Composer and GRAMMY- nominated violist Diana Wade likes to make strange sounds, usually on the viola. In a recent performance of Berio’s Sequenza VI, Diana was praised for playing with “both athletic and operatic ferocity” and “throwing herself into tremolo passages with a physical force that shook her and a sonic one that practically shook the walls” (Mark Swed, LA Times). If none of this is ringing a bell, then you may recognize her for saying “Shia LaBeouf” in that internet video.
Diana enjoys the richly varied musical life that she is cultivating in Los Angeles. Not only can she be heard recording for film and television, but also performing with ensembles such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Master Chorale, wild Up and appearances in series such as Jacaranda, Tuesdays @ Monk Space, and the Hear Now Music Festival. Diana has appeared on recent albums by Pat Metheny, Barbara Streisand, and numerous film scores.
Diana’s recent live highlights include performing in the electronic, classical and Slovakian-folk-music-based tale of The Black Queen with composer Juraj Kojs, pianist Adam Marks, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Beattie which premiered in Miami in the Fall of 2018 with subsequent performances in Copenhagen in 2019. Diana was the principal violist in the world premiere of Ted Hearne’s work Place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the fall of 2019. Subsequently, she recorded all three viola parts of Place for the recently released album for which she received a GRAMMY nomination. In the spring of 2019, Diana participated in part of LA Phil’s Fluxus Festival with wild UP performing the last two minutes of the Marriage of Figaro on a loop for 12 hours in a work called Bliss by Ragnar Kjartansson. One of her last live performances before the pandemic was with the renowned opera company, The Industry, in the premiere performances of Sweet Land by Du Yun and Raven Chacon.
Recently, Diana has found herself turning to composition. Her bizarre vocal fry extravaganza “Fry on Fry” has been tickling audiences all along the West Coast. Recent projects include a new work for solo violin commissioned by Shalini Vijayan and an oboe solo Psychopomp for Synchromy’s virtual Bird Day LA celebration.
Along with mezzo-soprano Jennifer Beattie, Diana has founded the experimental duo SpacePants. Diana serves as violist, vocalist, composer, and player of a 25 foot long drainage tube. SpacePants is an ensemble-in-residence for the Charlotte New Music Festival which moved online for the summer of 2020. In addition to giving the presentation The Power of the Tube: How Aliens Gave us the Tools for Creative Success, SpacePants, from two separate coasts, learned, workshopped, and recorded videos of six new student works. SpacePants recently had their essay Enthusiasm is Space Fuel published in the online publication, The Seers’ Catalogue.
In fulfillment of her viola dreams, Diana is currently recording the complete Viola Sonatas of Paul Hindemith with pianist Aron Kallay. Diana is deeply committed to playing the music of our time and has worked with closely composers such as Christopher Theofanidis, Martin Bresnick, Andrew Norman, Ted Hearne, Kerrith Livengood, and Thomas Kotcheff in the performance of their music.
Diana holds degrees and certificates from Temple University, Cleveland Institute of Music and University of Southern California and she studied with CJ Chang, Jeffrey Irvine, and Donald McInnes. Diana plays on a viola made by Tetsuo Matsuda in 2004 that she’s lovingly named Fernando. In the rare moment that she’s not playing viola, Diana enjoys writing lists, reading science fiction, and wishing she were an opera singer.
