PRESS PLAY Episode 75: Birría

April 23, 2026

Birría (2021)

Carolyn Chen (US)

Leslie Newman, flute
Anthony Thompson, clarinet
Carol Lynn Fujino, violin
Paul Widner, cello
Gregory Oh, piano
Ryan Scott, percussion
Brian Current, conductor

In considering how to make an Angeleno companion piece to the Capricorn movement of Stockhausen’s Tierkreis, I thought about how goats intersect with life in L.A. I live in Highland Park, a largely Mexican-American neighborhood since the white flight of the mid-1960s, following the completion of the Arroyo Seco parkway in 1940. Despite the rapid gentrification of the 2000s, this neighborhood is still home to numerous purveyors of Mexican cuisine, which can include bírria, a stew from Jalisco traditionally made with chili-pepper-based goat meat adobo. In Spanish, “bírria” describes things without value or quality. The dish’s name originates with the Conquistadors who, facing an overpopulation of tough and odiferous goats that they did not know how to eat, gave them to the native people, who marinated the meat in indigenous styles and cooked it underground, with delicious results.

This piece takes inspiration from this origin story and the cooking process of bírria – measuring dry ingredients, blending the salsa, marinating, and pressure-cooking. I imagined the gradually unwinding music box spinning into the whirling of a blender. I also had in mind ‘La Negra’ and other examples of son jalisciense, and songs by Lila Downs, Natalia LaFourcade, and Mexican Institute of Sound. Though the setting and ensemble here is of course very different, I tried to capture the sense of joy in some of this music.