MUSE/IQUE’s ‘Looking West’ Reconsiders the Myth and Music of the American Frontier

A MUSE/IQUE concert rarely unfolds like a conventional evening of songs. Under Artistic & Music Director Rachael Worby, each themed program is built more like a narrative, with musicians functioning essentially as members of an ensemble cast whose individual contributions push a larger story forward. There is something very theatrical about MUSE/IQUE’s offerings, carrying audiences through an identifiable beginning, middle and end while engaging the eyes as much as the ears. Historical context — not to mention the accompanying social, political and emotional implications — matters just as much as the performance, deepening the audience’s overall experience.

This approach has given MUSE/IQUE’s events a remarkably distinct identity. For instance, July’s Defiantly Joni examined Joni Mitchell not simply through her catalog but through the artistic independence and refusal to compromise that helped define her career. Earlier programs have similarly reframed seemingly familiar subjects such as Ed Sullivan. In fact, LAexcites saw that firsthand in 2024 at Really Big Show: How Ed Sullivan Changed America Every Sunday Night, when songs, archival imagery and Worby’s storytelling illuminated how The Ed Sullivan Show reflected changing ideas about race, representation and who was being welcomed into American living rooms.

Next comes Looking West: How the Myth of the Western Frontier Got Its Start, part of MUSE/IQUE’s 2026 WHERE THE HEART IS: 250 Years of American Music and Innovation season. This time, Worby and the MUSE/IQUE orchestra turn toward one of America’s most durable cultural inventions: the rootin’-tootin’ cowboy.

Looking West asks how a real place populated by complex communities became an almost boundless symbol of independence, masculinity, reinvention and freedom. Music was hardly a bystander in that transformation. Traditional songs born from life on the range eventually shared space with Broadway, popular music and Hollywood scores, all helping to enlarge the West from geography into mythology.

The repertoire alone illustrates how far that idea traveled. “Home on the Range” sits within the same conversation as Ennio Morricone’s unforgettable The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme and Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Elsewhere, MUSE/IQUE draws on Oklahoma!, Elmer Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven, the Eagles’ “Desperado” and generations of artists who soaked up, romanticized or challenged what a cowboy was supposed to represent.

The scheduled featured artists make that exploration particularly well chosen. Damon Daunno earned a Tony nomination for playing Curly in Daniel Fish’s Broadway revival of Oklahoma! and shared in the production’s Grammy-nominated cast recording; he earlier originated Orpheus in the off-Broadway Hadestown. Singer-songwriter Raye Zaragoza brings another layer through work rooted in resilience and her proud Indigenous and Mexican heritage. Last but not least, Emmy winner Glynn Turman will add storytelling drawn from cowboy culture to the proceedings, with a particular authenticity of his own as an accomplished horseman and real-life cowboy.

The artists’ personal and very different relationships to the material should help MUSE/IQUE probe the gap between the Western legend and the people who actually inhabited its landscape. The cowboy story has been rewritten countless times through theater, film and song, sometimes enlarging history and sometimes simplifying it. Looking West has room to ask whose stories became iconic, whose were pushed aside, and why the fantasy remains so potent even generations later.

Two venues will host Looking West, and each should color the experience in its own way. The first — The Huntington — will bring its own deep relationship to the history and cultural imagination of the American West. The second — the Skirball — will bring its longstanding engagement with identity, migration and belonging. MUSE/IQUE certainly has a way of making location feel less like an address than another participant in the evening.

After Looking West, the season continues with October’s American Sound Takes Flight, which follows Aaron Copland’s departure from European classical traditions toward a distinctly American musical vocabulary, then traces that evolution through artists ranging from Leonard Bernstein to Paul Simon and Rhiannon Giddens.

Undoubtedly, MUSE/IQUE has built a terrific reputation for its multidimensional musical explorations. These concerts don’t just entertain; they edify without dictating what audiences should think. The melodies may be familiar, but the thoughtful programming asks audiences to reconsider where they came from, what circumstances gave them meaning, and how they helped shape the stories Americans have absorbed, for better or worse, over the years.

With Looking West, even something as familiar as the cowboy may look a little different by the time the final note fades.

Cover image caption: MUSE/IQUE’s latest offering, Looking West: How the Myth of the Western Frontier Got Its Start, will be presented at The Huntington and Skirball Cultural Center. Graphic is courtesy of MUSE/IQUE.

MUSE/IQUE’s Looking West: How the Myth of the Western Frontier Got Its Start plays August 25th and 26th at 7:30 p.m. at The Huntington in San Marino, followed by performances August 30th at 3:00 p.m. (for Premium RSVPs only) and 7:30 p.m. at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. For more information and to RSVP, visit MUSE-IQUE.com.