Contempo Presents Tomorrow's Music Today Concerts, May 15 & 28
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMay 5, 2009
Contact:
Ian Martínez, Director of Communications
imartinez@uchicago.edu
(773) 834-7965
CONTEMPO PRESENTS TOMORROW'S MUSIC TODAY CONCERTS, MAY 15 & 28
Annual free events feature new works by University of Chicago composition students, performed by members of Pacifica Quartet and eighth blackbird
CHICAGO - Contempo, the University of Chicago's new music collective under the artistic direction of Shulamit Ran, will present its two annual Tomorrow's Music Today (TMT) concerts on Friday, May 15 and Thursday, May 28. Dedicated to works by the University of Chicago's graduate composition students, Tomorrow's Music Today features performances by the two Grammy-winning ensembles-in-residence, eighth blackbird and the Pacifica Quartet.
Originally created as the Young Composers Concerts by composer and University of Chicago professor Ralph Shapey, the TMT program provides an opportunity for masters and doctoral students to build professional relationships with world-class musicians. Throughout the season, the resident ensembles act as a resource, supplying interaction and creative guidance to the young composers.
"No experience matches the kind of learning that happens when a composer hears his or her music performed with passion and commitment," said Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Shulamit Ran, who serves as the artistic director of Contempo and as a composition professor to many of the students in the program. "It is a supremely inspiring and invigorating, not to mention edifying, occasion for all involved."
Each student's work is professionally recorded during the concert and functions as an important tool when the young composers go on to apply for summer festivals, competitions and faculty positions at academic institutions. In the case of David Gordon, a former student in the composition program, his 2002 TMT work, titled Friction Systems, was added to eighth blackbird's concert repertoire and later appeared on the sextet's Grammy-winning album, strange imaginary animals.
Speaking to TMT's ongoing importance to the University, Ran mentioned the twofold synthesis between performance and education. "On the one hand, a top-level professional ensemble is performing new music, but it is also an ensemble that serves a critical curricular function within the program, where we have at any given time 15 composers from across the globe working toward a Ph.D. in composition," said Ran. "Thus it is in these last two concerts each year that these two central aspects of the Contempo mission come together most fully and brilliantly."
The May 15 concert contains works by Dylan Schneider, Takuma Tanikawa, Shawn Allison and Jacob Bancks. Schneider's blazing Reflections of Time and Fire is contrasted with Tanikawa's poetic Midair for clarinet soloist and string quartet. Allison's musical fantasia, Towards the Flame, takes its inspiration from the life cycles of four different species of moths. Bancks' piece, Albion, based on the 14th-century astronomical clock of the same name, is a collection of eight short pieces written for eighth blackbird.
Works by Alex J. Berezowsky, Füsun Köksal, Steven Winfield and Andrés Carrizo comprise the May 28 concert. Berezowsky's May 6th, 1998 for string quartet commemorates Chicago Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood's 20-strikeout win against the Houston Astros. Köksal's Deux Visions Pour Sextuor presents two contrasting sections--one inspired by Chopin, the other by Middle Eastern and jazz rhythms. Winfield's Distant Glimmerings explores a wide range of literary-inspired emotions, while Carrizo's Fantasia Sobre "Soledad" is an introspective, incidental work that takes its cue from a Piazzolla composition.
Contempo's TMT events are free and open to the public. There are no advance tickets. For more information, call the University of Chicago Presents concert office at (773) 702-8068.
---
Contempo: Tomorrow's Music Today 1
Friday, May 15, at 7:30 p.m.
Fulton Recital Hall, 1010 E. 59th Street, 4th Floor
Free admission
eighth blackbird
Pacifica Quartet
Dylan Schneider: Reflections of Time and Fire
Takuma Tanikawa: Midair for clarinet quintet
Shawn Brogan Allison: Towards the Flame
Jacob Bancks: Albion: Eight short pieces for eighth blackbird
Contempo: Tomorrow's Music Today 2
Thursday, May 28, at 7:30 p.m.
Ganz Hall, Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Avenue, 7th Floor
Free admission
Cliff Colnot, conductor
eighth blackbird
Pacifica Quartet
Alex J. Berezowsky: May 6th, 1998 for string quartet
Füsun Köksal: Deux Visions Pour Sextuor
Steven Winfield: Distant Glimmerings
Andrés Carrizo: Fantasia Sobre "Soledad"
---
Dedicated exclusively to the performance of contemporary classical music, Contempo (A New Music Collective), formerly known as the University of Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players, is one of the oldest and most successful professional new music groups in the nation. Over its 44-year history, Contempo has earned an enviable reputation for its outstanding performances of music by living composers and has given over 80 world premieres of works by both established and emerging composers. Contempo also dedicates itself to the performance of works by the University's own doctoral candidates in composition, as well as countless other composers whose name recognition may not yet equal their talent. In addition to the Artists-in-Residence, Contempo often features musicians who perform regularly with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Shulamit Ran, Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor of Music at the University of Chicago, is a composer with special interest in the performance and study of contemporary music. She is artistic director of Contempo and has been on the composition staff at the University of Chicago since 1973. Ran's Symphony earned the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in Music and the 1992 Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. In addition to her numerous awards, fellowships, and commissions, she has also served as composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1991-97 and the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 1994-97. Ran is the recipient of five honorary doctorates and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2003.
In recent years Cliff Colnot has emerged as a distinguished conductor and a musician of uncommon range. He is principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's contemporary MusicNOW series, resident conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and principal conductor of the Contemporary Chamber Players. Colnot also conducts the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), various orchestras at Indiana University, the Callisto Ensemble and the DePaul University Symphony Orchestra. A champion of music education, Colnot has taught jazz arranging and advanced orchestration at DePaul University and the University of Chicago, respectively. As a bassoonist, he was a member of the Lyric Opera Orchestra of Chicago, Music of the Baroque and the University of Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players.
Described by The New Yorker as "friendly, unpretentious, idealistic and highly skilled," eighth blackbird promises its ever-increasing audiences provocative and engaging performances. It is widely lauded for its performing style--often playing from memory with virtuosic and theatrical flair--and its efforts to make new music accessible to wide audiences. Since its founding in 1996, eighth blackbird has been active in commissioning new works from eminent composers such as George Perle, Frederic Rzewski, Joseph Schwantner, Paul Moravec, and Stephen Hartke. The sextet currently serves as ensemble-in-residence at the University of Richmond in Virginia and at the University of Chicago. Among its accolades, eighth blackbird's recordings have received praise from critics nationwide, with the ensemble's fourth and most recent release, strange imaginary animals, receiving two Grammy Awards in 2008.
Rapidly achieving international stature as one of the finest chamber ensembles, the Pacifica Quartet is an ensemble-in-residence at the University of Chicago and the Longy School in Boston. Shortly after its 1994 formation in California, the Pacifica Quartet went to the Winnetka campus of the Music Institute of Chicago, where it won the 1998 Naumburg prize. The quartet has since received many additional honors, including an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006, becoming the second string quartet in the program's 30-year history to be so honored. Ardent advocates of contemporary music, the quartet commissions and performs many new works and has championed the string quartets of American composer Elliott Carter. In 2004 the Pacifica Quartet was appointed to the faculty of the University of Illinois in and serves as Faculty Quartet-in-Residence. Its members live in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.
---
The University of Chicago Presents is one of the city's landmark classical music presenters on the campus of the University of Chicago in the heart of the city's South Side. Among the musical legends who made their debuts at Mandel Hall are violinist Isaac Stern, guitarist Andres Segovia, soprano Cecilia Bartoli and The Juilliard String Quartet.
UCP offers five concert series--Classic Concert, the Howard Mayer Brown International Early Music, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Artists-in-Residence Series featuring the Pacifica Quartet, and the Contempo series.
TICKETS: By phone with credit card at (773) 702-8068; minimum $10 charge
In person with cash, check or credit card, weekdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Office of Professional Concerts, 5720 S. Woodlawn Ave.
- At Mandel Box Office after 6:30 p.m. on concert day
- By email at chicagopresents@uchicago.edu
PARKING:
Street or free in lot at 55th Street and Ellis Avenue
DISABILITIES:
Persons with disabilities or who otherwise need assistance may call the Office of Professional Concerts at (773) 702-8068 prior to the concert, but no later than 3 p.m. on concert day.
PHOTOS:
Photos of the artists may be obtained upon request to the University of Chicago Presents at (773) 834-7965, or by fax at (773) 834-5888. To download pictures directly from the web site, visit chicagopresents.uchicago.edu/news/photos.
ONLINE:
chicagopresents.uchicago.edu
###