^{The composers and musicians who took part in Concert XX on April 23, 2017.}

 

Guest violinist Davis Brooks and composer Frank Felicepresented a recital of 20th and 21st-century music for solo violin and fixed media. The program for this concert included works by James Aikman, Patrick Long, Otto Luening, Hugh Levick, Tyler Entelisano and Frank Felice.

Conceived in 2012, with the aim of fostering strong bonds and collaborative relationships between performers and composers at the School of Music, The 24 + 24 Hour Project began by randomly assigning composers to a volunteer musicians from the School of Music studios. These composers then had twenty-four hours to compose an original work for their assigned performers. Once the performers received the new work, they had up to twenty-four hours to learn, practice, and rehearse the piece until they performed it.

 

Guest composer and UI alumnus Amy Dunker is a Professor of Music at Clarke University where she teaches music theory, aural skills, composition and trumpet. Amy has a DMA in Composition from the University of Missouri‐Kansas City Conservatory of Music, MM in Composition from Butler University, MM in Trumpet Performance from the University of South Dakota and a BME in Music Education from Morningside College. She has studied composition with James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Michael Schelle, James Aikman and Robert Block.

 

Time With People (2013) is not an opera in the traditional sense. There are no characters, costumes, or even orchestral instruments. Instead, the stage is set with trash and other assorted objects. The soloists and chorus speak, dance, chant, and drum. And the only “classical” music comes from a recording.
Alternately funny, playful, perplexing, and sad, the work challenges audiences to reconsider their preconceived notions of the nature of music. Writing about the world-premiere performance, Lawrence Dunn remarked, “This is a world in which music is a kind of memory—something that must be reconstructed from the ground up, and afterwards returned to the same ground.”
The piece hearkens back to the traditional sense of an opera as a collection of works, yet upends tradition by largely removing music and the orchestra, leaving behind only fragments, both musical and literal: recorded excerpts of Handel and Rossini begin and end the work, while a trash-strewn set serves as an orchestra of found objects as the performers wade through it.
The performance group a.pe.ri.od.ic, led by Nomi Epstein, is a collective of composers, instrumentalists and vocalists with experience in myriad experimental music practices. The group has a history of interpreting distinctive pieces using a collaborative rehearsal process, deriving meaning and intention from oblique prose scores with great sensitivity.

 

The Composers’ Workshop (CW), made available to the graduate and undergraduate students in the composition program, helps to promote new works in live performance, thus encouraging dialogue between composer/composer and composer/musician regarding musical ideas, instrumental techniques and mutually understood notation. The program is made up of pieces that are in various stages of development, from early sketches to completed compositions. Works for specialized performers, such as the JACK quartet, are adjudicated and considered for a performance. The CNM currently schedules four CW concerts with student performers annually, and one concert with the JACK Quartet each fall.

 
 

The concert features two British composers, Jeremy Dale Roberts together with his former student Richard Causton. Dale Roberts, who passed away this year, had been active at the Royal College of Music as a teacher in music composition and latterly as Head of Composition from 1966 to 1998 and in terms between 1999 and 2004, as Visiting Professor of Composition at the University of Iowa. The director of CNM, David Gompper, includes Dale Roberts as a decisive mentor in his own education. Richard Causton is an award winning composer holding the post of Reader in Composition at the University of Cambridge (King’s College).

 

The MidWest Composers Symposium is a consortium made up of the composition departments of four American Midwest Universities: The University of Cincinnati, Indiana University and the Universities of Iowa and Michigan. The purpose is to allow students to have contact with other composers at nearby institutions, and to foster connections and self-identity.

 

In cooperation with the UI String Quartet Residency Program, CNM presents

 

JACK operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and spread of new string quartet music. Dedicated to education, the quartet spends two weeks each summer teaching at New Music on the Point, a contemporary chamber music festival in Vermont for young performers and composers. JACK has a long-standing relationships with the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, where they teach and collaborate with students each fall, and the Boston University Center for New Music, where they visit each semester. Additionally, the quartet makes regular visits to schools including Columbia University, Harvard University, New York University, Princeton University, Stanford University, and the University of Washington.  

The recipient of Lincoln Center\'s Martin E. Segal Award, New Music USA\'s Trailblazer Award, and the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, JACK has performed to critical acclaim at Carnegie Hall (USA), Lincoln Center (USA), Miller Theatre (USA), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), Muziekgebouw aan \'t IJ (Netherlands), IRCAM (France), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Suntory Hall (Japan), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Festival Internacional Cervatino (Mexico), and Teatro Colón (Argentina).

 

Directed by Asst. Professor Jean-François Charles, the Laptop Orchestra of the University of Iowa (LOUi) is an experimental new music ensemble that promotes the intersection of acoustic and electronic music, of traditional or classical instruments with laptops, guitar pedals, and other electronic devices. Students create their own repertoire and develop improvisation skills.
Guest Andrew Bentley is Artistic Professor of Music Technology at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki. He was one of the founders of the Music Technology study program at the Sibelius Academy in 1998, and acted as its first Head. Bentley has made long-term efforts to develop electro-acoustic music teaching and its educational tools, increasing their levels significantly. Over the past few years he has been actively involved in the development of SAMA – Sound Art & Sonic Arts, the inter-academy study program at the University of the Arts Helsinki.

 

The Composers’ Workshop, made available to the graduate and undergraduate students in the composition program, helps to promote new works in live performance, thus encouraging dialogue between composer/composer and composer/musician regarding musical ideas, instrumental techniques and mutually understood notation. The program is made up of pieces that are in various stages of development, from early sketches to completed compositions. Works for specialized performers, such as the JACK quartet, are adjudicated and considered for a performance. The CNM currently schedules four workshop concerts with student performers annually, and one concert with the JACK Quartet each fall.

52nd Season – Winter/Spring Session

 

The Iowa Composers Forum, founded in 1987, is one of the few remaining state-based concert music organizations in the US. These two concerts will feature new music by composers from across Iowa and the environs, including two young composers commissioned specifically for this festival. Performers include UI faculty, students, and the CNM ensemble.

 

This program presents three compositions with an emphasis on the “miniature” — multiple short movements with the intent to free up stylistic constraints. Two compositions, by guest composer John Berners (University of Indianapolis) and György Kurtág, reflect models that are disparate, brief and intimate. The concert will conclude with guest pianist and Iowa City native Conor Hanick performing Ligeti’s Piano Concerto, a modern tour de force in the contemporary piano literature.

 

The University of Iowa Chapter of SCI presents the winning compositions of the 2018 Call for Scores. Award winners are Richard Drehoff Jr., JP Lempke and Jeremy Rapaport-Stein.

 

The Composers’ Workshop (CW), made available to the graduate and undergraduate students in the composition program, helps to promote new works in live performance, thus encouraging dialogue between composer/composer and composer/musician regarding musical ideas, instrumental techniques and mutually understood notation. The program is made up of pieces that are in various stages of development, from early sketches to completed compositions. Works for specialized performers, such as the JACK quartet, are adjudicated and considered for a performance. The CNM currently schedules four CW concerts with student performers annually, and one concert with the JACK Quartet each fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Directed by Asst. Professor Jean-François Charles, the Laptop Orchestra of the University of Iowa (LOUi) is an experimental new music ensemble that promotes the intersection of acoustic and electronic music, of traditional or classical instruments with laptops, guitar pedals, and other electronic devices. Students create their own repertoire and develop improvisation skills.

 

The Composers’ Workshop, made available to the graduate and undergraduate students in the composition program, helps to promote new works in live performance, thus encouraging dialogue between composer/composer and composer/musician regarding musical ideas, instrumental techniques and mutually understood notation.