Return to the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music

The 30th Annual New Music Festival at Bowling Green State University
October 22-24, 2009

CLICK HERE FOR A COMPLETE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

The 30th Annual New Music Festival takes place October 22 –24, 2009. This year’s festival will feature Steven Stucky as special guest composer and will include performances by the acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble and BGSU ensembles, faculty and students. Organized by the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music and the College of Musical Arts, the festival has hosted John Adams, Samuel Adler, Milton Babbitt, William Bolcom, Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Chen Yi, John Corigliano, George Crumb, Mario Davidovsky, Anthony Davis, Philip Glass, John Harbison, Lou Harrison, Karel Husa, Joan La Barbara, Paul Lansky, Pauline Oliveros, Shulamit Ran, Bernard Rands, Terry Riley, Christopher Rouse, Frederic Rzewski, Gunther Schuller, Joseph Schwantner, Bright Sheng, Morton Subotnick, Joan Tower, Vladimir Ussachevsky and more than 400 other guest composers and musicians since 1980.

Steven Stucky has written commissioned works for many of the major American orchestras (Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minnesota, National, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and others); for institutions such as Carnegie Hall, the Aspen Festival, the Eastman School of Music, and the BBC; and for solo artists such as pianist Emmanuel Ax, percussionist Evelyn Glennie, guitarist Manuel Barrueco, baritone Sanford Sylvan and recorder player Michala Petri. His music can be heard on the Albany, Bis, CRI, Centaur, and Innova labels, and Chanticleer's recording of his Cradle Songs on Teldec won a Grammy in 2000. Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for music for his Second Concerto for Orchestra, Steven Stucky also has earned fellowships or prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation, Koussevitzky Foundation, Barlow Endowment, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment for the Arts, Bogliasco Foundation, and others.

Currently serving as Given Foundation Professor of Composition at Cornell University, Mr. Stucky is also active as a writer on music (his book Lutoslawski and His Music of 1981 won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award) and as a conductor specializing in contemporary music. In the latter role, in 1997 he co-founded Ensemble X, a professional chamber ensemble based in Ithaca that includes several faculty members from Cornell's music department. He currently shares Artistic Director duties with Xak Bjerken, Cornell professor of piano. He has been closely associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 1988 - the longest composer residency of any American orchestra - and divides his time between Ithaca and the West Coast, where he collaborates with Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen on programming and commissioning, is active in audience education initiatives, and supervises the Green Umbrella new-music series. A sought-after teacher and guest composer on college campuses, he was Composer in Residence at the Aspen Music Festival and School (2001), Visiting Professor at the Eastman School of Music (2001-2), and Ernest Bloch Professor at the University of California, Berkeley (2003).

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), described recently in The New York Times as “one of the most adventurous and accomplished groups in new music” and by the New Yorker as “a powerhouse of new-music programming on a Chicago-New York axis…brilliant and unexpected” is a uniquely structured chamber music ensemble comprised of thirty dynamic and versatile young performers who are dedicated to advancing the music of our time. Through innovative programming, inter-disciplinary collaborations, commissions by young composers, and performances in nontraditional venues, ICE brings together new music and new audiences.

ICE was founded in 2001, and has rapidly established itself as one of the leading new-music ensembles of its generation, winning first prize in the 2005 Chamber Music America/ASCAP Awards, and performing over fifty concerts a year in the U.S. and abroad. Recent engagements include performances at the Mostly Mozart Festival of Lincoln Center, the Bang on a Can Marathon at the World Financial Center, the opening ceremonies of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, multiple engagements at Miller Theatre, and performances at international festivals in Europe, Asia and Latin America. ICE served as ensemble-in-residence at New York University from 2004-2008, and at Columbia College Chicago from 2003-2008.

The ensemble released its first critically acclaimed CD on the Naxos label in 2007, and has recently released a new album on the New York based indie New Focus Recordings label featuring works by Davidovsky, Linberg, Saariaho, Du Yun and Fujikura. ICE is also featured on a new release featuring works by George Crumb on the Complete Crumb Edition of Bridge Records, recorded under the supervision of the composer.

In addition to ICE’s performances at major venues throughout the world, the ensemble has self-produced eight contemporary music festivals in venues as wide-ranging as nightclubs, galleries and warehouses, many of which are free and open to the public. An interest in multimedia productions has led to collaborations with Ridge Theater, with the New York City ballet choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, with director Luca Vegetti on the U.S. premiere of Xenakis’ opera Oresteia, and with director Lydia Steier on the co-production of a touring version of Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King. As a recipient of a MAP Fund award this season, ICE will commission the Brooklyn-based songwriter Corey Dargel for an evening-length art-pop song cycle tailor-made for the ensemble, to be premiered at Performance Space 122 in May 2009.

A champion of music by emerging composers, ICE has given over 400 world premieres to date. In 2004, ICE launched the 21st Century Young Composers Project, a worldwide call-for-entries by composers under the age of 35, which has culminated in the world premieres of works by young composers in 27 different countries.

CLICK HERE FOR A COMPLETE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS