New Music, New Voices
October 29, 2020
New Music 2020-21 Season
We are thrilled to introduce two new online series dedicated to living composers and their work: New Milestones and Composers in Focus.
Both series include newly-recorded and archival performances of music; interviews and conversations with composers and musicians; documentary film; and online resource guides. Once again, CMS has moved forward, in the midst of a pandemic, with new approaches to programming, like our intimate online concert series that continue bringing music, musicians, composers and audiences closer, even as they are physically kept apart.
New Milestones, which is Primarily a concert experience, supplemented with informational material to provide context, this series explores and unpacks the work of a wide-ranging selection of international composers: Eleanor Alberga, Andreia Pinto Correia, Patrick Castillo, Zosha Di Castri, Dai Fujikura, Helen Grime, Malika Kishino, Olivier Messiaen, Jessie Montgomery, Juri Seo, Alvin Singleton, Tōru Takemitsu, Alejandro Viñao, Thomas Meadowcroft, and Trevor Weston. This group consciously includes women and people of color, but is also diverse in other ways; there are newcomers and standard-bearers; lovers of tonal melody and artists embracing dissonance; and important composers from the U.S. and many representing other parts of the world, notably Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Jamaica, Japan, Portugal and Scotland.
Concerts in this series include a rich array of newly recorded performances along with archival recordings, interview clips, and supporting material to help introduce the composers to new audiences and deepen the listening experience for those already familiar with the composers and their work. A special section on the CMS Website will offer additional insights through extensive historical and biographical information along with program notes.
Composers in Focus, a new series this season, welcomes Zosha Di Castri, Jessie Montgomery, Tania León and Joan Tower and offers audiences a rare opportunity to sit in on intimate conversations between composers and musicians who know each other’s work, and in some cases have known each other for decades. The webinar-style presentations will include live, real-time conversations with composers as well as pre-recorded performances of their music.
This season we take the opportunity to empower newcomers to new music to join our sophisticated new music audience as fearless and curious listeners. We look forward to sharing this incredible line up with you in the weeks and months to come. Thank you for your continued support and commitment to CMS, chamber music, and our artists!