C3 Composers Kathleen Ginther and Timothy Dwight Edwards are Spektral Quartet’s special guests on an upcoming episode of the Floating Lounge!
C3 Composers Kyong Mee Choi and Timothy Ernest Johnson are Spektral Quartet’s special guests on an upcoming episode of the Floating Lounge!
*SEE BELOW FOR IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT ROOSEVELT UNIVERSITY’S COVID PROTOCOL*
*CORRECTED TIME*: 7:30 pm
C3 plus DAL NIENTE: NEW SOUNDS, NEW INSTRUMENTS
Sunday, December 12, 2021, 7:30 pm
Ganz Hall, Roosevelt University, Chicago, IL
Join C3 and Ensemble Dal Niente on December 12 at Ganz Hall or Streamed Here!
Called ‘a superb new music collective’ by the New York Times, Chicago’s Ensemble Dal Niente has risen to the top tier of new music chamber ensembles worldwide. Recipient of the 2019 Fromm Music Foundation prize and the first-ever ensemble to win the Kranichstein Prize in interpretation from the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Dal Niente has performed throughout Europe and the Americas, galvanizing audiences with their experimental spirit and virtuosic performances. C3 collaborates again with our old friends, presenting a program of new works written for Ben, Ammie and Emma by C3 members and emerging composers.
Emma Hospelhorn, flute
Ammie Brod, viola
Ben Melsky, harp
Kyong Mee Choi: Vanished for harp and electronics (2019)
Timothy Dwight Edwards: A Winter’s Voyage for harp and electronics (2021)
Kathleen Ginther: A Distant Light for viola and harp (2021)
Jonathan Hannau: The Sky Fell Last Night for flute and electronics (2021)
Timothy Ernest Johnson: Cadenza Ficta for viola and loudspeakers (2021)
Mary Mixter: River of Grass for flute and electronics (2021)
*ROOSEVELT UNIVERSITY COVID PROTOCOL INFO*
Please note, if you are planning to attend our concert on Dec. 12, Roosevelt University has a specific set of Covid protocols that must be followed. They include registering at least 24 hours in advance (link below), bringing proof of vaccination and a state ID, wearing a mask, and filling out a health survey (either upon entry or via a phone app). Please refer to the below link for more details:
https://www.roosevelt.edu/news-events/events#!view/event/event_id/114321
We will be performing our final concert of the 20/21 season on Tuesday evening, July 20 7:30 PM at the Nevermore Performance Space, 3411 W. North Ave in Chicago. This concert is part of the New Music Chicago Presents series. It will feature Elizabeth Start, cello, Amos Gillespie, saxophone and Lawrence Axelrod, piano. The program is all works by members of the CCC:
Amos Gillespie Ellipses (2020)
Laura Schwendinger Air from Magic Carpet Ride (2001)
Elizabeth Start Verdisimilitude (1998)
Lawrence Axelrod Piano Games (2017)
Tim Edwards Cello Cycles (2004)
Martha Horst Movement III from Summer Sonata (2004/2007)
It is a fun, dynamic and varied program. You can attend in person for free!! The large space will be set up for a small number of chairs to keep all attendees at a safe distance. You may also watch online through any of New Music Chicago’s portals on YouTube etc,
We hope to see you either in person or virtually for a great “home-grown” program by the CCC!
Date: Sunday, June 6, 2021
Time: 8:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Where: Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.)
Our final concert for the 2020-21 season will be a reprise program with our friends in Quintet Attacca. They will play a fun program of very diverse woodwind quintet works that they performed in Evanston several years ago, plus a new work by Kathleen Ginther. This will be a part of the Frequency Series at Constellation on Sunday, June 6 at 8:00 pm Central Time.
Constellation Covid policies: https://www.constellation-
For our first concert of 2021, the Chicago Composers’ Consortium is delighted to be collaborating with the local vocal group Artemisia Vocal Trio - Kaitlin Foley, Alexandra Olsavsky, and Diana Lawrence – with the added participation of Beena David.
The concert will be broadcast on Friday, April 30 at 7:30 pm Central Time on the CCC’s own YouTube channel (Concert Link). It will feature seven works for vocal trio and quartet by CCC composers Kyong Mee Choi, Kathleen Ginther, Martha Horst, Timothy Ernest Johnson, Laura Schwendinger and Elizabeth Start. Most of these pieces are premieres. The singers will also talk about their experience with the different compositions as part of the program.
This performance will NOT have the performers stitched together! The singers of Artemisia decided to be their own pod during the pandemic, so they have been able to rehearse and perform together. Therefore, despite the fact that the program will be recorded without an audience in Ganz Hall for broadcast, it will be a like an in-person concert in every other way.
Over the course of the 30+ year history of the Consortium, we have only rarely worked with vocal groups. We are happy to be remedying this notable lack with a fresh exciting program in April.
Please mark your calendar and plan to join us for this unique program by a dynamic, young, local group!
What: Chicago Composers’ Consortium presents the Artemisia Trio
When: Friday, April 30 7:30
Where: The YouTube Channel of the Chicago Composers’ Consortium
Featured Works:
Pale Courage by Kyong Mee Choi
Give Sorrow Words by Kathleen Ginther
Hand Games by Martha Horst
Un jour de les voix des femmes by Timothy Ernest Johnson
STARS and All Those That Love You by Laura Schwendinger
Uncertain Futures by Elizabeth Start
To pique your interest even further about this concert, here are a few words by the composers about their pieces.
Martha – As a little girl growing up in twentieth century America, I learned hand games on the playground and from my mother, who learned them when growing up in the Appalachian Mountains. All third grade girls knew multiple moves, songs, rhythms, and patterns for various songs. The songs in my work titled Hand Games are a celebration of this rich American folk music tradition.
Tim J- In my “Un jour de les voix des femmes”, Emily Dickinson’s beautiful poem “A Day” acts as a frame around a musical exploration of other poems by Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sophie d’Arbouville. I hope that Artemisia finds the perfect vehicle for their fun, eclectic and socially relevant approach to performance and repertoire in this music.
Kyong Mee – <Pale Courage> is a true story about the composer’s grand-aunt who chose starvation to death to fight for her dream to be educated and independent instead of being forced to marry a man who she did not know. Her father’s refusal and denial to accept her wish to go to school continued as well as her hunger strike, which led to her death. The composer wrote the text of the piece. This story also becomes the 3-act Opera, <Pale Courage> which is in the work-in-progress.
Betsy – In addition to real life and death struggles, this past year has included soul-searching on personal and national/international levels, refocusing discussions, and hope of re-imagined future dynamics, all of which are uncertain at this time. All three of the Conrad Hilberry poems I set here present situations where the future is anticipated, but the realities unknown. The first tells us “when I’m hungry enough….. I will know what the goat knows”, but what is that? The second, looking at a relationship of two people with analogs to geometry, ends wondering if their lines will converge into a point or diverge obtusely. The final poem sets “moon” as a “metaphor for what we leave unsaid”, and the poem ends with the moon, “appalling”, about to speak.
Laura – STARS for four woman’s voices and set to a poem by the Canadian Marjorie Pickthall Pickthall published much of her work while she was still young, and died at only 39. John Garvin, writing in Canadian Poets, “evident that a genius of a rare order had appeared in Canadian literature.’’ (A) writer of pain and presence whom we all, male and female alike, ought to read” In my setting, I have sought to capture the exquisite beauty of the heavens, and that feeling we all have when we look up at the stars in awe but also how small and alone it can make us feel in the face of the utter vastness. ALL THOSE WHO LOVE YOU is for Woman’s Voices, from the Songs of Solomon, is about spiritual and romantic love. It is from my six Choral settings, commissioned by the Marsh Chapel Choir and was performed by them at Carnegie Hall in 2012. These two settings are paired to capture two kinds of wonder, human love and transcendental awe.
KC – In addition to the universal sorrow and grief of the past year, ’Give Sorrow Words’ had a more specific impetus – an article in Vanity Fair by Ta-Nihisi Coates about Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor. This article affected me deeply. I was blown away by the courage of this woman in facing the unimaginable loss of her daughter. I wrote ‘Give Sorrow Words’ thinking of all the mothers, and all the fathers, and everyone who has lost a child during this year of tragedy. The words are by Shakespeare and Rumi.
Our concert with the Spektral Quartet – The Bernard Rands Effect – finally has a performance date: March 2, 2022. This is actually Bernard’s birthday and we are looking forward to giving him our long-postponed gift! This wonderful program will feature a short new string quartet by Bernard and eight responses by CCC composers. It’s hard to beat nine premieres played by the Spektrals in one evening! We will update time and location soon.
In the meantime, as preambles for the March concert, we will be doing three of Spektral Quartet’s very popular Floating Lounge programs, each one featuring two of our composers, an excerpt of their quartets for this program and conversation. They are fun online events and have proven very popular.
The dates are:
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
All programs are at 7:30 PM. They are free, but you must register through the Spektral Quartet website.
The Chicago Composers’ Consortium will continue its tradition of presenting a concert celebrating electro-acoustic works on October 29 at 7:30 PM. This program will be in a virtual format in conjunction with Experimental Sound Studio.
Clarinetist and composer Eric Mandat, a longtime friend of the CCC, is our featured guest. He will play three movements of his 2013 work Chiral Symmetries and an excerpt of his new work The Isoletudes. Eric will also play a new work by emerging composer Mengmeng Wang titled Formulas and a work by Consortium member Kathleen Ginther, The Line Between, that was written specifically for him. Lituus for 2 clarinets, 4 guitars and video by Timothy Ernest Johnson was also written specifically for this occasion.
Another emerging composer, Mitch Weakley, will premiere his Synthetechnica for fixed media.
We are also delighted to present the beautiful and imaginative work La Mer Émeraude for fixed media by Joao Oliveira, which won the 2020 Chicago Composers Consortium Composition Competition. This exceptional piece was chosen from among 49 entries from around the world.
Two other premieres will round out this varied program. Until Heard, for piano and electronics, by Kyong Mee Choi, and a new work by Timothy Edwards for electronics with video.
Please join us for this exciting online presentation of some of the newest works on the planet!
We’re delighted to announce a joint online event with the Spektral String Quartet. The event will take place on June 17 at 7:30 PM Central Time. It will feature two of our composers – Laura Elise Schwendinger and Martha C. Horst – talking about the pieces that they wrote for the Spektral Quartet as part of the Bernard Rands Effect concert that was to happen on April 19, but was necessarily postponed. The Spektrals have recorded and pieced together excerpts from both Laura’s and Martha’s piece, which will be presented along with conversation with both composers. It should be a fun and interesting hour that will whet your appetite to hear the whole program when it happens!
The event is free, but you DO need to register. Please follow this link :
https://spektralquartet.com/concerts/2020/6/17/floating-lounge-c3?fbclid=IwAR06wG_8ybHhqdaLMb-DUmk5c_zEb-MOvldGoNaEdBtsDYwQuCwILySIxfE
Another great way to support us at no cost is with Amazon Smile. When you make your next purchase at Amazon, sign in using the URL smile.amazon.com instead of the usual way. Here, you can choose the CCC to be the recipient of a percentage of your purchase with no extra cost to you! Win/win!
Thanks for your support and we look forward to seeing you (virtually) on June 17!
Larry Axelrod, president, with Kyong Mee, Tim E, Amos, KC, Martha, Tim J, Laura and Betsy
p.s. We are delighted to announce that eminent composer, saxophonist and educator Amos Gillespie has joined our ranks!
CCC and Spektral Quartet on The Floating Lounge
with C3 composers Martha Horst and Laura Schwendinger
June 17 at 7:30 PM Central