Join us for a unique event that straddles the line between jazz and classical! Newly composed music featuring:

Composer/performers Tim Johnson and Amos Gillespie are both classically trained composers with extensive experience in the jazz realm. It was a natural fit for them to work together to create a unique event that will explore music that taps both modern classical and jazz technique and expression.

The ensemble consists of both classically trained chamber musicians and seasoned jazz professionals, where both areas of performance practice will inform how the music is shaped for the concert.

From the composer’s point of view the process is a collaboration between the classical and jazz worlds, with the resulting scores being more specifically notated than a traditional jazz big band chart, but still allowing the openness and freedom for the jazz side to come to life.

Amos Gillespie, saxophone

Tim Johnson, guitar
Matt Mason, piano
Scott Mason, bass
Adam Shead, drums

Program:

Betsy Start, No Loitering
Kyong Mee Choi, Stainless Still
Tim Johnson, Time is the Now
Amos Gillespie, I. Match Light II. The Checkout III. Train Rattle
Tim Edwards, Crosstalk

Saturday, March 21, 2026 at 7:30 pm

The Checkout

Chicago Composers’ Consortium is delighted to partner once again with Chicago’s own Artemisia Vocal Ensemble in a concert of new works by Chicago composers for unaccompanied womens’ voices, presented at the exquisite Horatio N. May Chapel – a jewel-like performance space in Ravenswood. This concert, planned for 2021 but never presented live due to the pandemic, has finally been rescheduled for its live performance premiere on May 10th: Music by the women of Chicago Composers’ Consortium, performed by the women of Artemisia Ensemble.  Hope you can join us in this architectural and acoustical gem for a unique musical event!

May 10, 2025, 7:00 pm
Horatio N. May Chapel
Rosehill Cemetery
5800 N. Ravenswood
Chicago, Illinois

Free Parking:
Enter Rosehill Cemetery through the main gate at 5800 N Ravenswood and follow the signs to ‘May Chapel’, situated on the north side of the lagoon.

find it on google maps

Tickets: $30 / $10 students

Artemisia
Kaitlin Foley, soprano
Alexandra Olsavsky, soprano
Diano Lawrence, mezzo-soprano
Guest Artist, Cassidy Smith, mezzo-soprano

Program
ELIZABETH START Uncertain Futures (2021)
KYONG MEE CHOI  Pale Courage (2021)
LAURA SCHWENDINGER  STARS (2021)
KATHLEEN GINTHER  Give Sorrow Words (2021)
MARTHA HORST  Hand Games (2021)

This was a remarkable performance of an incredibly varied program. Surely, one of the best new music concerts of the year in Chicago, and well attended.

Bravo!

New Music for 2 Pianos & 2 Percussion

April 5, 2025, 7:30 pm
PianoForte Chicago
1335 South Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL

Tickets through PianoForte Chicago: $25/$5

Chicago Composers’ Consortium is thrilled to welcome Yarn/Wire, a phenomenal New York quartet of two pianists and two percussionists, in a program of World Premieres written expressly for Yarn/Wire. Music of five Chicago composers plus the Chicago premiere of Steve Reich’s iconic ‘Quartet’, which Reich calls “one of the more complex I have composed.”

Program:

Ascensions – Timothy Dwight Edwards *

‘After Clouds,…’ – Elizabeth Start *

Au revoir a soi – Timothy Ernest Johnson *

Game of Fibs – Amos Gillespie *

Velocities – K.C. Ginther *

Quartet – Steve Reich (Chicago premiere)

* world premiere

]]> http://c3composers.org/wordpress3/?feed=rss2&p=1397 0 http://c3composers.org/wordpress3/?p=1364 http://c3composers.org/wordpress3/?p=1364#comments Tue, 04 Feb 2025 20:30:38 +0000 consortium http://c3composers.org/wordpress3/?p=1364 … Continue Reading →]]> Mark your calendars for two upcoming C3 events this Spring!

Chicago Composers’ Consortium and Yarn/Wire

present

New Music for 2 Pianos & 2 Percussion

April 5, 2025, 7:30 pm
PianoForte Chicago
1335 South Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL

C3 is thrilled to welcome Yarn/Wire, the acclaimed New York-based quartet (pianists Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer, percussionists Russell Greenberg and Sae Hashimoto) in a program of new music for 2 pianos, 2 percussion at the elegant PianoForte Chicago in the South Loop. The program will feature music of five Chicago composers plus the Chicago premiere of Steve Reich’s iconic ‘Quartet’, which Reich calls “one of the more complex I have composed.”

Tickets: $25/$5

Program:
Ascensions – Timothy Dwight Edwards *
‘After Clouds,…’ – Elizabeth Start *
Au revoir a soi – Timothy Ernest Johnson *
Game of Fibs – Amos Gillespie *
Velocities - K.C. Ginther *
Quartet – Steve Reich (Chicago premiere)

* world premiere

Yarn/Wire is a NYC-based piano and percussion quartet dedicated to energetic and insightful performances of today’s most adventurous music, and to the promotion of creative, meaningful live musical experiences in the US and abroad. Yarn/Wire started making music together in 2005, focused from the beginning on creating music in partnership with composers, sound artists, noise musicians and more people around the globe who inspired them. Now, some 18 years later, Yarn/Wire is still guided by the same principles of openness, curiosity, and experimentation. New York Classical Review writes: “Yarn/Wire may well be the most important new music ensemble on the scene today.”

More info on our 2025 Season page.

Chicago Composers’ Consortium and Artemisia Vocal Ensemble

present

Les Voix du Femmes

May 10, 2025, 7:00 pm
Horatio N. May Chapel
Rosehill Cemetery
5800 N. Ravenswood
Chicago, Illinois

We’re delighted to partner once again with Chicago’s Artemisia Vocal Ensemble in a concert of new works by Chicago composers, presented at the intimate and exquisite Horatio N. May Chapel in Ravenswood. This concert, planned for 2021 but never presented live due to the pandemic, has finally been rescheduled for its live performance premiere. Hope you can join us in this architectural and acoustical gem for a unique musical event!

Tickets: $25/$5

The Sanctuary at Epiphany Center for the Arts
201 S Ashland Ave
Chicago, Illinois
312-421-4600
Tickets: $20 / $10 students

https://epiphanychi.com/events/chicago-composers-consortium-presents-brassworks-c3-with-axiom-brass/

Please join C3 and Chicago’s phenomenal Axiom Brass for a concert of new music for brass quintet! Axiom brings a fresh batch of international world premieres from Vancouver back to Chicago for this concert, along with quintets by Amos Gillespie, Timothy Johnson, Elizabeth Start and Augusta Read Thomas, plus the winning quintet from the 2024 C3 Composition Competition by Maxwell Franko.

Axiom Brass

Dorival Puccini, Jr., trumpet

Christopher Scanlon, trumpet

Alex Laskey, horn

Corey Sansolo, trombone

Serena Voltz, tuba

Program 

KEVIN DAY, Fantasia III for Brass Quintet (2021)

AMOS BILLESPIE, People in the Park (2021)

AUGUSTA READ THOMAS, Aura Tenebris (Radiant Darkness) (2024)

VALERIA GISEL VALLE MARTINEZ, Krypos 29, Red Metal (2024)

TIMOTHY ERNEST JOHNSON, Insuppressible (2024)

EVAN WILLIAMS, Lux Aeterna (2013)

MAXWELL FRANKO, A Light Shining in Darness: lamplight (2020)

ELIZABETH J. START, Somewhere Above Their Heads (2024)

VUMA LEVIN, Platinum (2023)

Described as “exceptional ambassadors for classical music” and “innovative programmers”, Chicago-based Axiom Brass designs concert experiences for audiences that stretch the imagination and expand sensibilities. Their concert programs regularly pair original works by composers such as Augusta Read Thomas, George Walker, and Joan Tower with early musical translations by Barbara Strozzi, Claudia Francesca Rusca, Leonora Duarte, and rousing tangos by Astor Piazzolla. As strong advocates for the creation and performance of “living music”, the ensemble actively engages with their audiences to showcase the importance of performing the music of living composers. Axiom has presented concerts all over the world, including the Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, Gallo Center for the Arts in California, Shenzhen Concert Hall in China, and Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis in Portugal.

The only brass ensemble to ever win the Fischoff Educator Award, Axiom creates custom- tailored workshops and residency activities for presenters and their communities. The group’s commitment to education and their interactive teaching style has led to residencies at the Grand Tetons Music Festival and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, as well as being featured as ensemble-in-residence for the National Brass Symposium. Axiom has presented concerts all over the world, including Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, Gallo Center for the Arts in California, Shenzhen Concert Hall in China, and Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis in Portugal.

2024 marks the premiere of the Heavy Metal Suite, a multi-year collaborative concert with the Future Minerals Working Group at the University of British Columbia, featuring eight internationally acclaimed composers from seven different countries around the globe. This trans-disciplinary partnership provides a new perspective about the foundational elements needed to support society’s renewable energy transition, with hopes that it will open a broad global conversation and inspire listeners to think differently about the future of Earth’s mineral resources. axiombrass.com

The Sanctuary at Epiphany Center for the Arts
201 S Ashland Ave
Chicago, Illinois
312-421-4600
Tickets: $20 / $10 students

On April 4, the collaboration between Chicago Composers’ Consortium and the international ensemble Duo Cortona comes to fruition with the Chicago debut of Duo Cortona, the husband and wife team of violinist Ari Streisfeld (founding member, Jack Quartet) and mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway (“…the highlight of the concert”, New York Times).

Come join us for a program of new music for voice and violin by composers Lawrence Axelrod, Kathleen Ginther, Eric Moe, Laura Schwendinger and Annika K. Socolofsky.

Duo Cortona is a contemporary music ensemble dedicated to the creation of works for its unique instrumentation: mezzo-soprano and violin, and to exploring new sounds and possibilities for its intimate, expressive, and vital combination. Duo Cortona works to establish a new and thus far unexplored repertoire, pursuing the endless possibilities of this union, and creating opportunities for both established and emerging composers through commissions, competitions, educational workshops, university residencies, and major concert performances.

Duo Cortona was founded at the Cortona Sessions for New Music by Ari Streisfeld and Rachel Calloway. Recent and upcoming performances include the Southern Exposure Series for New Music, East Carolina New Music Initiative, University of Wisconsin, College of Charleston, New Music New College, the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, Resonant Bodies Festival, The Stone, the SONiC Festival, New Music on the Point, and Contemporary Undercurrent of Song Project (Princeton). duocortona.com

Chicago Composers’ Consortium (C3) promotes the creation and performance of new music with a primary focus on composers and musicians from the Chicago area and the Midwest. As a presenter of contemporary music in Chicago for over thirty years, C3 has consistently found new ways to introduce audiences to what is new and exciting in music and to engage, educate and involve the community in an ongoing relationship of musical exploration.

What sets C3 apart from other contemporary music organizations is a history of innovative composer-generated collaborative projects and a commitment to adventurous programming, including the presentation of works composers deserving of a larger audience. c3composers.org

PROGRAM:

Shall I Compare thee to a summer’s Day
A Cat’s Cradle and other Catly Musings by Laura Schwendinger

Epousailles  by Kathleen Ginther

The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Lawrence Axelrod

The Frontierswomen by Eric Moe, Mikko Harvey, poet

It is what it is
Sticks and Stones
Who am I to Say? by Annika K. Socolofsky

And don’t miss our May 23 concert with Axiom Brass!

7:30 pm. Sherwood, Columbia College Chicago • 1312 S Michigan Ave in Chicago
Free admission, no registration necessary • donation suggested
Street parking on S Michigan Ave

Join us in the South Loop this Friday, February 9, 7:30 pm to hear the music of Kotoka Suzuki, Kyong Mee Choi, Brent Lee, Shelby Lock and Kari Watson and the video work of Sigi Torinus and Antonia Contro as Chicago Composers’ Consortium kicks off its 2024 Season with Cyberpairings, a concert of works that pair live performance with electronic music — sound with visual art.

Program

Vista (2022) for piano, video and ice by Kotoka Suzuki — video by Antonia Contro — animation by Joseph Merideth — pianist Megumi Masaki
Always, Sideways (2023) for piano, live electronics and visuals by composer Brent Lee and visual artist Sigi Torinus — pianist Megumi Masaki
Flowering Dandelion (2020) for violin and electronics by Kyong Mee Choi — violinist, Sarah Plum
utterance (2024) for modular synthesizer, video and synthesized voice by Kari Watson
PANDog (2022) audio/video by Shelby Lock
Blue Rising (2019) for piano and transducers by Kotoka Suzuki — pianist Megumi Masaki

Megumi Masaki’s HEARING ICE project aims to raise awareness of climate change on ice and amplify voices of impacted communities through the research, development and creation of new piano+multimedia narrative works. This process has many layers, uncovering personal stories, scientific facts and the synergy that translates into sonic and visual results.

While each work brings together different artists, scientists, and communities to explore distinctive perspectives of climate crisis, dynamic interactions throughout centres a common environment where all voices have equal weight. We are devising new ways to unify lighting, movement, and staging with sound and images to create a digital scenography for and between each narrative, connecting works cohesively to engage a wide audience in impactful experiences that motivate dialogue and action.

HEARING ICE connects us with nature and provides hope in a time of crisis.

Vista (2022) for piano, video and ice by Kotoka Suzuki
Video: Antonia Contro
Animator: Joseph Merideth

Vista (2022) for piano, video and ice by Kotoka Suzuki is a work created in collaboration with the visual artist Antonia Contro that addresses the consequences of climate change in the Arctic. Scientists, along with conservation organizations, such as the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Canada, have been closely monitoring the changing underwater soundscape of the Arctic using hydrophones. These audio recordings provide information on how increased open water in the Arctic, together with rising noise levels from a growing human presence, are significantly affecting underwater soundscapes and natural habitats. Mammals listen to each other and use sound to sense their habitat and detect both predators and prey. Finding more open water in the Arctic sea, mammals are increasingly moving from the subarctic to the Arctic and are doing so earlier in the season. Increased open water also increases noise levels and allows for increased human activity in the Arctic region. With permission from the Western Arctic Program conservation team at the WCS Canada (Conservation Scientist/Arctic Acoustic Program Lead, William D. Halliday), the work directly incorporates sounds from their audio archive.  The work was commissioned by the pianist, Megumi Masaki as part of her “Hearing Ice” project.

Always, Sideways (2023) by Brent Lee and Sigi Torinus is a short piece for piano with live interactive audio processing and video mixing. The pacing of the piece and character of the audiovisual gestures reflect the slow and relentless nature of changes to our environment, particularly the melting of the polar ice caps. The title is reminiscent of the movement of glaciers, with the video exploring themes of transformation, fluidity, fragility, and the transformative qualities of water and ice. Ephemeral shapes constantly change and evolve, matched by periodic shifts in timbre and harmony in the piano music. Always, Sideways was commissioned by Megumi Masaki for her HEARING ICE project.

Brent Lee is a composer, media artist, and musician whose work explores the relationships between sound, image, and technology, especially through multimedia performance. He has created more than one hundred works, ranging from orchestral music to interactive media pieces to film soundtracks. His most recent project is entitled Homstal, a set of multimedia pieces featuring saxophone improvisation in an interactive audiovisual environment. He is a co-founder of the Noiseborder Ensemble and the Electric Improv Lab, and teaches in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor.

Sigi Torinus creates new media works that include site-specific installation and improvisatory interactive live-video performance. Her work explores our perceptions of the migratory journey, through time and space, in physical, ephemeral, and digital worlds. She is a co-founder of the Noiseborder Ensemble and teaches in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor, Canada.

More about some of the music

Kyong Mee Choi’s piece Flowering Dandelion paraphrases an intriguing part of J.S. Bach’s Violin Sonata in B minor, Adagio, and showcases the evolution of musical expression incorporating timbral and textural evolution. The gestures of musical ideas portray the images of flowering dandelions. The piece is commissioned by Sarah Plum.

Kari Watson’s utterance, for modular synthesizers, video, and live electronics, is a multimedia performance piece that plays with the uncanny. Juxtaposing organic and synthetic sounds it utilizes the voice and the analog modular synthesizer alongside their uncanny doubles – a synthetic digitally modeled voice and a digitally modeled analog synthesizer. Playing between authenticity and artifice, these sounds collide and mesh, pushing and pulling with and against footage that further plays with this juxtaposition.

About her piece PANDog, Shelby Lock writes: “For several months, I had nightmares in which aggressive dogs came after me, and ‘PANdog’ is a musical representation of these dreams. The dogs would appear when I least expected, as I was minding my own business. Thus, ‘PANDog’ solely consists of eleven sounds I recorded from my daily life, including the Chicago ‘L’ train, a refrigerator, an air vent, window blinds, microwave beeps, elevator chimes, and more, along with several samples of dog howls, barks, and groans. The title has several different meanings but is mainly a reference to the dog noises invading everything by being placed among many other types of sounds (-pan comes from the Greek word for ‘all’).”

Inspired by existing iconic piano works depicting the motion of water and oceans, Kotoka Suzuki’s Blue Rising work quotes composers of the past such as Debussy, Ravel, and Liszt. Through a series of small surface transducers placed directly on the strings of the piano, sounds are projected directly from inside the instrument. In doing so, the instrument becomes a symbolic reference to the past not only through the musical gestures performed by the pianist but also through the emerging sounds, quoted from the past that flood out of the instrument. Furthermore, specific frequencies are projected from the transducers to excited the harmonic partials of particular strings. This work was dedicated to Cheryl Duvall and commissioned by the pianist.

Restaurants within two blocks of the concert

Our 2024 Season

For details about our concerts: Cyberpairings, Duo Cortona and Axiom Brass, see our 2024 season page.

Axiom Brass Competition for Brass Quintet – Deadline Extended

For our May 23 concert, the Chicago Composers’ Consortium seeks works for brass quintet by composers of any age or nationality whose work is not widely known. Compositions may have been previously performed. Our intent is to promote the work of composers whose work is not widely known. Details here.

The deadline has been extended to February 1, 2024.