Help celebrate the Consortium’s 25th anniversary season!

CCO, Matthew Kasper, conductor
Special guests Mary Stolper, flute and
Julia Bentley, mezzo-soprano

Sunday, April 26 at 3:00
Ebenezer Lutheran Church,
1650 W. Foster Ave., Chicago

The Chicago Composers’ Consortium is teaming up with the Chicago Composers Orchestra on Sunday April 26 to present a concert of Chicago and world premieres!
Five outstanding new works

Come and join us for the celebration. Hear these outstanding and memorable new works, then afterward enjoy some refreshments, and talk with the composers.

Waking Dream for flute and orchestra
by Laura Schwendinger
featuring Mary Stolper, flute
Chicago première

Waking Dream (2009) is a single movement poem for flute and chamber orchestra. It was written for and dedicated to the 2001 Concert Artists Guild International Competition winner, Christina Jennings. The work blossoms slowly through a long and sustained dream-like span of tremolo strings with harp, and vibraphone figures, sprinkled about as the flute flitters and flies above and below. Like golden reflections of light from the setting sun on water, Waking Dream is meant to evoke an intense, and shimmering color world of sound. Available on Albany records (Troy 1390) with Christina, and was nominated by them for a Grammy.

Parallel Digressions for string orchestra
by Martha Callison Horst
World Première
Parallel Digressions (2015) for string orchestra features rapidly shifting harmonies moving in parallel motion.  As the piece progresses, musical phrases are frequently interrupted by diverging musical ideas.  Some of these digressions last for one or two measures, some last for much longer.

As Far as Cho-Fu-Sa
by Kathleen Ginther
featuring Julia Bentley, mezzo-soprano
World Première
As Far As Cho-Fu-Sa (2015) is a setting of the last stanza of The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, from a small volume of poems entitled Cathay: Translations by Ezra Pound. Pound’s translation is a very free interpretation of a poem by the great Chinese poet Li Po about distance and longing, written by a young 8th century Chinese wife to her absent husband.  As Far As Cho-Fu-Sa was written for the CCO. It is based on a larger 3-movement work entitled The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, written for the SIU Concert Choir and Wind Ensemble and premiered at Symphony Center in 2011.

Dreams of Summer for string orchestra
by Elizabeth Start
Chicago première
Elizabeth Start’s Dreams of Summer was written in honor of a landmark birthday year of Phyllis Jansma of Michigan’s Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. Meant to evoke memories of happy summers playing music for long hours, often late into the night, with friends in a relaxed and rustic setting, the piece alludes to some of the camp’s favorite repertoire. It begins with a melody distorted from the opening of Mozart’s K. 157 string quartet, and references Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto and a bit of a tango.

The Art of Peace for mezzo-soprano & orchestra
featuring Julia Bentley, mezzo-soprano
by Timothy Dwight Edwards, text Emily Dickinson
World première
Emily Dickinson lived through the Civil War, and her poetry reflects a struggle with hope for peace and a search for the role of the artist. These three songs draw connections between those themes.
1. Hope is a thing with feathers
2. Many times I thought that peace had come
3. The martyr poets

This concert is made possible by the generous support of our contributors, including grants from Womens Philharmonic Advocacy and the Alice M. Ditson Fund.