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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!

CCC and Spektral Quartet on The Floating Lounge with C3 composers Martha Horst and Laura Schwendinger

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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

CCC and Spektral Quartet at Constellation – POSTPONED

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Bernard Rands Effect Concert Postponement

We are sorry to announce the postponement of our April 19 concert featuring the music of Bernard Rands and eight of our CCC members, due to ongoing health concerns. Both the Spektral Quartet and the Chicago Composers’ Consortium are eager to get this concert in front of an audience as soon as is possible. The exciting combination of a premiere by Bernard Rands and the responses to this new piece by our composers still feels as fun, exciting, and musically enriching as ever.

We will update you on a new date for this concert, as well as plans for our 20/21 season, as soon as they become clear. In the meantime, please keep listening to new music! Support all of your musician friends who are struggling through this crisis. We are all itching both to perform and be part of an audience again very soon!

 

Annual Electro-acoustic music concert

Sam Pluta Photo

Friday, February 21 at 7:30 in Ganz Hall, we will present our annual concert of electro-acoustic music.  Noted local composer Sam Pluta will be our guest for this program, His works Triptych for EF and Points Against Fields for bassoon and electronics will be featured. Also on the program include Unfolding for flute and electronics by Tim Edwards, Steel Plan for lead steel pan, vibraphone and electronics by Tim Johnson, Vanished for harp and electronics by Kyong Mee Choi and Whispers and Secrets, an installation piece by Beth Bradfish. Performers for this program include Ben Roidl-Ward, bassoon, Ben Melsky, harp and Lisa Goethe-McGinn, flute.

Also on the concert will be a work by the winner of this year’s call for scores, Panayiotis Kokoras, and our runner-up John Gibson, chosen from among 59 entries from all over the world.

Please join us for this celebration of one of the cutting edges of new music!

 

30th Anniversary Celebration Recap

October 6 was a banner day for the Chicago Composers’ Consortium – we celebrated our 30th anniversary at the Experimental Sound Studio. For any organization, this is a remarkable amount of time. For a small self-administered not-for-profit group, it is a minor miracle.

Beth Bradfish and KC Ginther took the lead in organizing the event, assuring that good food (from the Middle Eastern Bakery in Andersonville), lovely silent auction art works and scheduling all went smoothly. Kyong Mee Choi, Martha Horst and Laura Schwendinger used their considerable charm in engaging our attendees, making sure the food and wine remained properly displayed and directing our attendees to the performing space. Tim Edwards provided important audiovisual `support of C3 history. Larry Axelrod, Tim Johnson and Betsy Start, along with former member Sebastian Huydts and flutist and dear longtime supporter and friend Caroline Pittman were the performers.

We also took this important marker to honor one of Chicago’s most fervent supporters of new music – Jane Heron. Jane’s role in creating New Music Chicago, her support of us and many of other new music groups, and her sane, solid advice have been fixtures for many years. We were delighted to share our celebration of good fortune with her.

It was a lovely afternoon, so our audience friends were able to enjoy the garden space. To our delight, most people decided to spend several hours with us, enjoying good food, conversation and music. The warmth and good will of the event were readily apparent to everyone.

Here’s to the beginning of our next decade of bringing the newest music to Chicago!

2019-2020: CHICAGO COMPOSERS’ CONSORTIUM 30-YEAR ANNIVERSARY SEASON

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Happy 30th Birthday C3! A Celebration

October 6, 2019 Experimental Sound Studio, 2-5p           

C3 combines music, food and friends in the galleries and gardens of ESS. Over the course of the afternoon, our guests are invited to listen to works from our repertoire played by our ensemble – – Lawrence Axelrod (piano), Timothy Ernest Johnson (guitar) and Elizabeth Start (cello) joined by collaborating partners Sebastian Huydts (piano) and Caroline Pittman (flute).

I
Sebastian Huydts -Various for Piano – 10 min
Kyong Mee Choi – For those who left us (for guitar and piano) – 9 min

II (performed in garden, weather permitting)
Lawrence Axelrod – Mandala (for guitar)- 8 min
Elizabeth Start – Various for Cello – 9 min

III
Timothy Ernest Johnson – Three C Thirty (piano, cello and flute) – 6 min
Martha Horst – Shades of Silence (for piano) – 8 min

IV
Kathleen Cecilia Ginther – Windpool (for guitar) – 9 min
Laura Schwendinger – Rapture (for piano and cello)

 

Beth Bradfish – Sound Art Chair – an installation

 

It’s Spring: Electro-Acoustic Music Festival

February 21, 2020 Ganz Hall at Roosevelt University, 7p

C3 presents It’s Spring, an annual electro-acoustic festival, featuring Guest Composer Sam Pluta, a Chicago-based composer, laptop improviser, electronics performer and sound artist, plus CCC members Kyong Mee Choi, Tim Edwards, Tim Johnson and Beth Bradfish.

 

Call & Response: C3/Spektral Quartet/Bernard Rands

April 19, Constellation, 8:30p

C3 launches a bold 30th Anniversary Season with Call and Response, a concert of 10 World Premieres written for and premiered by Chicago’s superb Spektral String Quartet. It’s a double birthday – for C3 and for Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Bernard Rands, Illinois resident and world renowned composer, who is celebrating his 85th birthday year. The concert features a new string quartet written specifically for this project by Rands, plus short quartets written by C3 composers in response to Rands’ newly composed work, using Rands’ work as a jumping off point into their individual musical landscapes. Riffing on Rands’ musical ideas, C3 enters into a unique musical conversation with each other, with Spektral Quartet, and with the composer whose work inspired this project.

 

Call & Response – The Tour – C3/Spektral Quartet/Rands

C3 and Spektral Quartet hit the road with a tour throughout Illinois, bringing 10 world premieres plus a variety of outreach activities to local community venues, schools and universities in Carbondale, Cairo, Normal, and Champaign.

Rube Goldberg

Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola

Chicago Composers Consortium Season Finale with the Nois Saxophone Quartet!

The final concert of the Chicago Composers’ Consortium 2018-19 season is special indeed! The special featured performers are the highly acclaimed ~Nois Saxophone Quartet – Hunter Bockes, János Csontos, Jordan Lulloff and Brandon Quarles. The program will include a work by special guest composer Jeremy Rapaport-Stein, winner of this year’s call for scores. The rest of this program features works specially written for ~Nois by CCC members Lawrence Axelrod, Martha Horst, Betsy Start and Timothy Ernest Johnson.We hope you can join us for what will be an exciting evening of the newest music for saxophone, performed by four of Chicago’s new music specialists!

Frequency Series

Sunday, June 2 2019 / 8:30PM / $20/$5
Constellation 3111 N. Western Ave.

 

Program

Frenetic Dances (2018)            Martha Horst
Chicago Summer (2018)        Timothy Ernest Johnson
Quatresaxfoil (2018)            Elizabeth Start
Frissons (2018)                Lawrence Axelrod
Lucifer Gorgonzola (2016)        Jeremy Rapaport-Stein

Nois Saxophone Quartet:

Hunter Bockes
János Csontos
Jordan Lulloff
Brandon Quarles

 

Traveling Inside: C3 at ESS

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Painting by Cassandra Kaczor
Portrait of Seth Pae Playing His Viola (2016)
Acrylic on Canvas

The Chicago Composers’ Consortium has once again brought together a fascinating group of pieces exploring both electronic and acoustic media including works by three guest composers to keep your eye on, as well as several established Chicago composers. On April 5, Experimental Sound Studio will be the setting for the event including works featuring a variety of instrumentalists performing on bass clarinet, viola, piano, violin, spoken word and French horn, and with an emphasis on electronic interaction.

Themes of travel, motion, dreams, surrealism and introspection pervade these highly individual and personal musical expressions. Guggenheim-winning composer Kyong Mee Choi will include her acousmatic piece Trains of Thought, “based on the experience of sitting on a train and having various thoughts evoked by the sounds of the environment.” Based on a short story, Cassandra Kaczor’s piece secondhand smoke for amplified viola is also a technical study. The theme of introspection continues with the sonically rich electro-acoustic autobiographical piece about a trip to Japan, Journey/Dream by Lawrence Axelrod. Keith Kusterer’s newest premiere will exhibit the most masterful fusion of dramatic and compositional elements in a duet performance for pianist Shi An Costello and electronics. The composer writes “for measure is a surrealist work performed by two very close friends. The live performance is layered with pre-recorded sonic events that are designed to pair with real-time elements of theater, interactive movement and musical gesture.” Jeff Schaller’s piece for solo violin is inspired by soundscape work and virtuosic performance experienced in Italy.

While at ESS, you’ll want to experience The Sound Art Chair, a sound installation by Beth Bradfish in collaboration with Celia Grainer, inspired by her synesthetic response to paintings by Anna Kunz. The project was supported by a grant from DCASE. It is the third sound sculpture object in the series “Home Sounds.”

Experimental Sound Studio

5925 N Ravenswood Ave., Chicago

7:30 pm April 5, 2019

Tickets $20/$5 at the door

C3 @Impromptu Fest

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C3 presents a concert of chamber works at Guarneri Hall in downtown Chicago as part of the second annual Impromptu Fest created by New Music Chicago. Concert to include works by Betsy Start, Larry Axelrod, Tim Johnson, Tim Edwards, KC Ginther and Kyong Mee Choi.

Concert is March 28, 7:30PM.

Guarneri Hall
11 East Adams Street · Suite 350A
Chicago, Illinois 60603
847.780.6720

https://guarnerihall.org/

For more info see:

https://www.newmusicchicago.org/impromptufest/

~Nois Saxophone Quartet Competition Results

Rube Goldberg

Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola

This year’s call for scores had the largest response of all that we have held. Sixty-four entries from around the world were sent in. These compositions covered all ranges of style and manner of musical expression. We were truly awed at the variety and quality of the entries.
Larry Axelrod, Kyong Mee Choi and Tim Johnson narrowed the field to twelve finalists, which were sent to ~Nois for their final decision. With typical verve and energy, the members of the quartet listened carefully and decided quickly. The winning composition is Lucifer Gorgonzola by Jeremy Rapaport-Stein. Jeremy is currently a PhD student at Brandeis College in Boston. He hopes to join us for the concert in June!

You can get to know a bit about him here: www.jeremyrapaportstein.com

We thank all those who took the time to submit to our call for scores. We learned so much about the amazing possibility of the saxophone from your music.
Congratulations to Jeremy Rapaport-Stein!