Bienen School hosts fifth biennial new music conference April 21-23

• Link to: Northwestern Now Story

• Composers include Julia Wolfe and Alex Temple (’17 DMA)
• Performers include piano and percussion quartet Yarn/Wire
• Performances include music of Julia Wolfe, David Lang, Anna Meredith, Tania León

EVANSTON, Ill. — For the first time in five years, the Institute for New Music at Northwestern University’s Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music hosts its biennial Northwestern University New Music Conference (NUNC! 5) in person from Friday, April 21 to Sunday, April 23.

One of the leading conferences for new music in the world, the event welcomes composers, performing musicians, scholars and other new music advocates for workshops, discussions and concerts. Following a postponed 2020 NUNC! 4 that was hosted virtually in 2021, the conference returns to an in-person format in 2023.

“I am very much looking forward to seeing and hearing NUNC! return to an in-person conference,” said Institute for New Music director Hans Thomalla. “I am particularly excited about New York-based piano-percussion ensemble Yarn/Wire performing at NUNC! for the first time, as well as for alumna Alex Temple, whose recent release ‘Behind the Wallpaper’ made national and international headlines, returning as a featured guest composer.”

All events take place on Northwestern’s Evanston campus and are open to the public, and most are free. Tickets to performances with an admission charge are available from the Bienen School Ticket Office at 847-467-4000 or music.northwestern.edu/nunc5. 

Seminar with Miki Kaneda
Friday, April 21, 2 p.m.
Ryan Center for the Musical Arts, LL-115, 70 Arts Circle Drive
Free admission

A discussion featuring guest speaker Miki Kaneda (assistant professor of music, musicology and ethnomusicology at Boston University) and moderated by Bienen associate professor of musicology Ryan Dohoney.

Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra
Friday, April 21, 7:30 p.m.
Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, 50 Arts Circle Drive
Tickets are $8; $5 for full-time students with valid ID

Led by Bienen professor of conducting and ensembles Alan Pierson, the orchestra performs Anna Meredith’s “Nautilus,” a 2011 fanfare for electronics arranged for orchestra in 2021. The program continues with Julia Wolfe’s “Fountain of Youth,” which, in the composer’s words, depicts the legendary fountain through “a sassy, rhythmic, high-energy swim.” Concluding the concert is Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia; composed in 1968-69 for the New York Philharmonic’s 125th anniversary, the work was heavily influenced by the sociopolitical tumult of that time period. 

Call for Presentations
Saturday, April 22, 9:30 a.m.
Regenstein Master Class Room, 60 Arts Circle Drive
Free admission

Presentations by Aaron Helgeson (Montclair State University), Mari Kimura (University of California, Irvine), Camilo Mendez (Hong Kong Baptist University), Ryne Siesky (Johnson University/University of Miami, Frost School of Music) and Alissa Voth (Ph.D. candidate, Northwestern University). 

Call for Scores Saxophone Workshop Concert
Saturday, April 22, noon
McClintock Choral and Recital Room, 70 Arts Circle Drive
Free admission

The Bienen saxophone studio, directed by Taimur Sullivan, performs selected works from the NUNC! 5 Call for Scores by Luis Miguel Delgado Grande, Keaton Garrett, Karola Obermueller, Cole Reyes and Yuting Tan. 

Keynote Presentation
Do What You Love? New Music, New Work—After 2020
Saturday, April 22, 2 p.m.
Regenstein Master Class Room, 60 Arts Circle Drive
Free admission

A presentation by musicologist Kaneda of Boston University. Her talk analyzes musical labor and notions of love in relation to gig work. 

Call for Performers: Constellation Men’s Ensemble
Saturday, April 22, 4 p.m.
Regenstein Master Class Room, 60 Arts Circle Drive
Free admission

The Chicago-based vocal Robert Maggio’s “Man Up/Man Down,” an exploration of masculinity in 21st-century America.

Bienen Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble
Saturday, April 22, 5 p.m.
Galvin Recital Hall, 70 Arts Circle Drive
Tickets are $8; $5 for full-time students with valid ID.

Donald Nally and assistant conductor Jack Reeder lead the ensemble in the Midwest premiere of Julia Wolfe’s “Letter from Abigail,” her musical meditation on the struggle for women’s rights as interpreted through the lens of a 1776 letter from Abigail Adams to her husband. The work is paired with David Lang’s “the national anthems,” examining the common thread running through the anthems of many nations. Also on the program are Lang’s “where you go,” inspired by the well-known phrase from the Book of Ruth, and Michael Gordon’s “Anonymous Man”—a memoir chronicling the composer’s time in a neighborhood in transition, and his conversations with two homeless men living there. The ensemble is joined by collaborative keyboardist Charles Foster and Chicago-based new music ensemble Zafa Collective.

Yarn/Wire
Saturday, April 22, 7:30 p.m.
Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, 50 Arts Circle Drive
Tickets are $10; $5 for full-time students with valid ID.

Yarn/Wire—comprised of pianists Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer and percussionists Russell Greenberg and Sae Hashimoto—performs Bienen faculty member Alex Mincek’s “Pendulum VI: Trigger,” Kelley Sheehan’s “acoustic sourings” and selections from the NUNC! 5 Call for Scores by Luis Fernando Amaya, Kyong Mee Choi and Jack Langdon.

Guest Composer Presentations
Sunday, April 23, 10 a.m.
Regenstein Master Class Room, 60 Arts Circle Drive
Free admission

Presentations by composers Julia Wolfe and Alex Temple. Wolfe is Musical America’s 2019 Composer of the Year, a 2016 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Temple has collaborated with performers and ensembles including Mellissa Hughes, Julia Holter, Wild Up, the Spektral Quartet and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Call for Performers
Sunday, April 23, 2 p.m.
McClintock Choral and Recital Room, 70 Arts Circle Drive
Free admission

Selections from the NUNC! 5 Call for Performers includes performances by pianist Fidan Aghayeva-Edler; violinist Yu-Fang Chen and cellist Peter Opie; pianists Sandra Coursey and Stephen Ekhert; the Gresham Duo; saxophonist Casey Grev; pianist Mabel Kwan; the Lawrence Graduate Bayreuth Tuben Quintet; the Pinson Chamber Band; bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward and pianist Peter Kramer; pianist Yumi Suehiro; and Tower Duo.

Call for Electronics
Sunday, April 23, 5 p.m.
Ryan Opera Theater, 70 Arts Circle Drive
Free admission

Selections from the NUNC! 5 Call for Electronics by Han geul Lee, Elliott Lupp, Maya Nguyen, Mauricio Pauly, Sunhuimei Xia and Jay Alan Yim.

Contemporary Music Ensemble
Sunday, April 23, 7:30 p.m.
Galvin Recital Hall, 70 Arts Circle Drive
Tickets are $8; $5 for full-time students with valid ID.

Ben Bolter and Alan Pierson conduct the ensemble in the closing event of NUNC! 5. The program features Julia Wolfe’s “Impatience”—a work written to be performed live with the 1928 Charles Dekeukeleire film of the same name—as well as Alex Temple’s “The Man Who Hated Everything,” a rollicking tribute to and critique of Frank Zappa. The evening concludes with a work by 2023 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition winner Tania León, “Ritmicas”; inspired by the music of Cuban composer Amadeo Roldán, it is (in the composer’s words) based on “a rhythmic spectrum that creates a rainbow of polyrhythmic inventions.”