Northwestern University New Music Conference | April 24, 2021 |

Happy to be a part of NUNC!4: Northwestern University New Music Conference this year at Northwestern.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the festival – originally scheduled to take place last year – will take place online. The recording of my work Quasi (ébauche) for string quartet, performed by the fabulous Arditti String Quartet, can be found at: https://sites.northwestern.edu/…/scores-for-arditti…/ along with works by Yu-Chun Chien, Onur Dülger, Yuko Ohara, Ruud Roelofsen, and Max Vinetz.

Many thanks to Hans Thomalla and his team for their tireless efforts. Many thanks, of course, to Irvine Arditti, Ralf Ehlers, Lucas Fels, Ashot Sarkissjan.

Program Notes

In Quasi (ébauche) the original formative ideas are constantly recalled in a series of reconstructions of the past in constantly present contexts, having at times more fidelity—and at times growing less similar—to the original experience. These reconstructions, by means of pitch gene recombinations, leave only memory vestiges of the original by constantly shifting, diffusing, distorting, transforming, omitting or adding events according to a model of retention/corruption.

It is, in other words, like drawing “on the elements and gist of the past, and extract, recombine and reassemble them into imaginary events that never occurred in that exact form,…not to preserve the past but to adapt it so as to enrich and manipulate the present.’’ It is all about what is remembered and how it is remembered…

One of the leading conferences for new music in the world, the Northwestern University New Music Conference (NUNC!) brings together composers, performing musicians, scholars, and other new music advocates for a day of workshops, panel discussions, and concerts.

This year’s virtual conference guests include the Arditti Quartet; composers Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Jennifer Walshe, and Katherine Young; and musicologists Kerry O’Brien and Ted Gordon. Presentations will be given by Sergio Cote Barco, Elaine Fitz Gibbon, Daniel Tacke, and Ben Zucker. The conference culminates in a performance by the Bienen School’s Contemporary Music Ensemble, with guest vocalist and violinist Alyssa Pyper.

All events are free and open to the public. More information, and registration for the virtual presentations, is available at https://sites.northwestern.edu/nunc/