The NIU New Music Festival celebrates its fourteenth edition with two evenings of music October 26-27. The festival events will take place in the School of Music’s Boutell Memorial Concert Hall at 7 p.m. each night. Tickets are available online at go.niu.edu/arts-events. NIU students are admitted free of charge with a reserved ticket.
This year’s festival features:
- Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Melinda Wagner (The Juilliard School)
- Guest solo flutist Emma Hospelhorn (Ensemble Dal Niente)
- Music by nine composers
- A world premiere: Gregory Beyer performs Melinda Wagner’s “The Witness Tree” for solo marimba
- Six more premieres by NIU student composers, performed by the NIU New Music Ensemble
On Monday, October 26, the festival will feature the the NIU Chamber Choir performing a new work by Saunder Choi, as well as the world premieres of six works NIU student composers, featuring the NIU New Music Ensemble under the direction of Zach Good. The ensemble will also perform Melinda Wagner’s chamber sextet, “Unsung Chordata.”
On Tuesday October 27 at 11 a.m., our festival’s featured guests, Melinda Wagner and Emma Hospelhorn, will offer an All-School Convocation for the School of Music community, performing and discussing their lifelong involvement in contemporary music making.
That evening on October 27 at 7 p.m. in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall, the NIU School of Music community will offer a composer portrait of our special guest, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Melinda Wagner. Her music will receive performances by the NIU Wind Ensemble under the direction of Thomas Bough, the Avalon String Quartet, Festival Director Gregory Beyer, and guest flautist Emma Hospelhorn as concerto soloist in Wagner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition, “Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion” performed by the NIU Philharmonic under the direction of Maria Kurochkina.
After Tuesday night’s concert, there will be a post-festival reception at Tapa La Luna in Downtown DeKalb. We encourage the NIU and the DeKalb community at large to come out and help us celebrate another successful festival!
Questions or comments can be directed to Festival Artistic Director Dr. Gregory Beyer via email, gbeyer@niu.edu.
