New Music New College Opens Its 20th Season
The New Music New College 2018-19 season – the 20th year of the groundbreaking series – opens Saturday, October 6, with Sō Percussion, a quartet of master percussionists.
The five-concert series again will include Artist Conversations and Pre-Concert Talks. Subscriptions for the entire series are $60 and tickets for individual performances are $15; Artist Conversations are free and open to the public. All performances are on the New College of Florida campus.
Sō Percussion is in its fifth season as the Edward T. Cone Ensemble-in-Residence at Princeton University. The group composes and plays its own works as well as 20th-century classics by John Cage, Steve Reich and Iannis Xenakis. Recent highlights include performances at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the National Gallery of Art and the Kennedy Center.
The New York Times said of Sō Percussion :“Through a mix of consummate skill and quirky charm, this mercurial quartet has helped to ignite an explosive new enthusiasm for percussion music old and new.”
At New College, the group’s performance will include Bryce Dessner’s Music for Wood and Strings and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw’s Taxidermy, both Sō Percussion commissions.
The performance will be at 8:00 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 6, in Club Sudakoff, in New College’s Sudakoff Conference Center, which is on the east (airport) side of the New College campus.
There will be a pre-concert talk at 7:30 p.m. and a reception following the concert. There also will be a free Artist Conversation with the group at 5:00 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 4, in Club Sudakoff.
New Music New College is a program of New College of Florida, the state’s honors college and a national leader in the liberal arts and sciences. The concert series is funded in part by Sarasota County Tourist Development tax revenues.
Tickets are $15 for a single concert or $60 for the five-concert series. Admission is also free for students, faculty, and staff of SCF, USF Sarasota-Manatee, Ringling College of Art & Design, Eckerd College, FSU/Asolo Conservatory, and Booker/VPA High School with school ID.
For tickets to this concert or any concert in the series, visit https://donate.ncf.edu/newmusic20182019 or call 941-487-4888.
The other performances in the series will be:
Inter/Action: New works featuring Mark Dancigers, New College students and Grand Electric
Saturday, November 10, 2018 at 8:00 p.m., Mildred Sainer Pavilion
Pre-concert talk at 7:30 p.m.
Artist Conversation on Thursday, Nov. 8., at 5:00 p.m. in Sainer Pavilion
Composer and electric guitarist Mark Dancigers has returned to New College as the college’s first professor of digital media and music. Inter/Action will engage the possibilities of digital media through works that explore sound, music, movement, and images. Dancigers will lead students in a new piece that uses the sound of rain data as an inspiration for improvisation and dance. The second half of the concert will feature the duo Grand Electric—Dancigers on guitar and electronics and renowned New York City based pianist Aaron Wunsch—as a bridge between the electric and acoustic worlds.
Ensemble Dal Niente with George Lewis
Saturday, January 26, 2019 at 8:00 p.m., Mildred Sainer Pavilion
Pre-concert talk at 7:30 p.m.
Artist Conversation on Thursday, January 24, at 5:00 p.m., Sainer Pavilion
Chicago-based Ensemble Dal Niente has been showered with critical praise and prestigious awards since forming in 2004. Their astonishing virtuosity is put entirely in the service of musical communication, making even the most demanding contemporary works accessible and compelling. Their program for New Music New College will feature pieces by George Lewis, Anthony Braxton, and Katherine Young that, while notated, each have origins in improvisation. Composer and MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow George Lewis will join us for this concert.
Tigers Above and Tigers Below – Eliza Ladd with New College Students
Friday and Saturday, February 15-16, at 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, February 17, 2019 at 3:00 p.m.
New College of Florida’s Black Box Theater, in Hamilton Center
Pre-concert talks at 7:30 p.m. February 15-16 and 2:30 p.m. February 17
Artist Conversation Thursday, February 14, at 5:00 p.m., Black Box Theater
In this new commission Eliza Ladd, in collaboration with New College students, will create a score of “Live Sound Action” (her theatrical approach to composition and performance). Ladd’s approach, at once visual, aural and physical, combines the sounds of objects and human movement with layers of primitive voice and song. This original New Music composition will be influenced by a theme of migration, what gets carried over time across place, and the act of searching, listening and thriving as it manifests in the flight of birds, the walking of humans, and on an elemental scale of geology.
Wet Ink Ensemble: Kate Soper’s Voices from the Killing Jar
Saturday, April 27, 2019, at 8:00 p.m., Mildred Sainer Pavilion
Pre-concert talk at 7:30 p.m.
Artist Conversation on Thursday, April 25, at 5:00 p.m., Sainer Pavilion
Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit, which New Music New College presented as a work-in-progress in 2015, went on to be a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize. Wet Ink returns to perform Voices from the Killing Jar, another of Soper’s theatrical works. This work of timely resonance from 2010-12 depicts a series of female protagonists caught up in “hopeless situations, inescapable fates, impossible fantasies, and unlucky circumstances.”
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Located in Sarasota, New College of Florida has educated intellectually curious students for lives of great achievement since its founding in 1960. As the State of Florida’s designated honors college, New College provides an exceptional undergraduate education that transforms students’ intellectual curiosity into personal accomplishment. The 110-acre bayfront campus is home to more than 800 students and 80 full-time faculty engaged in interdisciplinary research and collaborative learning. New College offers nearly 40 areas of concentration for undergraduates and a master’s degree program in Data Science.
