Composer

AMFS artist-faculty, all top musicians from renowned orchestras, opera companies, and conservatories, come together to play their favorite chamber music works. Always a joyful and creative 75 minutes of music-making.

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Chamber Music 2024 Concert 7

Aspen Meadows Resort

Experience the future of classical music as the New Jersey Symphony showcases the works of four emerging composers at the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute Concert. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, this event is hosted by Institute Director Steven Mackey and conducted by Christopher Rountree. The concert features compositions by Leigha Amick, Santiago Beis, Paul Cosme, and Jessie Leov, each bringing a unique voice and perspective to the symphonic landscape.

Leigha Amick's "Cascade" is an orchestral response to Carl Stone's electronic piece "Mae Yao," transforming from disjunct, percussive material to smooth, lyrical passages through a passacaglia structure. Santiago Beis's "Spletna" explores the entanglement of present moments and fading memories, inspired by the Czech term coined by composer Leoš Janáček. Paul Cosme's "A Stranger in a Festival of Spirits" draws from various folk music and festival traditions of Pacific Asia, reflecting his experiences and connections with these cultures. Jessie Leov's "Speculations on a Rainbow" responds to Judy Millar's artwork "The Rainbow Loop," weaving through a shifting canvas of stability and turbulence, stillness and motion.

This concert not only highlights the innovative compositions of these talented artists but also offers a glimpse into the evolving world of contemporary classical music. The event concludes with a post-concert reception, providing an opportunity to meet the composers and enjoy a special Cone-inspired ice cream flavor crafted for the occasion.

New Scores: The Cone Composition Institute Concert

Princeton University

Renowned conductor Robert Spano leads the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in a remarkable program featuring two exhilarating world premieres and a late-Romantic era classic. The afternoon opens with a newly commissioned work by James Ra. Praised by the Philadelphia Inquirer as “a composer to watch,” Ra’s compositions have been described as “coursing with adrenaline-pumping energy.”

Ra, Mackey, and Tchaikovsky

Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

The New York Times praised their “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism;” and the Philadelphia Inquirer observed their “seemingly infallible instincts for finding the center of gravity in every phrase and musical gesture.” Hear the Brentano Quartet joined by cellist Wilhelmina Smith in Steven Mackey’s quintet Joy Rhythm Study—a co-commission with the AMFS. In the composer’s words, “I began by exploring some rhythmic curiosities emerging from the confrontation/combination of seven in the time of two (or four) and then became preoccupied with the idea of transforming the resultant off-kilter experiments, hobbled oddities and precarious textures into something joyful through the course of the piece. The Brentano will also play one of Beethoven’s late quartets. At their British debut, the London Independent review raved, calling it “as momentous a performance of Beethoven’s Op. 130 Quartet as I’ve ever heard live… “Passionate, uninhibited and spellbinding.” The quartet’s affinity for Beethoven is reflected in its name, taken from Antoine Brentano, whom many scholars believe was the composer’s “Immortal Beloved.

Recital: Brentano Quartet with Wilhelmina Smith cello

Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. Cellist Wilhemina Smith joins the quartet in this recital featuring an AMFS co-commissioned work by composer Steven Mackey. 

A Recital: Brentano Quintet  with Wilhemina Smith cello

These lunchtime discussions feature prominent performers, composers, and musicologists in lively discussions with AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher.

High Notes

Hotel Jerome

Fittingly, the New Jersey Symphony has tapped leading New Jersey composer and frequent Symphony collaborator Steven Mackey to celebrate the centennial with a new commission featuring original texts by former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith.

Mozart & Steven Mackey

New Jersey Performing Arts Center

State Theatre New Jersey

Richardson Auditorium

Dvořák “turned the musical establishment upside down,” notes Brentano violist Serena Canin, when he proclaimed that “in the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music… There is nothing in the whole range of composition that cannot be supplied with themes from this source.” The magnificent Brentano Quartet brings this credo to life in a program that explores Dvořák and his American legacy.

Brentano Quartet

American Philosophical Society

Shining at the top of a new wave of guitarists, Sean Shibe creates imaginative programs aglow with innovation, new music, and passionate insights into classics. The Guardian enthused, “What’s really striking is the way in which Shibe sustains a world of intensity and introspection through playing that buzzes with vitality.” Named BBC New Generation Artists, the Van Kuijk Quartet’s “unanimity, tonal blend and intonation are close to flawless” (Gramophone).

Sean Shibe | Guitar & Van Kuijk Quartet

War Memorial and Performing Arts Center

For this winter’s "What I Hear" event, American composer Steven Mackey curates a program of chamber music in connection with the BSO's performance of his Concerto for Curved Space later that evening. New England Conservatory musicians perform his works String Theory, See Ya Thursday and Physical Property (with the composer on electric guitar), along with the second movement ‘Vivace’ from Beethoven’s Op. 135 string quartet. BSO Assistant Artistic Administrator Eric Valliere moderates a conversation with the composer.

Steven Mackey

Composer

Events

Past events

Aug 10, 2024

Chamber Music 2024 Concert 7 · Aspen Music Festival

Jul 20, 2024

New Scores: The Cone Composition Institute Concert · New Jersey Symphony

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