12th NIU New Music Festival presents “New Music from Chicago,” featuring guest composers and performers Amy Wurtz, Jonathan Hannau, and Kyle Flens

The NIU New Music Festival celebrates its twelfth year with three consecutive evenings of music November 6-8, 2024. All festival events will take place in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall. The evening programs begin at 7PM in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall, and tickets are available through the NIU CVPA Digital Box Office. This year’s festival theme, “New Music from Chicago” intends to highlight the enduring and powerful cultural bridge that connects NIU and DeKalb to the great city of Chicago. This year’s festival will feature:

three concerts of music for orchestra, choir, wind ensemble, percussion ensemble, mixed chamber groups, solo instrumentalists, and sound installations

Guest composer and pianist Amy Wurtz
guest artist performances by the Flannau Duo (Kyle Flens and Jonathan Hannau)

music by 15 composers with connections to Chicago and/or NIU Music by 8 NIU student composers to be performed by Amy Wurtz and the Flannau Duo.

NIU student and faculty soloists Evan Miller, Ben Wahlund, and Tom Snydacker, NIU ensembles including the NIU Philharmonic, NIU Chamber Choir, NIU Percussion Ensemble, and the NIU New Music Ensemble.

On Wednesday, November 6th, the festival kicks off with a 7PM program in the Music Building Concert Hall featuring guest composer and pianist Amy Wurtz, the NIU Chamber Choir, a world premier by rising star composer and NIU alumna Marybeth Kurnat, soloists Ben Wahlund, Evan Miller, and Tom Snydacker, a world premiere by NIU faculty composer Brian Penkrot, the NIU Graduate Percussion Quartet, the NIU Clarinet Quartet, and the NIU Wind Ensemble, playing music by world renowned Chicago composers Augusta Read Thomas, Marc Mellits, and Shawn Okpebholo.

On Thursday November 7th at 11AM, our festival’s featured guest artists Amy Wurtz, Jonathan Flannau and NIU alumnus Kyle Flens (‘17 MM, ‘18 PC) will perform and discuss their involvement in Chicago’s rich New Music during the All-School Convocation.

And that evening, our guests will offer eight world premieres by student composers who have written new music just for our guests. The second half of the program is entitled the “Abundance Project,” featuring two faculty/student collaborative ensembles that will perform major new works by NIU faculty composers, Geof Bradfield (Music from his new album, “Colossal Abundance”), and Gregory Beyer’s “(Amen)ding Thirteen: a Sign of Abundance,” his recent commission for the Chicago new music sinfonietta, the Grossman Ensemble. Bradfield and Beyer will be joined by faculty performers including the Avalon String Quartet, School of Music Director Andrew Glendening, and many others.

Friday November 8th, the composition department will offer its 3PM Composition Seminar featuring Amy Wurtz discussing her extensive catalog of compositions with a special focus on the works featured on the festival.

And on Friday evening, the 12th NIU New Music Festival will close with a program beginning with the Homecoming-famous Huskie Sound Garden sound installation led by NIU students Jacob Parra and D’Andrae Atkins. The program will continue with repertoire for piano and percussion featuring guest artists Kyle Flens, Jonathan Hannau, Amy Wurtz, joined by Festival Artistic Director Gregory Beyer, and the concert will close with two works performed by the NIU Philharmonic, Josh Rodriguez’s beguiling “¡Vamos!” and Amy Wurtz’s “Emome.”

After Friday 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 by phone,
(815) 753-7981, or by email, gbeyer@niu.edu.

For in person tickets, please visit:

https://niumusic.universitytickets.com/

As always, NIU concert performances are broadcast through our School of Music Livestream:

https://www.niu.edu/music/performances/index.shtml