The UO School of Music and Dance will celebrate the 20th anniversary of its Music Today Festival when the biennial celebration of music from the 20th and 21st Centuries begins on Monday, Feb. 25.
Performances will run all week at various locations across campus. All events are scheduled during the evening, with most held at the Frohnmayer Music Building.
Robert Kyr, the Philip H. Knight Professor of Music and chair of the music school's composition area, founded the festival in 1993 as part of the Composers Forum seminar. He estimates that more than 100 students will participate as composers or performers during the festival.
“Most of our repertoire is music created by our own undergraduate and graduate composers,” he says.
The festival will spotlight more than 40 premieres by student composers, “which is more than any other music festival that I know,” Kyr says. “Our festival will give audiences a chance to enjoy the abundant creativity of our own new music culture.”
The festival features a number of new music ensembles including Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Sospiro (a chamber choir), ONE (Ova Novi Ensemble) and turnEnsemble.
“We are the only university in the world to have six student-run new music groups,” Kyr says.
The music school also has the Oregon Composers Forum, which is part of a required seminar for composition majors.
In addition to student performers, the Music Today Festival features nationally and internationally recognized music stars. This year’s headliners are no exception, including soprano Estelí Gomez and the PRISM Saxophone Quartet.
Gomez – a graduate of Yale and McGill universities who won first prize in the 2011 Canticum Gaudium International Early Music Voice Competition in Poznan, Poland – will perform with the the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble in a program of new music by UO composers on Monday, March 4.
The PRISM Quartet – consisting of saxophonists Matthew Levy, Timothy McAllister, Zach Shemon and Taimur Sullivan – performs on Thursday, Feb. 28. The PRISM Quartet is a two-time winner of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.
For its performance, UO student group turnEnsemble will team up with School of Music and Dance ensemble-in-residence Beta Collide, featuring professors Molly Barth on flute and Brian McWhorter on trumpet. Beta Collide has received national attention for its high quality and innovation.
The Music Today Festival includes ticketed and non-ticketed events, as well as a free master class. Tickets for paid events are available at the door or in advance from the UO Ticket Office in the Erb Memorial Union, 1222 E. 13th Avenue, 541-346-4363 or tickets.uoregon.edu.
See full festival schedule at http://music.uoregon.edu/musictoday.
- by Aria Seligmann, UO Office of Strategic Communications