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Featuring three world premieres by composers Alican Çamci, Andrew McManus and Laura Schwendinger, featuring piano soloist Christopher Taylor. This concert is made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and sponsorship by the Katherine L. Griem and Anthony G. Montag Charitable Fund.

Laura Schwendinger, composer of Artemisia, winner of the 2023 American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Opera award ($50,000), was the first composer to win the American Academy in Berlin Prize. A Professor of music composition at UW-Madison, her works have been championed and premiered by Dawn Upshaw, Arditti & JACK Quartets, Jenny Koh, Janine Jansen, Matt Haimovitz, ICE, Eighth-Blackbird, Juilliard, ACO, Franz Liszt Orchestra. Her music performed at the Kennedy & Lincoln Centers, Berlin Philharmonic Kammermusiksaal, Wigmore, Carnegie Halls, Miller & Théâtre Châtelet, Tanglewood, Aspen, Ojai, Talis, & Bennington Festivals. Fellowships include a Guggenheim, Radcliffe Institute, Copland Prize from Copland House (2), ALEA III First Prize, American Academy Arts Letters (3), MacDowell (12), Yaddo (9), Bogliasco (2) and Bellagio fellowships, as well as commissions from the Harvard Music Association, CMA, NFA, Miller Theater and the Fromm (2) & Koussevitzky (2) Foundations. Her music was called “captivating, artful..moving” and “music of infinite beauty” in the New York Times, “ the genuine article..onto the ’season's best list “in the Boston Globe. In SFCV review of her opera, “Artemisia is sumptuous on every level.” Recent and upcoming premieres include her second Opera, Cabaret of Shadows (a second Fromm Commission) was just premiered by Musiqa at MATCH in Houston, Nightingales for Eleanor Bartsch and Ariana Kim, and her harp concerto, Second Sight for Atlanta Symphony Principal Harpist just premiered in Atlanta. Colin Clarke wrote about her JACK CD, QUARTETS, “the sheer intensity of the music is spellbinding…the passion shines through like..light.”

Laura’s work Second Sight is a Concerto for Piano & Orchestra performed by piano soloist Christopher Taylor.

Andrew McManus’ (b. 1985) orchestral work Strobe, premiered in 2014 by the New York Philharmonic, was called “riveting” and “breathless…surging…hazy…sometimes all at once” by the New York Times. His 2021 work Quiet Down for 4 players and electronics draws on a recording of LGBTQ activist Silvia Rivera's iconic 1973 speech. Whatchya Got (Sweet Water prints) (2021) for the Chicago Composers Orchestra, works with the “freedom, sentience, joy and mourning” assembled in a “lockdown print” by artist Michelle Nordmeyer. Embers, fused to ash (2015), for Alarm Will Sound, amalgamates Richard Wagner’s “Magic Fire Music” from Die Walküre with other fire-based imagery. In 2014 he began Neurosonics, a multi-work collaboration with University of Chicago neuroscientist, which creates electronic soundscapes using data from experiments used in the study of epilepsy. The project was supported by residency awards at the Aaron Copland House (2018) and the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (2018). New Music USA funded the project’s second work, pathways, bursting [neurosonics 2] for string quartet and electronics, which places the Spektral Quartet amidst a sea of alternately violent and tender spatialized sounds. Pathways was the winner of the 2020 Charlotte New Music & Beo String Quartet Competition. Other organizations that have featured his work include Latitude 49, NYCEMF, eighth blackbird, Fort Worth Opera, Aspen Music Festival, SPLICE Institute, New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music, Bowdoin International Music Festival, and the Minnesota Orchestra. In 2020 he was Limited Term Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Georgia. He is based in Chicago.

Andrew’s work one idea of heaven is dedicated to the memory of all LGBTQ people who have been the victims of violence.

Alican Çamci’s recent works feature an investigation of sound as a documentary medium, seeking to explore this aspect through the use of field and speech recordings, found sounds, and everyday materials in relation to the performative dimension introduced by musicians in a live situation.

CCO will also premiere Alican’s work copy-paste diptych for chamber orchestra.

About The Soloist:

Hailed by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist” (The Los Angeles Times), Christopher Taylor has distinguished himself throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents and interests. He has concertized around the globe, with the most recent international tours taking him to Italy, Germany, Korea, China, and Singapore. In the U.S. he has appeared with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Houston Symphony, and the Milwaukee Symphony. Mr. Taylor has undertaken various unusual projects. Recent examples include: performances of the complete Beethoven symphonies as transcribed by Franz Liszt; performances and lectures on the complete etudes of György Ligeti; and a series of performances of the Goldberg Variations on the unique double-manual Steinway piano in the collection of the University of Wisconsin.

Numerous awards have confirmed Mr. Taylor’s high standing in the musical world, among them an American Pianists’ Association Fellowship, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, a Bronze Medal in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and an Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award.

Mr. Taylor owes much of his success to several outstanding teachers, including Russell Sherman and Maria Curcio-Diamand. In addition to his busy concert schedule, he currently serves as Paul Collins Professor of Piano Performance at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He pursues a variety of other interests, including: mathematics (he received a summa cum laude degree from Harvard University in this field); computing; linguistics; and biking, which is his primary means of commuting.

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