*Tickets will also be sold at the door. Masks optional.

Featuring three world premieres by composers Alican Çamci, Andrew McManus and Laura Schwendinger, featuring piano soloist Marta Aznavoorian. This concert is made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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 dedicated to soloist Marta Aznavoorian.

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:

A Pianist of exceptionally finished technique and purity of musical Impulse” (Boston Globe) Armenian/American Pianist, Marta Aznavoorian is known for her inspiringly spirited playing and vast emotional reach. The multi Grammy nominated artist has performed to critical acclaim throughout the world as orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. She made her professional debut at the age of 13 performing Mozart Piano Concerto No 24, K 491 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the invitation of Sir George Solti. She then went on to engage with orchestras throughout the United States and abroad including Sydney Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Chicago Symphony and many others including an engagement with the New World Symphony as a result of an invitation from Michael Tilson Thomas who was also the conductor.

Aznavoorian has many awards and accolades including First prize in the Stravinsky International Competition and the special prize for best interpretation of the commissioned contemporary work. As a recipient of the Level 1 award in the National Foundation of the Arts talent search, Aznavoorian became a Presidential Scholar and was invited to the White House where she met former President George H.W. Bush and performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. With her expressive energy and originality she brings to new and traditional classical music, Aznavoorian has recorded extensively for Naxos, Warner Classics and Erato, and has just released her 7th album under record label, Cedille Records.

Aznavoorian is a founding member of the Grammy-nominated Lincoln Trio, which Fanfare Magazine has labeled as the “hottest Trio in the business”. Aznavoorian also performs extensively with violinist Stefan Milenkovich, and her sister, cellist Ani Aznavoorian. The Aznavoorian sister Duo is set to release their debut album in 2022 called “Veiled Mountain; Gems from Armenia” for Cedille Records. A champion and lover of contemporary music, she has recorded music and premiers by the world's leading composers of our time including William Bolcom, Osvaldo Golijov, Augusta Read Thomas, Shulamit Ran, Stacy Garrop, Joan Tower and Jennifer Higdon among others.

A student of the renowned teacher, Menahem Pressler, Aznavoorian received her Bachelor Degree and Artist Diploma at Indiana University and Masters Degree from New England Conservatory. As a dedicated educator and philanthropist, she gives lessons and masterclasses across the United States and abroad, and is on faculty at DePaul University and the Music Institute of Chicago where she is also Artist in Residence. Aznavoorian works with many programs to help create training pathways for students from traditionally under represented backgrounds. Her new foundation aims to help fund these students and help them achieve their full musical potential. Marta Aznavoorian is a Steinway Artist.

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