*Tickets will also be sold at the door. Join us for a free pre-concert talk at 6:45pm!
The 2023-2024 season is sponsored by the Katherine L. Griem and Anthony G. Montag Charitable Fund.
Carlos Bandera - world premiere*
Carlos Bandera is a Chicago based composer whose music is characterized by a glacial unfolding of sonic landscapes. He often expands simple elements into large-scale musical structures, through which he explores the interplay of harmony, noise, and texture.
Bandera’s orchestral work Materia Prima, which premiered in 2023 at Carnegie Hall by the American Composers Orchestra, was described by the New York Classical Review as having “one of the most immersive and elegant transitions from nothingness to complexity that one has heard.” His music has been performed by groups such as the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the American Composers Orchestra, the Albany Symphony, the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, Dogs of Desire, ~Nois, Ensemble Linea, Hotel Elefant, Earspace, Hebrides Ensemble, Nebula Ensemble, and Omnibus Ensemble. In 2022, his piece Meristem was performed by the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra during their “On the Road” tour across South East England. He has been a fellow at Copland House’s CULTIVATE, Orchestra of St Luke’s DeGaetano Composition Institute, Composers Conference, and the Underwood New Music Readings, a resident composer at the Black House Collective New Music Workshop, and has attended the Delian Academy for New Music and Time of Music (Musiikin aika).
Bandera holds degrees from the Peabody Institute (MM) and Montclair State University (BM). He is currently pursuing a PhD in Composition and Music Technology at Northwestern University, where he has studied with Alex Mincek and Hans Thomalla and has been awarded the William T. Faricy Award.
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Ania Vu - world premiere*
Polish of Vietnamese descent composer and pianist, Ania Vu (née Vũ Đặng Minh Anh) writes music that explores the interplay between the sound properties of the words and their meanings, musical energy related to form, and varied notions of time. She also enjoys crafting her own text that serves as a sonic, formal, and expressive guiding reference in her musical writing process.
Her music has been described by the Boston Globe as an exhibition of "artful vocal writing [that] ranges from percussive whispers to glinting, pure-voiced lines that [...] blended elegantly into the roiling cauldron of strings." Ania was the 2024 Composer-in-Residence at the Chelsea Music Festival and has received recognition and fellowships from the American Opera Project, ASCAP, Copland House, Tanglewood, the Boston New Music Initiative, and the I-Park Foundation.
She was the 2022-23 Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Chicago and a composer fellow with the "Composers & the Voice" program. As a passionate educator, she has been a Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, University of Chicago, and will join the faculty at Northwestern University in Fall 2024. Ania received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.M. in composition and theory from the Eastman School of Music.