2018 – Institute for Music Leadership

Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble: All Around Us Project

Emma Gierszal — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 16:13:53 +0000

Continuing the research/development phase with the end goal to create an evening-length, theatrical and musical story that experiments with binaural technology (a three-dimensional soundscape with audience in headphones).

Julisa Fuste: New World Symphony Face off: A Battle of the Instruments

Emma Gierszal — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 16:03:01 +0000

The New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy (NWS), offered its Fellows several opportunities to create musical interactions with audiences inside the concert hall and in the community. These opportunities—collectively referred to as the New Audience Fellow Initiative—include Community Projects, Double Take Concerts, and Affinity Concerts.

NWS is a laboratory for how classical music is taught, presented and experienced in the 21st century. To create new points of entry into classical music for newer, younger, and more diverse audiences, NWS strives to imagine and present concert experiences that intentionally depart from traditional performances. In that spirit, the New Audience Fellow Initiative challenges Fellows to experiment by designing (with staff help) their own concerts and events.

Andrew Bliss: Nief-Norf’s Knoxville Concert Series

Emma Gierszal — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 15:53:28 +0000

Nief-Norf’s first year-round concert series brought new music to venues within the greater Knoxville community. An expansion of the summer festival (nnSF) program, the concert series will featured six curated performances by nnSF faculty, including a combination of professionals (Nief-Norf faculty/staff) and student performers. This combination offers young musicians professional experience while performing at a world-class level, while bringing new music to the urban Knoxville area. All concerts were free and open to the public, with the
exception of the Big Ears Festival.

Megan Steigerwald Ille: Hipster Opera: American Identity, Digital Media, and Experimental Performance

Emma Gierszal — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 15:47:06 +0000

Megan Steigerwald Ille is a scholar of contemporary opera whose research explores how experimental operatic performances attract new audiences by reshaping institutional narratives around the genre. Her work builds on existing scholarship while focusing on how innovative production models impact both performers and audiences. Her book project, Hipster Opera: American Identity, Digital Media, and Experimental Performance, examines the intersection of opera, digital media, and American cultural identity. Through case studies of Opera Philadelphia’s O17 and O18 Festivals, the Los Angeles-based company The Industry, and The Mile-Long Opera by David Lang and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, she analyzes the stories these performances tell about opera in the 21st century. Her research highlights the tensions between innovation and tradition, corporate support and grassroots creativity, and cultural prestige and public accessibility. By incorporating ethnographic methods and focusing on artists, producers, and audiences, her work offers a critical new lens on the evolving dynamics of operatic performance in the digital age

Amy Advocat: Exposure: a Transient Canvas opera

Emma Gierszal — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 15:17:44 +0000

Exposure is a bold reimagining of Thomas Hardy’s The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved, exploring the intersection of art, power, and the evolving image of the “ideal woman.” Set across three pivotal decades, the 1970s, 1990s, and today, this opera unfolds through the lens of a female model’s portrait sessions, examining how beauty, perception, and agency shift across time. Composer Daniel Felsenfeld and librettist Bea Goodwin, both seasoned voices in contemporary opera, shine a spotlight on the dynamics between artist and muse, particularly in an age reckoning with the legacy of #MeToo. Inspired by Hardy’s structure of three 20-year intervals, Exposure captures the cultural pulse of each era—framed by the political turbulence of Nixon, Clinton, and our current moment—while confronting how women have been shaped, silenced, and sometimes shattered by the gaze of the artist and the media alike. This work is an invitation to question the power structures behind image-making and to reflect on the untold stories of those caught in their frame. By centering female voices, Exposure challenges traditional narratives and opens space for dialogue around consent, identity, and the cost of being seen.

Mariel Roberts: Mivos Quartet 10th Anniversary Festival

yhuang93 — Wed, 09 May 2018 19:42:00 +0000

The Mivos quartet, which includes three Eastman alumni, has spent their first decade devoted to performing works of contemporary composers and presenting new music to diverse audiences.

This project was a three-day festival highlighting some of their favorite and most meaningful collaborations and projects. Each evening consisted of a short opening set by a friend and collaborator of the ensemble, followed by a set of music performed and curated by the quartet with special guests.

Melissa Snoza: Fifth House Ensemble and Alash

yhuang93 — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 16:59:00 +0000

Praised by the New York Times for its “conviction, authority, and finesse,” the Chicago-based Fifth House Ensemble harnesses the collaborative spirit of chamber music to reach beyond the traditionally perceived limits of classical music. The ensemble’s artistic, educational, and civic programs engage theater groups, video game designers, corporate innovators, and folk bands to share stories as diverse as the communities it serves.

The project tells the story of Tuvan music and culture, framing the idea that folk
music is equally about preservation and participation. They explore how folk
music comes to exist, how it is assimilated, disseminated, and appropriated by other cultures, why it matters to a people, how it retains its identity while blending with a wide variety of influences, and how it has survived and responded to various threats.

Anna Reguero: The Aesthetics of “Indie-Classical”: Music in the Age of Post-Postmodernism

yhuang93 — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 16:31:00 +0000

This project was a case study and ethnography on the Ecstatic Music Festival, a
series of concerts that began in 2011 that features collaborations between
innovative “indie-classical” ensembles and non-traditional bands set in an
“uptown,” traditional concert hall in New York City.

The Ecstatic Music Festival markets this music and the artists as “ecstatic,”
turning the focus away from the music’s complexity or musical materials and onto feelings the music and artists can create for listeners. This research will help us understand how and why this music creates meaning and value for listeners in the 21st century.

John Pickford Richards: JACK Quartet: TIME SPANS Festival

yhuang93 — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 19:52:00 +0000

JACK operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and spread of new string quartet music. Dedicated to education, the quartet spends two weeks each summer teaching at New Music on the Point, a contemporary chamber music festival in Vermont for young performers and composers.

The time spans festival presents a concert featuring JACK and engineers from the SWR Experimental studio in Freiburg, Germany performing works by Felipe Lara, Sabrina Schroede, and Georg Friedrich Haas. All three works feature interactive electronic instruments that were developed in Freiburg and can only be performed with the expertise of engineers from the SWR Experimental studio.