Out of a respect for renewable energy and a commitment to creating a new, better reality, composer Viet Cuong devotes his percussion quartet concerto, Re(New)al, to finding unexpected ways to breathe new life into traditional ideas. Alongside the orchestra’s traditional instruments, percussionists perform on “found” instruments, including crystal glasses and air cans.
In a Chicago Composers Orchestra co-commissioned world premiere, a new work from Canadian/Icelandic composer Fjóla Evans creates a “texturing fog.” Evans’s work explores the visceral physicality of sound while drawing inspiration from patterns of natural phenomena.
Nature | Human features two commissions from CCO’s Ten x Ten project, co-presented with Homeroom Chicago and Spudnik Press. Ten x Ten pairs composers with visual artists, challenging each pair to co-conceptualize their work across media, stretching and expanding their creative processes. Ten x Ten world premieres:
In The Eyes of All Future Generations, composer Brian Baxter uses musical time and pattern to reflect on how the effects of climate change will reverberate, impacting future generations. Artist Katherine Lampert explores time and patterns through her print Echo, based on the patterns from a Baculites fossil. The fossil’s patterns, which mark the different chambers, “are not only beautiful but remind us of the physicality and fragility of life.”
As an homage to the trees of central Mexico, artist Rodrigo Lara Zendejas presents us with four sound sculptures. Using these sculptures, composer Luis Fernando Amaya derives every musical sound for cosa verde para descansar los ojos. Percussionists perform on the sculptures themselves, in conversation with the orchestra, “where the cello and the mesquite tree sculpture meet, interact with each other, and speak to each other.”