Austin Chamber Music Center

12/14/2022

This week’s is composer and violinist Dr. Chen Yi. Dr. Chen is a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries. She is currently a Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of Music and Dance in the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005, and the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 2019.
Born in China, Ms. Chen received bachelor and master degrees from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University in the City of New York.
Recent world premieres of Chen Yi’s works have included Introduction, Andante, and Allegro by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Fire for 12 players by the Grossman Ensemble at Logan Center Performance Hall in the University of Chicago, Totem Poles for organ solo at the AGO national convention in Kansas City, Pearle River Overture by Guangzhou Symphony in China, and Southern Scenes for flute, p**a, and orchestra by the Hawaii Symphony in Honolulu. The 20/21 concert season started with the European premiere of Tang Poems Cantata by MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir in Germany and the world premiere of Bamboo Song by pianist Zou Xiang at the China National Center for Performing Arts Concert Hall in China, followed by world premiere performances of two oboe solo works: Elegy by St Paul Chamber Orchestra’s oboe principal Cassie Pilgrim, and Mountain Song by Fergus McCready at the Royal Academy of Music to celebrate its 200th anniversary.

You can listen to her work “Memory” below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCE6mTR9q6w

12/13/2022

Our In-School Coaching students and Adult Academy members had a successful weekend of final concerts! They accomplished so much throughout the fall semester. Congrats to everyone who performed this past Saturday and Sunday! 👏👏👏

We hope to see new and returning faces in the spring—visit our Education page for information about the upcoming semester! AustinChamberMusic.org/Education/

12/12/2022

Ashley Fure — Something to Hunt [w/ score]

This week's is sonic artist Ash Fure. Fure is an artist who blends installation and performance. Called “purely visceral” and “staggeringly original” by The New Yorker, Fure’s full-bodied listening experiences open uncommon sites of collective encounter. Recent immersive productions include Hive Rise: for Subs and Megas, commissioned by Club TransMediale and premiered in Berlin's iconic Berghain club; Filament: for Trio, Orchestra, and Moving Voices, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and premiered in New York’s Geffen Hall; and The Force of Things: an Opera for Object, premiered at Peak Performances. Fure holds a PhD in Music Composition from Harvard University and is an Associate Professor of Music at Dartmouth College. A finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Fure is the recipient of two Lincoln Center Emerging Artists Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rome Prize in Music Composition, a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Prize, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant for Artists, a Fulbright Fellowship to France, a Darmstadt Kranichsteiner Musikpreis, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship from Columbia University.

Something to Hunt by Ashley Furehttp://www.ashleyfure.net/Performed by Dal Nientehttp://dalniente.com/Andrew Nogal, OboeRyan Muncy, SaxKatie Schoepflin, Clar...

12/08/2022

Come support ACMC musicians of all ages this Saturday and Sunday during their final fall concerts! Students from our In-School Programs and avocational players from our Adult Academy have all been working hard this fall in preparation for this weekend's recitals. Admission is free for all performances. Get details on our online events calendar: https://austinchambermusic.org/events-calendar/

12/07/2022

As One – Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell & Kimberly Reed | Stingray PausePlay

This week’s is composer Laura Kaminsky. Possessing “an ear for the new and interesting” (The New York Times), Laura Kaminsky frequently addresses critical social and political issues in her work with a distinct musical language that is “full of fire as well as ice, contrasting dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection. It is strong stuff.” (American Record Guide). Her first opera, As One, is among the most produced contemporary operas since its 2014 premiere with 50+ productions to date in the U.S., Europe, Canada, South America and Australia. The As One team has since been commissioned twice—by Houston Grand Opera for Some Light Emerges (2017) and Opera Parallèle/American Opera Projects for Today It Rains (2019). She is co-librettist (with novelist Lisa Moore) and composer for February, commissioned by Newfoundland’s Opera on the Avalon for 2023. Awarded the 2016 Polish Gold Cross of Merit by the President of Poland for exemplary public service or humanitarian work, Kaminsky has been recognized by many organizations for her work, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and has received six ASCAP-Chamber Music America Awards for Adventurous Programming. Head of composition at Purchase College Conservatory of Music, and a composer mentor for the Juilliard School Blueprint Fellowship program, she leads The American Opera Project’s Artistic Advisory Council and sits on the boards of Opera America and the Hermitage Artist Retreat. Her music is recorded on the Affeto, Albany, Bridge, BSS, Cedille, CRI, Capstone, Mode, MSR, and Navona labels and is published by Bill Holab Music. Kaminsky is a BMI composer.

We got to sit down with Laura, Mark and Kimberly, the composer and libretti of As One, a operatic work that was a part of the Opera America World Opera Confe...

12/07/2022

The Coltman Competition application is open now through December 20! We can't wait to see what you've been working on!

12/06/2022

Bouman Fellowship | Kinds of Kings

This week’s is the composer collective Kinds of Kings. Founded in 2017, Kinds of Kings is a collective of multifaceted composers committed to building a positive and supportive community around the creation and experience of new music. The collective is focused on amplifying and advocating for the voices of historically-marginalized people and expanding access for audiences and composers.
​
In their 2019-2020 season, Kinds of Kings was an Artist-in-Residence at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, New York. Described as “distinguished young creators who work in diverse styles,” (The New Yorker) the collective’s 2019-2020 concert series, Equilibrium and Disturbance, featured Rubiks Collective , ~Nois saxophone quartet, Isabelle O’Connell, Nouveau Classical Project, and Real Loud. Kinds of Kings has previously had portrait concerts with New York-based chamber groups Metropolis Ensemble and Desdemona Ensemble, the ZAFA Collective in Chicago, and the St Louis Symphony as part of the orchestra’s Pulitzer Series. In March 2022 the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Grammy-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird premiered a new concerto by the collective, Nine Mothers.
​
Kinds of Kings is Gemma Peacocke (New Zealand/Brooklyn, NY), Shelley Washington (United States/Brooklyn, NY), and Maria Kaoutzani (Cyprus/Chicago, IL).

Kinds of Kings advocacy and education initiatives including the Bouman Fellowship

12/01/2022

A Charlie Brown Christmas

December is here! To get you in the holiday spirit, ACMC's A Charlie Brown Christmas is FREE to enjoy on demand, starting today! Video access is available on our website now through January 8 so that you can enjoy Vince Guaraldi's tunes throughout the holiday season. ✨

Enjoy the Austin Chamber Music Center's annual Charlie Brown celebration at the Stateside Theatre in December! Featuring the music of Vince Guaraldi.

11/30/2022

Joan Tower's "Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman #6"

This week's is Grammy-winning American composer Joan Tower. Heralded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time," her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man; Island Prelude; five string quartets; and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was founding member and pianist of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.

11/28/2022

Did you know that Austin Chamber Music Center has spotify playlists that feature our and featured artists? Checkout the links below to listen to some new music and get rid of the Monday blues.

MusicMonday: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6g9RwbVwb5DROKxQIn8dIF?si=iLJuDHu9SneE7zIvnEWpRg

WCW: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1IAJhDBe20x3OFYw40WB0x?si=7NEAKt_BTreMeTOJdrW6yA

11/16/2022

This week’s is composer Gemma Peacocke. Gemma is a Brooklyn-based composer from Aotearoa New Zealand. She writes avant-pop music for chamber ensembles, soloists, and orchestras, and she also writes a lot of music with electronics. She has a particular love of interdisciplinary collaborations and often works with visual artists, writers, dancers, theater directors, and designers.
​
Gemma’s first album, Waves & Lines, sets to music poems by Afghan women collected and translated in I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from contemporary Afghanistan by Pulitzer Prize-winner Eliza Griswold. Waves & Lines has been performed as an evening-length multimedia song cycle at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Roulette Intermedium and National Sawdust in New York, and Australia’s Melbourne Recital Center.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KaISkBFwb4
​
Gemma is co-founder of the Kinds of Kings composer collective. Described by The New Yorker as “distinguished young creators who work in diverse styles,” the collective focuses on amplifying and advocating for under-heard voices in classical music. The collective was an Artist-in-Residence with National Sawdust in 2019-2020, and a new concerto commission from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Grammy Award-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird premiered in March 2022.
​
Gemma has been commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonic, Rochester Philharmonic, Third Coast Percussion, PUBLIQuartet, Bang on a Can, Rubiks Collective, Stroma, and Alarm Will Sound.
​
A joint Ph.D. candidate in Music and Humanistic Studies at Princeton University, Gemma previously studied with Julia Wolfe at NYU Steinhardt and at the New Zealand School of Music. She lives in Brooklyn with her biggest fan, a standard poodle called Mila (and Gemma’s husband George also lives with them). She also spends as much time as possible in New Zealand.

11/14/2022

This week’s is composer Spencer Arias. Spencer is a composer, improviser, and educator based in Michigan who creates people-centered music based off shared and contrary experiences focusing on themes of social, political, and environmental changes. They believe that community should be put at the center of music and art and that it should not live within a hierarchy, and that Composers, performers, conductors, and audiences do not have any more or less to offer, and all these spheres are essential to creating new and old music. At the center of this are questions of identity, with a particular interest in Q***rness, Gender, and Inclusivity.

They have had performances throughout the US and Europe, having been performed by musicians such as the JACK Quartet, The New Thread Quartet, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and Nick Photinos. They have won numerous awards, including the Music Now Competition, The Jere Hutcherson Large Ensemble Competition, and the Most Inspirational Performance Art Award at the 2020 Michigan State University Social Justice Art Festival.

As a performer, they work primarily as an improviser using piano, voice, and electronics. They won an East Lansing Cultural Arts Grant to collaborate with fellow composers Lyn Goeringer and Kakia Gkudina on a project called Q***rbending, whose goal was to create inclusive q***r spaces for the q***r residents of East Lansing. As a soloist, they are interested in creating primarily long-form ambient, textural music that does not take itself too seriously.

They recently finished their Doctorate in Music Composition at Michigan State University, where they studied primarily with David Biedenbender, Alexis Bacon, and Lyn Goeringer. Before that, they did a Master's in Music at New York University and their Undergraduate degree at Arizona State University They are currently an Instructor of Music Theory at Western Michigan University and does theory research on Inclusive approaches to Pedagogy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kn5zudvp8w

11/14/2022

Today wrapped up the fall semester for the Young Artist Academy. So much accomplished in 10 weeks! Super proud of each and every student that performed on stage today.

11/12/2022

The New World: Austin Chamber Music Center Concert

Tonight: join clarinetist James Shields, violinist David Felberg, and pianist Michelle Schumann for The New World! Music by Bartok, Dvorak, and Stravinsky starting at 7:30 PM at the First Unitarian Church. Tickets are available online and we will have $12 Student Rush tickets at the door starting at 6:30 PM. Details and advance tickets available on our website.

Music by Bartok, Dvorak, and Stravinsky performed by clarinetist James Shields, violinist David Felberg, and pianist Michelle Schumann. Taking place in person November 11 and 12, with a virtual option available.

11/10/2022

We're looking forward to this weekend's season concert, The New World ! ACMC's 22–23 season is extra festive thanks to our dining sponsor Gusto Italian Kitchen + Wine Bar. Stop by Gusto on Burnet Road before or after the concert to complete your date night!

11/09/2022

Make sure to get to Saturday's Synchronism concert early, so you can hear a pre-concert performance by Young Artist Academy student Pedro Salas. He will be playing Violin Sonata No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 45, Movement II, by Edvard Grieg. Pedro is a Junior at Akins HS and is the 2022 Felicity Coltman Scholarship Award recipient.

11/09/2022

This week’s is pianist and activist Lara Downes, a trailblazer both on and off the stage, whose music seeks inspiration from legacy, history, family, and collective memory. She is a chart-topping recording artist, a powerfully charismatic performer, a curator, and tastemaker recognized as a cultural visionary on the national arts scene. "With a fierce commitment to arts advocacy, Downes enjoys creative collaborations with a range of leading artists, including multi-instrumentalist, composer and singer Rhiannon Giddens, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Simone Dinnerstein, folk icon Judy Collins, writer Adam Gopnik, and former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove. Her close partnerships with prominent composers span genres and generations, with premieres and commissions coming from Jennifer Higdon, John Corigliano, Stephen Schwartz, Paola Prestini, Clarice Assad, Michael Abels, and many others.

You can listen to Lara perform here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwSBAS2Pp-U

11/08/2022

It's ! We had 100% voter turnout from ACMC staff and we want YOU to join in! Check in with your colleagues and friends and get out to the polls—ballot and polling information is available at vote411.org.

11/07/2022

This week’s is the arts organization ChamberQUEER. Chamber Q***r is a multifaceted organization with the mission of presenting and performing q***r artists, highlighting historically underrepresented q***r figures in classical music, and providing an intersectionally inclusive space within classical music for artists and audience. With a focus on building inclusive community spaces, CQ holds dedicated community events throughout each season, where q***r artists and audiences alike can come together through music-making. ChamberQUEER was founded in 2018 by Jules Biber, Danielle Buonaiuto, Brian Mummert, and Andrew Yee.
ChamberQUEER hosts many community events throughout the year, from reading parties to house concerts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it transitioned to online and outdoor events, holding space for the community through Zoom happy hours, Instagram Live interviews with q***r composers, educational webinars, and Zoom chamber music concerts in collaboration with other LGBTQ+ service organizations.
ChamberQUEER has been presented by National Sawdust; WQXR at the Greene Space; Death of Classical at Green-Wood Cemetery; Brooklyn Pride; Boulanger Initiative; and the Westerlies. Founding members have had appearances as ambassadors for ChamberQUEER at chamber music festivals, on podcasts and public radio broadcasts, and at residencies all over the country. CQ also works to promote q***r musicians in the larger musical scene, helping to contract q***r musicians for various events.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9sY9mUOu90&feature=emb_title

11/07/2022

Two Adult Academy masterclass, two clinicians— thanks Karl Mitze & Scott Donald — and eight chamber ensembles… what a fun evening!

11/03/2022

Internships

ACMC is now accepting applications for an Education Intern and a Marketing Intern for this spring. If you or anyone you know wants to gain experience working at an arts nonprofit, please apply or spread the word. Visit our Internships page to learn more!

Overview of ACMC Internships In keeping with our mission to educate the next generation of music enthusiasts, the Austin Chamber Music Center is proud to offer internship opportunities for college-age students looking to gain hands-on experience in their chosen field. In most cases, college credit i...

11/03/2022

Employment

ACMC is now accepting applications for a new full-time Program & Events Manager! If you or anyone you know wants to work in the arts by supporting ACMC's award-winning chamber music programs, please apply or spread the word. Visit our Employment page to learn more!

Join our team!

11/03/2022

The second installment of our 22–23 Season is next week! The New World features clarinetist James Shields, Principal Clarinet of the Oregon Symphony, and violinist David Felberg, Concertmaster of The Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra & Chorus. The two artists are the co-directors of ChatterAbq, a chamber music organization in Albuquerque. They'll be joined by ACMC's Michelle Schumann to perform music by Bartók, Dvorak, and Stravinsky.

Tickets and discount season packages available now.
For all season programs, ACMC offers $12 Saturday
Student Rush tickets and pay-what-you-can virtual
access.

11/02/2022

ACMC is proud to be a Business Partner for Big Medium's 2022 Austin Studio Tour! The tour is free and open to the public, showcasing our city's amazing local artists November 5–20. Learn about the tour's many different participating artists and locations at AustinStudioTour.org.