Four-Day New Music Festival Slated in School of Music

The four-day 2008 New Music Festival at Illinois State University, as its titles suggests, will present master classes and new music compositions celebrating music from the 20th and 21st centuries in free recitals in Kemp Recital Hall at 8 p.m. each evening beginning Monday, March 17.

Visiting artists from across the country will give master classes for ISU students and free concerts featuring music written within the past 50 years.  In most cases, the works showcased at the festival concerts were written especially for the performers.

The March 17 concert will feature solo cellist David Russell, who will perform virtuosic works for solo cello written by some of this country’s top composers.  Russell is a strong advocate for composers and new music, having worked with many leading artists.

The second concert, March 18, will feature the Linden Duo, a guitar and flute duo comprised of Illinois State faculty guitarist Angelo Favis and flutist Kim Risinger.  They will perform works by such international artist as Japanese composer Takemitsu, as well as local composers including the University of Illinois’ Stephen Taylor, a former Illinois State faculty member. 

Favis and Risinger are known not only for their artistry but for their culturally diverse programming.  The concert will feature pieces composed specifically for the duo involving real time computer-aided sound manipulation.

On March 19, pianist Amy Dissanayake, one of the nation’s foremost interpreters of contemporary piano repertoire, will perform.  She has recorded all of the Rakowski études on the Bridge Label, and regularly performs the demanding and virtuosic études by composer Ligeti. 

Based in Chicago, Dissanayake appears frequently on the NewMusic Now series, conducted by Pierre Boulez.  She served as the principal pianist of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago for six years, and has been an extra keyboardist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  Her awards include a stipend prize at the 2000 Darmstadt Internationale Fereinkurse für Neue Musik, first prizes in the American Opera Society of Chicago competition, the Union League and Civic Arts Foundation piano competition, the Farwell Competition and the Rose Fay Thomas Competition, which led to a solo performance in Orchestra Hall in Chicago.

The final concert will involve School of Music faculty and Dissanayake performing chamber music repertoire from the 20th and 21st century.  Works by international composers such as Britain’s Sir Peter Maxwell-Davies and Hungary’s Erod will be paired with works by young, up-and-coming composers such as Illinois State University faculty member and composer David Feurzeig.