SFNM’s Year Eight
Santa Fe New Music Presents The Music of our Time in Full Force

For More Information: Santa Fe New Music – 505-474-6601 • info@sfnm.org

(Santa Fe, NM: September 4, 2008) Santa Fe New Music (SFNM) launches in October an eighth season of exciting new works and underperformed classics of the 20th and 21st centuries to appreciative audiences in New Mexico and the region.

Founded in 2000, SFNM has presented over 220 works, with many enjoying a regional if not American or World premiere.

The 2008-2009 season includes 11 concerts, featuring over thirty works by a variety of today’s leading U.S. and international composers, along with revisitings of 20th century masterworks.

"We wanted to create a dynamic and interactive method for people to co-create relevance around our concerts," explains SFNM’s Founder and Artistic Director, John Kennedy, himself an internationally renowned composer and conductor, and one of the leading U.S. proponents of new music.

"An exciting element of this season is the presentation of cross-disciplinary explorations around new music. The concerts this year involve text, performance poetry, a new work tied to SITE Santa Fe’s 7th biennial exhibition, an outdoor ambient piece, the commission of a quickly rising star in the composing world, and an ambitious youth opera project—among other offerings."

An overarching element of SFNM’s new season is a multi-year, interdisciplinary focus, "Music&Word." This programming focus reflects SFNM’s interest in extending the music of our time to other areas of the creative and human experience.

In addition to a robust season featuring 11 concert performances and an adult education series, SFNM will publish a "suggested reading list" at its website. Audience members will be invited to comment upon and enhance the reading list, and discuss titles with each other, both at the concerts and through the Internet.

"Santa Fe New Music always strives to connect the many sectors of our community to the music of our time, and the roster for this year is an ambitious and exciting way of meeting our mission," Kennedy explains.

SFNM’s season (which officially began in July, 2008 with a collaborative concert with the Santa Fe Desert Chorale), continues from October, 2008 until April 2009 with the following events:

Fall Opening Weekend: October 16-18 — The debut of an adult lecture series with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, the 8th annual New Mexico Young Composers Project Awards Ceremony, and a spectacular concert start the Fall off with a new music bang.

Thursday, October 16, 2008, 6:00-7:30 — Debut of a six-part adult lecture series, "Beyond the Noise." Inspired by Alex Ross’ celebrated recent book: The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, this series will be taught by SFNM’s John Kennedy and is co-presented with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. The lectures begin with 20th century music and carry the exploration into the present. (Additional dates are: October 30, November 6, November 13, November 20, and December 4. Time: 6:00 - 7:30.)

Georgia O’Keeffe Education Annex, 123 Grant Avenue. Cost: $10, or $50 for series subscription. Pre-registration is required with the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum at: 505-946-1039.

Saturday, October 18, 6:00 p.m. — NM Young Composers Awards. SFNM’s New Mexico Young Composers’ Project (NMYCP) is a keystone of its youth education portfolio. Over the first eight years, the NMYCP has presented over 50 awards, with several of the winning works enjoying a premiere as a preview to a SFNM concert.

This year, composers from Santa Fe, Las Cruces, Los Alamos and Albuquerque, ranging in age from 7 to 17, will receive their awards, and the SFNM ensemble will play excerpts from the works. Free. Center for Contemporary Art at 1050 Old Pecos Trail.

Saturday, October 18, 7:00 p.m. — David Lang and the Post-Classicals. This program features "Child" by 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer (and Bang on a Can founder) David Lang. Also on the program is "War of the Words," by Santa Fe favorite Peter Garland, and works by maverick composer Phillip Bimstein for pre-recorded human and feline voices with chamber ensemble.

"This concert is a terrific way to debut our fall season," remarks Kennedy, "because these composers are all friends, colleagues of ours in addition to being essential forces in the new music world." Longer-term SFNM audiences will remember David’s "The So-Called Laws of Nature," having a breathtaking regional premiere when SO Percussion performed it as part of SFNM’s 2004 International Festival of New Music.

SFNM’s audiences seem to always enjoy the work of Peter Garland, a past Santa Fe-area resident. His latest work, "War of the Words" is a pithy critique of our war-engaged era, and how doublespeak has taken over the cultural paradigm.

Aligning with SFNM’s Music&Word theme, the Phillip Bimstein chamber works sample cat meows, cow lowing, the oral histories of farmers, and other human voices, and — says Kennedy, "transmogrifies them into entirely different ‘voices.’ Phillip’s work is completely satisfying because it remains imbued with musical integrity. His sound manipulations don’t ‘lose’ the music in the process of the sampling, nor do they veer into gimmickry. Phillip has created some of the most virtuosic integrations of music and text among today’s composers."

Phillip Bimstein will be in attendance at the concert and will present remarks.

Center for Contemporary Art at 1050 Old Pecos Trail. Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at the door. For all concerts except where noted: Season subscriptions and individual tickets available at SFNM's website; advance ticket sales at Nicholas Potter Booksellers, 211 East Palace Avenue.

Friday, October 24, 7:30 p.m. — Malangan. This event features a commissioned musical performance by SFNM’s John Kennedy and Santa Fe composers Molly Sturges and Chris Jonas, created in response to SITE Santa’s Fe’s Lucky Number Seven Biennial. "Malangan" is a word derived from Oceanic religious cultures that evokes a reverent and celebratory response to the transitory nature of life. A spatial work, Malangan will utilize the entire exhibition space of SITE and will also involve community members and volunteers who worked in putting together the biennial exhibit. Like all aspects of SITE’s Biennial, it is intended to be an ephemeral work. Kennedy, Jonas and Sturgis last collaborated together at SFNM’s April 2008 Zest Fest event. Malangan is co-sponsored by Box Gallery.

SITE Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta, $10 ($5 students, seniors, SITE Santa Fe members at Friend and Family levels), 505-989-1199.

Sunday, November 2, 7:00 p.m. — Orpheus and Euridice. This musical drama by composer Ricky Ian Gordon features guests artists Gina Browning, soprano; Joseph Illick, piano; and Jonathan Jones, clarinet. It originally premiered in 2005 at the Lincoln Center Festival.

Ricky Ian Gordon, one of today’s most lyric and successful music-theater composers, created this modern and very personal take on the ancient Greek myth while caring for his partner, who would ultimately succumb to AIDS. This concert is a benefit event, and part of the Southwest CARE Center’s 20th anniversary AID and Comfort Gala weekend.

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 Tickets through the Lensic at www.ticketssantafe.com or call 505-988-1234

Sunday, November 16, 3:00 p.m. — Endangered! A solo piano recital by Marthanne Dorminy-Gardner (aka Marthanne Verbit) to celebrate the release of her new CD "Endangered," this concert includes music  from 1997-2007 composed by five American  composers — Joseph Fennimore, Steve Heitzeg, Peter Lieberson, John Kennedy, and Hilary Tann — celebrating nature and bearing witness to our endangered environment.

John Kennedy describes Marthanne as "a gifted, sensitive, and visionary artist." The program includes works that convey reverence for the natural world, as well as newly commissioned pieces reflecting on the perils the earth presently faces.

Scottish Rite Center, 463 Paseo de Peralta. Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at the door; tickets
available at www.sfnm.org; or Nicholas Potter Booksellers, 211 East Palace Avenue.

Thursday, December 11, 7:00 p.m. — From Thoreau to Cage: American Voices. A companion to the lecture series with the O’Keeffe Museum, this concert is a part of SFNM’s Music&Word focus that examines how the vanguard of 20th century American composition, through Charles Ives and John Cage, was influenced by the American Transcendentalists.

The program includes Charles Ives’ towering and notoriously difficult "Concord Sonata," performed by its leading exponent, the masterful pianist Stephen Drury. Also on the concert are works for piano, percussion, and voice by John Cage that incorporate the drawings and texts of Henry David Thoreau. "American Voices" is presented in collaboration with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Scottish Rite Center, 463 Paseo de Peralta. Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at the door; tickets available at www.sfnm.org; or Nicholas Potter Booksellers, 211 East Palace Avenue.

Sunday, December 14, 3:00 p.m. — Unsilent Night.

In a new holiday tradition, SFNM presents Santa Fe’s first manifestation of Phil Kline’s international outdoor ambient music piece for an infinite number of boomboxes and community performers. Some 30 cities: from Sydney to Seattle, Middlesbrough (UK) to Manassas (VA), and Houston to Hamburg, will be recreating what the composer calls, "a Christmas caroling party except that we don’t sing, but rather carry the music, each of us playing a separate track that is a "voice" in the piece... We become a city-block-long sound system!" Recent performances in San Francisco and elsewhere have attracted over a thousand spectators and hundreds of participants.

This new holiday tradition will convey a sense of urbanism and post-modernist play into Santa Fe’s rich and exciting yuletide roster. To participate in "Unsilent Night," interested community members will need to bring their own boombox or machine that can play a cassette, .mp3, or CD, and sign up in advance through SFNM’s website. Those without boomboxes can still walk along with the performers.

Santa Fe Plaza and environs. Free, visit www.sfnm.org/unsilent for additional information.

Saturday, January 10, 2009, 7:00 p.m. — Music and Word in the Gallery. Another collaboration borne from SFNM’s 2008 Zest Fest, this concert features acclaimed performance poet Cari Griffo and SFNM musicians performing poetry, sound texts, and works by John Kennedy and others. Zane Bennett Contemporary Art will curate an associated exhibit. Audiences will experience an intimate mid-winter event blurring boundaries between music and words, enhanced by visual art. Co-sponsored by Zane Bennett Contemporary Art.

Venue: Zane Bennett Contemporary Art, 435 S. Guadalupe St.  Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at the door; tickets available at www.sfnm.org; or Nicholas Potter Booksellers, 211 East Palace Avenue.

Friday, March 13, 2009 —Revelation. Michael Harrison is one of the present-day masters of alternative tuning, utilizing the intriguing formula of "just intonation" to create mystical and memorable piano soundscapes. A long-time collaborator of minimalist masters Terry Riley and LaMonte Young, Harrison also brings his own aesthetic point of view into a deeply reflective and emotionally powerful composition.

As SFNM’s John Kennedy remarks, "’Revelation’ is a ‘must-hear’ in today’s new music." Of the guest artist, the New York Times recently wrote, "Mr. Harrison strips away centuries of well-tempered convention to reveal naked notes, which he stacks up in clear chords of swirling clouds."

Center for Contemporary Art at 1050 Old Pecos Trail. Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at the door; tickets available at www.sfnm.org; or Nicholas Potter Booksellers, 211 East Palace Avenue.

March 27, 28, and 29 — The Language of Birds. The New Mexico premiere performances of this 2004 family opera written by John Kennedy. Originally commissioned by the Sarasota (FL) Opera, SFNM’s production features a cast of 100 Santa Fe youth in a gorgeous and spirited all-ages performance

."SFNM’s inaugural youth opera project is turning into an innovative collaboration between SFNM, the public schools, and the community at-large," says Kennedy. "Our heroes, heroines, and bird teachers have a great story to share and we are very excited to be performing not only at the Lensic but also taking the show on the road to Albuquerque. It will be a great celebratory moment for our community!" (More information about the project is online).

Tickets: $20-$40, half-price for youth 16 and under.

Friday March 27, 7:00 p.m.; Saturday March 28, 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 West San Francisco Street. Sunday, March 29, 3:00 p.m., National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 4th St SW, Albuquerque.

Spring Closing Weekend: April 17-18

Friday, April 17, time, venue tba — Second Annual SFNM Zest Fest.

Picture yourself in downtown Manhattan, circa 1979. Phillip Glass and Steve Reich are still speaking to each other, the Talking Heads are ambling over to make the scene with Yoko Ono while Andy Warhol makes a spectacle. Somewhere in Europe, Iannis Xenakis is mixing it up with Luciano Berio.

Revelers are invited to bring their best Soho-loft-party incarnations (costume optional) to this annual fundraising bash, which will include delicious food and drink, exquisite silent auction temptations, an interactive, participatory "Fluxus Cabaret," (advance registration required if you wish to take part in performance elements), and yes! a new music "disco." This is a benefit for SFNM’s Youth Education Programs. Tickets start at $40.

Saturday, April 18, 7:00 p.m. — The Music of Paul Moravec. The season ends with SFNM’s sixth annual "Living Composer Portrait" in collaboration with the Santa Fe Opera. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer "Paul Moravec is very gifted at uniting a communicative musical language with other artistic themes and ideas," says John Kennedy. This concert includes works for voice and chamber ensemble utilizing writings of Benjamin Franklin who, in the words of SFNM’s Kennedy, "would certainly be a devotee of new music, were he alive today."

Stieren Hall, Santa Fe Opera. Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at the door; tickets available at www.sfnm.org; or Nicholas Potter Booksellers, 211 East Palace Avenue.

SFNM’s Year Eight has been programmed in response to a longstanding audience request for new and recent works of the American and international canon that range in variety, size, and scope. In addition to these concerts and the "Language of Birds" youth opera project, Santa Fe New Music’s 2008-2009 season also offers robust online offerings (website, blogs, forthcoming podcasts). Taken in its entirety, SFNM’s Year Eight delivers on Santa Fe New Music’s mission of presenting the most compelling music of our time to a dynamic, enthusiastic, and ever-expanding audience base from Northern and Central New Mexico — and beyond.

Through concerts, commissions, and educational events, Santa Fe New Music promotes understanding of, enthusiasm for, and participation in the music of our time, serving as an advocate for new classical music and its future. SFNM was founded by Artistic Director John Kennedy in 2000. Santa Fe New Music is a 501(c)3 corporation.

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