May 31--Five commissioned world premieres, tributes to composers Pierre Boulez and Steve Reich, and a partnership with the inaugural Ear Taxi Chicago Festival of New Music will highlight the 2016-17 season of MusicNOW, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association's contemporary music series.
The four-concert series, presented Monday evenings at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, is curated by Samuel Adams and Elizabeth Ogonek and will mark their second season as CSO composers-in-residence.
The season opener, Oct. 10, will be the final concert of the first-ever Ear Taxi Festival, a weeklong, citywide event organized by former CSO resident composer Augusta Read Thomas and Fulcrum Point New Music Project artistic director Stephen Burns. The program will include new works by Chicago composers Katherine Young and Kyle Vegter. The Vegter piece will draw on the resources of Chicago's Manual Cinema.
Reich's 80th birthday will be commemorated in the Nov. 21 concert, program to be announced.
Boulez, the CSO's late conductor emeritus, will be honored on April 3 with a program of his own music along with two newly commissioned pieces inspired by his works.
The MusicNOW season will conclude May 22 with a concert built around concertos for the 21st century -- Dutch composer Michel van der Aa's "Up Close" (a cello concerto with film), and a new work by Ogonek for solo violin inspired by the "Mystery Sonatas" of Baroque composer Heinrich Biber.
For further information, visit www.cso.org.
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