NOW MUSIC Festival Celebrates 20 Years of Contemporary Music Feb. 11-18
The Conservatory of Music will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the NOW MUSIC Festival, a weeklong celebration of contemporary musicians and composers.
NOW MUSIC Festival features compositions primarily in the 20th- and 21st-century art-music style, but also includes progressive jazz and popular music styles. The festival seeks to expose the central Ohio community to international, national and regional living composers and their music. It is one of the most comprehensive and diversified celebrations of contemporary music presented in the Midwest. Read more about the NOW MUSIC Festival here.
This year’s festival marks the return of composer and conductor-in-residence Michael Schelle, distinguished professor of music and founding director of JCFA Composers Orchestra at Butler University, in Indianapolis. Schelle’s work has been commissioned and performed by professional, university and public school orchestras, bands, choirs, new-music ensembles and instrumentalists and vocalists, including the following:
• Chicago Symphony Orchestra
• Detroit Symphony
• Minnesota Orchestra
• Milwaukee Symphony
• Buffalo Philharmonic
• Louisville Orchestra
• Cincinnati Symphony
• Indianapolis Symphony
• Kansas City Symphony
• ProMusica Chamber Orchestra
• St. Paul Chamber Orchestra
• Cleveland Chamber Symphony
Schelle has received composition grants, awards and commissions from dozens of organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, American Symphony Orchestra League, Welsh Arts Council, Organization of American States, International Percussive Arts Society, American Pianists Association, New York State Arts Council, Great Lakes Arts Alliance, ASCAP Music Foundation, Arts Midwest/Meet The Composer Inc., Hudson Research Institute, Dow Chemical Company, New England Foundation for the Arts and many others. Find out more about Shelle here.
The festival also will feature performances by the following artists and ensembles:
• Permagrin
• William Grubb, guest cellist
• Capital University/Bexley Community Orchestra, under the director of Nicholas J. Perrini
• Symphonic Winds and Wind Symphony, under the direction of Barry E. Kopetz
• Spectrum and Friends, and guitar ensembles, both under the direction of Stan Smith
• percussion ensembles, under the direction of Nate Anders
• Trombone Choir, under the direction of Tom Zugger
• Lisa Jelley, flute
• Charles Wetherbee, violin
• Tony Zilincik, low brass
• Gail Lehto Zugger, clarinet
See the complete NOW MUSIC Festival schedule for Feb. 11-18 here. All events are free and open to the public.