Southwest Chamber Music, based in Pasadena, California, has announced that programming for its 25th season in 2011-12 will include Ten Freedom Summers, a world premiere marking the civil rights movement from 1954 to 1964; a John Cage festival; and a new-music festival comprising commissioned premieres by multiple composers. Wadada Leo Smith’s Ten Freedom Summers—described as a psychological interpretation of events pertinent to the struggle for civil rights— will take place over three evenings in October and will feature Southwest Chamber Music musicians performing with members of the composer’s own Golden Quartet. In March 2012, the ensemble will mark John Cage’s birth centennial with concerts at the Japanese American National Museum, the Pacific Asia Museum, the Pasadena Art Museum, and the Colburn School; works to be performed include One 6 and One 10 for solo violin; a cycle of works comprising Atlas Eclipticalis, Variations IV, and 0’00”; and Lecture on the Weather, inspired by Henry David Thoreau. A new-works festival in May 2012 will feature commissioned works including Unsuk Chin’s Homage to Gyorgy Ligeti, a co-commissioned with the Nieuw Ensemble of Amsterdam and the Germany’s Witten Festival; Charles Wuorinen’s It Happens Like This (co-commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and dedicated to James Levine); Vu Nhat Tan’s The Song of Napalm; Lei Liang’s Falling Blossoms; Hyo-shin Na’s Morning Study; and Gabriela Ortiz’s De animos y quebrantos.
Posted August 31, 2011
