During the spring of 2015, Drs. Kristin Ditlow and Karola Obermüller began planning the first installments of a contemporary music exchange. This exchange would bring American contemporary music to Germany, and likewise sponsor performances of contemporary German music in New Mexico.
The project quickly expanded to include Professors Eric Lau and Scott Ney, with performances in Nürnberg and Darmstadt and master classes in Würzburg.
darabq1summer2015 from Kristin Ditlow on Vimeo.
The program included compositions by Volker Blumenthaler, professor for composition and theory at Nuremberg Hochschule für Musik, Cord Meijering, director of Akademie für Tonkunst, Darmstadt; UNM Music Faculty Karola Obermüller, Jose-Luis Hurtado, Peter Gilbert, and Richard Hermann; and noted composers Olivier Messiaen, Lori Laitman, Milton Babbitt, and James Beale.
The Nürnberg performance was hosted by Monika Teepe and Volker Blumenthaler while the Würzburg Hochschule für Musik hosted master classes for percussion and saxophone. The Akademie für Tonkunst, Darmstadt, was the host for the Darmstadt solo “klavierabend.”
Future performances and exchanges are being planned for the coming season.
Hearing Heat: An Anthropocene Acoustemology
Bruno Latour argues that even if poisoned, the anthropocene is a deep gift to human research, inciting new approaches to environmental responsibility. Taking up Latour’s challenge through acoustemology, the study of sound as a way of knowing, this talk engages histories of hearing heat that affectively entangle cicadas and humans in Papua New Guinea, Japan, and Greece.
Music from the Americas presents Ensemble Vertebrae
Music from the Americas presents “New Music from Mexico,” featuring world premieres by Juan José Bárcenas, David Hernández-Ramos, José-Luis Hurtado, Victor Ibarra and Rodrigo Valdez-Hermoso. Works will be performed by the Ensemble Vertebrae featuring Oliva Abreu, flute, Ana Paolina Hasslacher, piano and Camille Emaille, percussion.
The Enchantment Brass releases first album!
The Enchantment Brass, the brass ensemble-in-residence at the University of New Mexico, has released their debut recording, A Brass Menagerie: The Music of John Cheetham, on all digital formats.