Schedule:

February 18, 2025

8:30 p.m: Frequency Festival: McCowen and Greenstone, Varo Quartet and - Nois    

John McCowen and Madison Greenstone: Mundanas
For weeks leading up to the Fagradalsfjall volcanic eruption of March 2021, there was a persistent pulse of earthquakes near John McCowen’s home in Reykjavík, Iceland—sometimes only minutes apart. At first, from silence, there would appear an incredibly low, sine-like tone. As this tone began to crescendo, it would be accompanied by an ever-increasing vibration. These vibrations would then become visceral as the building shook. With the epicenter located a 30 minute drive from Reykjavík, one could visualize the initial grinding of tectonic plates and the subsequent, earth-rattling waves emanating from the volcanic center. For John, feeling these rolling vibrations unconsciously shaped the music of Mundanas VII-XI.

The parallels between this experience and the music are unambiguous - two contrabass clarinets emanating low, sine-like tones with shifting harmonics activated by these rumbling swells. When these two contrabass clarinets are combined, there emerges a wave of combinatorial frequencies - an acoustic stream of sound almost tactile. All this said, there exists an orchestra of sound waiting to be observed as the listener goes deeper. This suite of new compositions exhibits John McCowen and Madison Greenstone at a height of ensemble entanglement - operating as a singular organism. The record has a unified aura from beginning to end - variations on a theme - silence to culmination and back. The music is more akin to the rolling waves of tectonic activity than to McCowen’s more strident works. This showcases the performers ability to remain placid with an ability to shimmer and sonically multiply at a moment’s notice.

Varo String Quartet and - Nois play Poetics of Space Translation Symmetry  by Noah Jenkins
Chicago contemporary music powerhouses - Nois and Varo String Quartet come together for the first time for the world premiere of Poetics of Space Translation Symmetry by Chicago composer Noah Jenkins. The 45-minute octet features a spatial arrangement with the strings centered in the performance space and the saxophones posted around the perimeter. Tones, players, and quartets sound individually and fuse together into composites, melodic shapes blur into vertical harmony, and just-intonation harmonies are animated as their constituent tones take shape in spatiotemporal patterns.

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February 19, 2025

8:30 p.m: Frequency Festival: Mabel Kwan and Beyond This Point    

Beyond This Point
Beyond This Point presents two premieres from composers/multimedia artists David Bird and Julie Zhu. Each new work dives either feet-first or head-first into the increasingly entangled relationship between biological and computational "minds"– at once postulating, declaring, admonishing, and beseeching what the hell is going on and what the hell will happen next.

Amanuensis - Julie Zhu (b. 1990) - 25'
For 2 performers, amplified plywood board, live video, and live electronics
Amanuensis sees 2 performers seated across from each other at a 4' x 4' plywood board, amplified with 4 contact microphones. In turns, the board becomes a canvas, a confessional, a ChatGPT prompt, a battlefield– but above all, a medium through which we try desperately to guess the 3D future in a hopelessly 2D reality.

Hypochondriac - David Bird (b. 1990) - 25'
For 2 performers, live electronics, and interactive systems
Hypochondriac begins as a sort of autopsy between a mortician/scientist/end user, and a corpse/automaton/product. As the piece unfolds, the "patient" on the table evolves from an inanimate object to a subservient machine to a sentient and perhaps omnipotent being.

Mabel Kwan
Pianist Mabel Kwan performs solo piano works by Isang Yun, Andile Khumalo, Lei Liang, Tania Leon, and Sarah Kirkland Snider.
A meditation on silence, memory, resilience, being.

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February 20, 2025

8:30 p.m: Frequency Festival: Natural Information Society and Zosha Warpeha    

Joshua Abrams and the Natural Information Society Community Ensemble
Natural Information Society (NIS) represents a convergence of musicians and artists to create sonic harbor, meditative space and kinetic momentum music. Realizing compositions by composer Joshua Abrams, the group's core quartet lineup includes Abrams, Lisa Alvarado, Mikel Patrick Avery and Jason Stein.  Working the seams between minimalism, jazz and experimental practice, the group has become a reference for contemporary non-idiomatic creative music. The band has recorded 7 albums for eremite records, collaborations with ******* Bajas for Drag City Records and toured extensively in North America, Europe and Brazil.  In 2021 Abrams formed an expanded version of NIS called the Natural Information Society Community Ensemble, adding more winds and Chicago tenor saxophone legend Ari Brown to the group as heard on 2023's Since Time Is Gravity.  For the Frequency Festival Abrams will reconvene the NIS Community Ensemble to premiere new music written for the ensemble.  The lineup for the festival includes Joshua Abrams, Lisa Alvarado, Josh Berman, Ari Brown, Ben Lamar Gay, Nick Mazzarella, Jason Stein and Mai Sugimoto.

Zosha Warpeha
Zosha Warpeha is a Brooklyn-based composer-performer working in a meditative space at the intersection of contemporary improvisation and folk traditions. She explores transformations of time and tonality on Hardanger d’amore, a sympathetic-stringed relative of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, often layered delicately with her own voice. Her current solo work is informed by the cyclical forms, rhythmic elasticity, and the physical momentum of Nordic folk music. Warpeha’s solo debut silver dawn (Relative Pitch Records, 2024) has been lauded as a "breathtaking dialogue between Warpeha and her instrument" (I Care if You Listen), her compositional process "subverting tradition not as a political act, but as a point of departure" (Peter Margasak). She is a 2025 Artist-in-Residence at ISSUE Project Room and her work has also been supported by the US-Norway Fulbright Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

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February 21, 2025

8:30 p.m: Frequency Festival: Ian Antonio: Jürg Frey and Mivos Quartet    

Mivos Quartet
The Mivos Quartet is devoted to performing works of contemporary composers and presenting diverse new music to international audiences. The quartet, founded in 2008, commissions and premieres new repertoire for string quartet, and is dedicated to creative collaborations with a wide variety of artists. Mivos maintains an active international performance schedule, with regular appearances as ensemble-in-residence at summer festivals. Mivos takes part in many educational residencies at universities and summer festivals, working with young performers and composers to develop their craft, technical skis and artistic expression. The quartet also runs two composition prizes to help discover and promote emerging composers in the US and abroad. Beyond these activities, Mivos collaborates regularly with guest artists, presents multimedia projects, and performs improvised music.

Olivia De Prato and Maya Bennardo, violins, Victor Lowrie Tafoya, viola, and Nathan Watts, cello
Ambrose Akinmusire: May Our Centers Hold (2023) 12’
Ingrid Laubrock,  Ashes (2022) 15’
Alex Mincek, Pendulum XI: "Strato" for electric guitar and string quartet (2021) 25′
With special guest Nadav Lev, electric guitar

Ian Antonio plays Jürg Frey
Ian Antonio is a percussionist who specializes in the creation, development, and realization of new and recent musical works. He is a co-director of the composer/performer collective Wet Ink and the percussion ensemble Talujon, and for many years was also a member of Yarn/Wire and Zs. With these ensembles and others, Ian performs around the world at venues both big and small. His playing can be heard on dozens of albums released by a wide range of record labels. Ian lives in Ypsilanti, MI and teaches percussion at the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre and Dance.

Program:
Glafsered I (2002) by Jürg Frey
Tender Outermost Melodies (2022) by Jürg Frey (world premiere)

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February 23, 2025

8:30 p.m: Frequency Festival: Ensemble Dal Niente    

Ensemble Dal Niente
Dal Niente closes this year’s Frequency Festival with a program centered around two world premieres by two of the ensemble’s favorite composers: Aida Shirazi and Hilda Paredes. Paredes and Shirazi have each written a large-scale new work for voice and ensemble featuring soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw.  The ensemble first worked with Tehran-born Aida Shirazi in 2018, with the workshop and premiere of The Shadow of a Leaf in Water for ensemble and lights. According to Shirazi, her music for solo instruments, voice, ensemble, orchestra, and electronics "mainly focuses on timbre for organizing structures inspired by Persian and English languages and literature."

Dal Niente recorded Hilda Paredes’ concerto for harp and orchestra, Demente Cuerda, in 2021. One of the leading Mexican composers of her generation, Paredes is known for her poetic approach to composition, her technical brilliance, and her deft interweavings of pre- and post-colonial musical lineages. Paredes' new work for Ensemble Dal Niente, entitled Aftaab Meeshavad, features soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw and a 13-person ensemble, conducted by Michael Lewanski. The ensemble will also present the regional premiere of Karola Obermüller's Reflejos Distantes for bass flute, bass clarinet, violin, and cello; and Darlene Castro's Desmoronamiento for flute and electronics, performed by soloist Emma Hospelhorn.

Program ( denotes world premiere):
Hilda Paredes, Aftaab Meeshavad (2025)
Aida Shirazi, New Work (2025)
Darlene Castro, Desmoronamiento (rev. 2024)
Karola Obermüller, Reflejos Distantes (2006)

Performers:
Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano
Emma Hospelhorn, flute
Zach Good, clarinet
Andrew Nogal, oboe
Benjamin Roidl-Ward, bassoon
Matthew Oliphant, horn
Kyle Flens, percussion
Winston Choi, piano
Ben Melsky, harp
Patrick Yim, violin
Ammie Brod, viola
Juan Horie, cello
Mark Buchner, bass
Michael Lewanski, Conductor

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Date: February 18 - 23, 2025

Location:

Constellation
3111 N. Western Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618

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