Composer Showcases

Lakeshore Rush premieres new works by Illinois composers. Natasha Bogojevic writes a meditation on the effects of gun violence. Xavier Beteta weaves songs in an ancient Mayan language.  Angel Bat Dawid writes about the Catacombs. Ethan Dymit’s “Child’s Play” uses nursery rhymes as a starting point.

Paul Novak’s youth is an exploration of ghost stories as an inherently queer genre, imagining haunting as a metaphor for queer trauma. Liza Sobel Crane's Worth demonstrates how handling hardships creates character. Blair Boyd writes about being apart from the place you know. Eric Malmquist sets Illinois Poet Laureate Mark Turcotte's "Hawk Hour.” Asher Sizemore writes Everyone Dies in the Gender Reveal Apocalypse. Paradoxical Ode, from Andrei Skorobogatykh, is a poem about science, universe and death. Bliss, from Bradley Robin transforms from wanting to having and from innocence to wisdom, through a lyrical and musical journey inspired by Sondheim, Scriabin, Salvador Dali, and Santa Claus.

KAIA String Quartet premieres new works by Illinois composers. Rosśa Crean writes music for the tender moments between collapse and beginning again. Lee Kesselman’s musical meditation is a search for the personal side of prayer. Justin Weiss writes an exploration of our relationship with nature, time, and memory. Graham Meyer uses Sappho's poetic fragments, both in words and wordless song.

Quintet Attacca is a wind quintet dedicated to dynamic, engaging performances. For this concert, they are joined by Chiemerie Obianom, baritone, Jordy Vargas and Karlos Piñero-Mercado, tenors, Katherine Peterson, soprano, and Quinn Middleman, mezzo-soprano in five new works. John Dorhauer’s work offers a commentary on our modern approach to executive privilege and the roles and responsibilities of our highest leaders by juxtaposing text segments of the Magna Carta with Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in Trump v. United States. Shane Cook’s work, Bloom, will use nature imagery as an analogy for how we grow into identities at points in our lives, while the instruments provide a colorful, blossoming backdrop that exemplifies the idea of growing/blooming. Marybeth Kurnat’s Birdsong uses text based on an anonymous child's poem written during the Holocaust.  Gillian Rae Perry’s work, inspired by the passing of her father, explores themes of grief as part of a shared human experience. Alex Taylor’s if you is a musical setting of the first part of H.D’s long poem Eurydice, a powerful retelling of the “Orpheus myth” from the perspective of Eurydice.