PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A three-day 21st Century Orchestra festival will welcome a Grammy Award-winning orchestra and Providence-based Community MusicWorks to Brown University’s campus for a series of performances, artist presentations and debuts of a range of new music composed by University faculty members and graduate students.
The open-to-the-public festival will highlight the University’s year-old Lindemann Performing Arts Center as a premier site for orchestral performance, technological experimentation and recording.
The festival, which will take place from Oct. 24 to 27 as part of the Brown Arts Institute’s IGNITE series, aims to explore what orchestras mean to individuals and communities in the 21st century. The festival includes ticketed panel discussions and performances, several of which are free to attend.
“Brown has really grown its research focus in orchestral music, and there’s a strong interest, both among the faculty and graduate student body, in writing for orchestra and experimenting with the instrument that is the orchestra,” said festival co-organizer Eric Nathan, a composer and associate professor of music.
The Lindemann’s state-of-the-art capabilities have significantly enhanced the on-campus performance experience for the Brown University Orchestra, for which Nathan is the interim conductor. The space has also welcomed a wide array of other Brown-affiliated musicians and invited guests during its inaugural year.
“The sound in The Lindemann’s main hall is so clear,” Nathan said. “It has a brilliant, crystalline quality to it that is great for the audience to hear the detail of the sound. What’s also critical is that the players on stage can hear each other so well while performing. The level of performance has increased, and it’s a wonderful place to be inspired in.”
With support from the Brown Arts Institute, Nathan organized and curated the festival with fellow composers and Brown music faculty Anthony Cheung, Wang Lu and Butch Rovan.
The festival will kick off at The Lindemann on Thursday, Oct. 24, with a performance by the Grammy Award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project. In an open-rehearsal style event, the orchestra will play five compositions written by Brown graduate students Isaac Barzso, Inga Chinilina, Nicholas Bentz, Sofía Rocha and Adeliia Faizullina. On Friday, Oct. 25, the Boston Modern Orchestra will return to The Lindemann for a concert of new works written by Cheung, Nathan, Rovan and Wang.
Both performances will be professionally recorded, which will make the new orchestral works accessible to students and the general public. The recordings of faculty works will eventually be edited into an album, and the students will be able to use the recordings as part of their professional portfolios.
“Recording is generally a very expensive and difficult thing to do with orchestras, given the immense costs of paying all of the musicians and securing the rights to share it publicly and commercially,” Nathan said. “So there are many orchestral works that never get recorded, and the public does not get to enjoy them beyond live performances.”
During the festival on Oct. 25, Boston College Associate Professor of Music Daniel Callahan will deliver a keynote, titled “Conducting Oneself: Bodies, Identities and Power on the Podium,” in which he will explore the role of the conductor to embody empathy while simultaneously projecting expertise and power.
The festival will conclude on Sunday, Oct. 27, with two events featuring the Providence-based Community MusicWorks. There will be a panel discussion at 1 p.m. with Community MusicWorks Artistic Director Sebastian Ruth and Afa Dworkin, president of the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization, which is dedicated to increasing representation among Black and Latino communities in classical music. The discussion will be followed by a performance by Community MusicWorks’ ensemble in residence, MusicWorks Collective.
Festival events will be held at the Lindemann Performing Arts Center at 144 Angell St. in Providence, and in the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at 154 Angell St. in Providence. Ticket prices for the various events range from free to $15.