nienteForte is excited and proud to announce our featured performers and ensembles for Season 15. All events are free and open to the public (donations are welcome).
Maya Bennardo
Maya Bennardo (she/her) is an active performer and composer living in Stockholm, Sweden. Maya is interested in opening the dialogue and blurring the boundaries between composers and performers, and is devoted to performing music of the present. She is a founding member of the violin/viola duo andPlay, described by I Care If You Listen as “enthusiastic champions for new music and collaboration.” She is a member of the internationally acclaimed Mivos Quartet and also performs new and traditional repertoire for violin and piano with pianist Karl Larson in their Bennardo-Larson Duo.
Maya recently released her first solo record, ‘four strings’ with music by Eva-Maria Houben and Kristofer Svensson which was released on the kuyin label, September 2022 (named as one of The Best of Contemporary Classical 2022 on Bandcamp and one of Steve Smith’s 22 for ‘22). The album is a continuation of Bennardo’s work exploring sonic fragility and temporal stasis on the violin.
Program:
Tulane University Dixon Annex
Patterns of Plants (1996-2020) by Mamoru Fujieda
dormant gardens ia. (2023) by Maya Bennardo
Så vill jag glömma (2023) by Kristofer Svensson
aria (2023) by Linda Catlin Smith
October 9-11th 2024
Roberta Michel
Brooklyn-based flutist Roberta Michel is dedicated to the music of our time. She has commissioned and premiered hundreds of new works and has worked with many notable composers of our day. Roberta is the flutist and Co-Director of Wavefield Ensemble and is a member of PinkNoise and Duo RoMi.
Originally from Maine, Roberta attended the University of Colorado at Boulder and SUNY-Purchase College and has studied with Robert Dick, Tara O’Connor, Alexa Still, and Jean Rosenblum. She holds a doctorate in music performance from the City University of New York Graduate Center and is a winner of the NFA Graduate Research Competition for her dissertation on the flute music of Salvatore Sciarrino.
January 30-February 1st 2025
Tulane University Dixon Annex
Fidan Aghayeva-Edler
Fidan Aghayeva-Edler is a pianist based in Berlin, Germany, currently focused on performance of women composers. She is active in Berlin’s contemporary music scene and works closely with composers. Her innovative work is supported by various grants and scholarships from Musikfonds Berlin, Deutsche Orchester-Stiftung, Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, Fonds Darstellende Künste, GVL-Stipendium, the Norwegian Quota Scholarship, the Dwight and Ursula Mamlok Foundation, Cesko-Nemecky fond budoucnosti, inm.
During the corona pandemic, she carried out various projects and developed new concert formats, such as livestream concerts with numerous world premieres, shop window concerts and virtual duo improvisations. Her actual project for 2024 is #365daysofperformance which includes a daily livestreamed performance of solo piano pieces, exclusively by female and forgotten composers. In August 2024 she conducted a one-woman 24-hour piano performance with music exclusively by women-composers.
Program:
Tulane University Dixon Annex
Processional (2018) by Hannah Kendall
10 Miniatures (2009) by Helen Grime
Jasmine Petals (1998) by Rahilia Hasanova
Dorothea (2015/2024) by Kari Besharse Neonympha
(from Four Seasons) (2009) by Liza Lim Winter
Lacuna (2020) by Wang Lu
Johannesburg Etude 2 (2015) by Clare Loveday
fardanceCLOSE (2012/rev.2020) by Chaya Czernowin
March 7th 2025
Bergamot Quartet
Bergamot Quartet is fueled by a passion for exploring and advocating for the music of living composers, continually expanding the limits of the string quartet’s rich tradition in western classical music. With a priority given to music by women, they aim to place this new, genre-bending music in meaningful dialogue with the histories that precede it with creative programming, community-oriented audience building, and frequent commissioning.
Bergamot Quartet is Ledah Finck and Sarah Thomas, violins; Amy Tan, viola; and Irène Han, cello. Founded at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore in 2016, Bergamot Quartet is based in New York City and was the Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the Mannes School of Music for 2020-2022.
March 12-14th 2025
New Marigny Theater/Tulane University Dixon Annex
nienteForte Quintet
Stay tuned for more information about our quintet!
May 2025