Category: other

Pedazos intermitentes de un lugar ya fragmentado (Intermittent Fragments of a Fractured Place) is a piece inspired by attempts at reconstructing memories connected to specific places and people. The piece is part of a series of pieces I’ve been writing recently which use field recordings taken from my trips to visit family and friends in Puerto Rico. It reflects on the construction of identity when attempting to create a sense of belonging in two places simultaneously as well as in the complexities that come with it. 

Commissioned by Arizona Friends of Chamber Music for Hub New Music’s 10th Anniversary. Sponsored by Boyer Rickel.

This work is held in exclusivity until June 1, 2025.

angelicanegron.com

In 2015 I composed the first version of Lines of acid dreams, however, I felt I could not find the proper ways to explore and materialize my conceptual framework. When the Hub folks contacted me interested in that piece at the beginning of 2022, I knew I could finally revive my timbral, folding, floating textural ideas. To be clear, the piece is not a programmatic journey of acid dreams. The “acid dreams” are, in fact, daily realities. 

Musically speaking, nothing stayed from the original but the title. 

Lines of acid dreams gravities within and without time. However, as we cannot separate time from space, the textures were imagined as different spaces or locations. At the same time, the textures/spaces are also in a constant sense of temporal transition. Similarly, the timbral counterpoint strives to create vocal sounds and unison-like moments in a 3D harmonic space.

And additionally, the four instruments playing almost entirely from beginning to end is a metaphor for twirling infinity lines, lines that intercut, contradict, and feedback mutually. 

Lines of acid dreams is dedicated to Hub New Music.

Commissioned by Hub New Music

jamesdiaz.co

What if We’re Beautiful is an experiment in musical gift-craft. I don’t knit or crochet, but even so, I imagine these movements as something akin to handknit musical objects woven from modest sonic threads, each made with a particular recipient in mind. And although there are countless fine examples of composers making imagistic portraits or reflective dedications, I’ve aimed for something a little different here – each piece feels to be less portraiture of any particular person and more as an opportunity to make something enjoyable for a few folks I hold very dear. In doing so, it’s my hope that others who hear and play this piece – including my friends in Hub New Music – also find something meaningful, too. 

To be sure, the gifts offered in this piece are themselves the refraction of the countless and intangible gifts of queer (and queer-adjacent) friendship and joy I have received from the band of fellow travelers acknowledged in these movement titles. And although I didn’t immediately set out to write a piece about queer joy, that’s basically what happened here anyway; as the piece came together, it became increasingly clear to me that it’s also an appreciation of the boisterous, delicate, wacky, campy, and sorrowful joy that we can offer to one another.

Commissioned by Hub New Music.

danielthomasdavis.com

I have loved New Orleans since the first moment I got there. Throughout the city there resides the palpable energy of both the living and the dead. Last time I was there, I took a walking tour and discovered some pretty spooky local stories about violence, ghosts, fires, and Voodoo. 

I also learned about Marie Laveau and the services she provided: she was a dedicated practitioner of Voodoo, healer, herbalist, and entrepreneur. Laveau was also known as a prominent female religious leader and community activist. 

My narrative for this piece explores a haunting, finding a way to be healed, and an “exorcism” of sorts – a pattern that can be found in many stories about New Orleans. The work also serves as a metaphor for the patterns that we keep subconsciously replaying in our own lives, and the hope that we can love ourselves enough to finally conquer the demons that haunt us. 

My deepest thanks to Hub New Music for asking me to write this work in honor of their 10th anniversary.

Commissioned by Hub New Music with additional support from the Cheswatyr Foundation

This work is held in exclusivity until June 1, 2025.

jessicameyermusic.com

Capriccio began as a response to the work of Hans Hofmann, the influential German-American artist and teacher. Hofmann’s best-known work is abstract, with great slabs of paint of simple shapes and lines that seldom represent anything directly, and the finest of these paintings are charged with intense emotion that is difficult to describe. Hofmann was clearly aware of the expressivity in his abstract art, giving his paintings evocative titles that demonstrate a poetic sensibility I found as irresistible as the images themselves. As much as I responded to Hofmann’s visual art when composing Capriccio, I also responded to these titles; I began to think of them as verbal frames to my musical canvas. 

Capriccio is in three movements, borrowing their titles from Hofmann’s paintings. The first movement, Lonely Journey, begins as a ponderous funeral march and is transformed as it traverses an imagined musical landscape. The second movement, Pénombres du Soir (Evening Twilight), is, like Hofmann’s painting, all about transitions between states. It begins with a shimmering, fragile texture and a sort of grotesque aria before transitioning into a scherzo – a flight of fancy that could have arisen in the space between waking and sleeping. The final movement, Bacchanale-Phantasmagoria, takes its title from two paintings. The Bacchanale is a scene of wild revelry, loosely drawn from Balkan dance music. The music gets wilder and wilder leading to the brief Phantasmagoria that concludes the piece; in the final moments the music becomes a fever dream of all the images in the piece, finally collapsing into ecstatic exhaustion.

Capriccio was commissioned by Hub New Music and Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA) in celebration of the museum’s Han Hofmann Exhibition “The Nature of Abstraction.”

michaelippolito.com

Since our organization’s founding in 2013, Hub has maintained an unyielding dedication to building a repertoire that is uniquely ours. With our instrumentation being both non-traditional and full of untapped artistic potential, it was clear from the onset that commissioning music would be the lifeblood of what we do.

Being active commissioners of new music has also fostered a creative community we cherish deeply. Over the years, the composers with whom we collaborate have become close colleagues and friends. Our artistic process forges relationships built on mutual trust, willingness to explore uncharted territory, and a desire to imagine something special to that time and place. The energy in that process is indescribable.

Creating a body of music that reflects the world we collectively inhabit is also a high priority in Hub. For us that means building a lexicon that transcends borders imposed by genre. It means curating large projects in which programmed works converse with one another around a central theme, like friends at a dinner party. It means creating a repertoire in which all voices are heard and valued equally.

For our tenth anniversary, we’ve asked an esteemed cohort of composers to usher Hub into our second decade. These composers offer us the opportunity to further push the envelope of our creativity, and build an ever larger community around the work we love. We’re beyond thrilled to celebrate our tenth birthday party in this way, and can’t wait to have you there.

hubnewmusic.org

nienteForte would like to give heartfelt thanks to our Season 13 donors and sponsors. We would also like to give acknowledge the following people and organizations who have offered their time and resources to make this season possible:

• Hotel Peter and Paul
• Kappa Kappa Psi Rho Chapter
• Tulane University’s Music and Science Technology Program
• Versipel New Music