newEar celebrates its sixteenth season of challenging and innovative music-making with Crossings, a series of concerts that explores all manner of encounters, intersections, collisions, crossplay and merging of disparate elements. Whether it is in the variety of ways that some composers have engaged with a challenging new stylistic movement, the influence of the geographical crossroads of Kansas City, the exploration of acoustic space, or an account of how one composer confronted and transformed all of the music that he encountered over a long and productive career, this season promises to be one of our most exciting ever and one you won't want to miss.

Györgi Ligeti's passing in 2006 was a loss to music that was keenly felt around the world. newEar has long desired to do an all-Ligeti program and here it is at last. His music was remarkable: devoid of sentiment, whimsical, bizarre, and utterly astonishing in its continuous discovery of new sounds where there seemed to be none left to be found. His genius was to learn everything from everyone, from Bartok and Brahms to Stockhausen and Steve Reich to Nancarrow's player piano works and the music of African pygmies. Our concert covers much of the vast breadth of his music, including the early Six Bagatelles for woodwind quintet, Poéme Symphonique for 100 metronomes, the chamber version of his Cello Concerto and the amazing Horn Trio.

Tickets for are $20 and $8 for students with ID. For ticket information call the Central Ticket Office at 816.235.6222 or toll-free at 1.888.286.4849.

Financial assistance for newEar has been provided by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, DST Systems, Inc., the Carolyn L. Hart Memorial Trust and the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.