If you can hear it elsewhere in Kansas City (or the region), newEar isn't interested in doing it. If you are looking for the novel (not simply for novelty's sake), but to S-T-R-E-T-C-H your conceptions about art/music/sound, you won't want to miss a single one of newEar's programs!

"... (a) sense of experimentalism that has made them unique in Kansas City for over a decade."

— Paul Horsley, Kansas City Star

Season

newEar Concerts 2007-2008

Season 15

Hemispheric Sound Travels

Concert 4: Pacific Rim
Saturday, April 26, 2008, 8 p.m.
All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church

newEar welcomes guest artist Jin Hi Kim. Acclaimed as both a virtuosic komungo (Korean fourth century fretted board zither) performer and composer, newEar will premiere her work commissioned for the concert, featuring the composer on komungo. We also welcome back two founding members of newEar, Pat Conway and Jeffrey Ruckman, and Gamelan Genta Kasturi to help us celebrate the close of our 15th season with two new compositions written for gamelan and newEar.

Concert 3: Three English Gentlemen
Friday, February 1, 2008, 8 p.m.
All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church

One composer is hailed as the next Benjamin Britten, the other is the youngest composer to have ever had a retrospective by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the third composer has been called one of the most gifted composers of his generation. Three English Gentlemen celebrates the chamber music of British heavy hitters Thomas Adès, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Harrison Birtwistle. On the program are two early pieces by Adès: Five Eliot Landscapes (1990), a song cycle for soprano and piano, which presents Adès' first opus written at the age of seventeen and Still Sorrowing for solo piano written in 1991. newEar will also feature two recent chamber works by Mark-Anthony Turnage, the piano trio A Fast Stomp (2004) and Two Memorials (1995-2000) for soprano saxophone. Also on the program is Harrison Birtwistle's epic The Axe Manual (2000) for piano and percussion, commissioned and premiered by world–renowned performers Emanuel Ax and Evelyn Glennie.

Concert 2: Climbing Parnassus
Friday, November 2, 2007, 8 p.m.
All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church

The year 2008 marks the 100th birthday of iconic American composer Elliott Carter. newEar celebrates this momentous event with Carter's song cycle Tempo e Tempi written in 1999 for soprano, oboe, clarinet, violin and piano. Also on the program: James Mobberley's Vox Inhumana (2003), inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, Unexpected Things (2006) for violin, piano and tape by Daniel Weymouth, October Sequences (2003), a multi-media work by David D. McIntire, and the world premiere of Ingrid Stölzel's piano trio The Road is All (2007).

Concert 1: Sounds of the Northwest Hemisphere
Saturday, September 22, 2007, 8 p.m.
All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church

newEar opens its 15th season celebration with Robert Xavier Rodriguez's spirited Tango (1985) for tenor, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, piano and accordion. This audience favorite, first heard in Kansas City in newEar's inaugural season, is based on news clippings of the tango craze that swept Europe and the United States in 1913-14. Quotations from Beethoven to Brahms can be heard throughout the work, all colored by the vibrant rhythm of the tango. Also on the program are works by Mexican composers Armando Luna and Federico J. Garcia Castells, and Canadian composer Michael Bushnell.