The annual
MusicNOW festival continues to bring musical experimentation and dialogue to Cincinnati, and its 11th version this weekend will once again partner with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. MusicNOW founder and Cincinnati native Bryce Dessner (
The National) and CSO Musical Director Louis Langree have planned three nights of new music and classics like you’ve never heard them before.
“It’s truly a unique CSO experience,” says Meghan Berneking, the Symphony’s Director of Communications. “From the flip side, these composers now have at their disposal 90 orchestra musicians excited to play their music.”
For the CSO, the three-day festival — two nights of which center around the CSO and Music Hall — is a chance to live up to one of its core values of being a place for musical experimentation. For Dessner, MusicNOW is an annual return to his home town and an opportunity to compose and play music in a totally different way.
“This is music that people don’t get to hear every day,” Berneking says. “Bryce talks a lot about how Cincinnati is really the only place MusicNOW could happen.”
The experimentation of the festival will begin Friday, March 18, with a night filled with contemporary music by composers who are still writing. The night focuses on the world-renowned
Kronos Quartet in conversation with the full orchestra, the music inspired by themes ranging from historical immigration to 9/11. Joining Kronos, CSO and Dessner will be MacArthur Genius Fellow and new host of
Prairie Home Companion Chris Thile, performing his own works for mandolin.
The collaborations and conversations continue into the second night of music Saturday, March 19, opening with a piece by 20th-century Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski followed by Dessner's response to it. Adding to the conversation is a piece by composer Terry Riley inspired by the first Gulf War. The night will end on a more uplifting note with Magnus Lindberg’s
Feria, or “Festival.”
MusicNOW will continue with the
Punch Brothers (one of Thile’s side projects) at Cincinnati Masonic Center downtown on Sunday night, March 20.
Berneking encourages MusicNOW audiences for any of the nights of the festival to come with an open mind, pointing out that even Beethoven’s 5th Symphony was once new to listeners. She also says there might be more surprises in the works for the festival.
“We didn’t even announce what’s on the program until about two months ago,” she says. “That’s how new it is.”
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