Ensembles

2024-2025 Boston University Center for New Music Season Announced

The season includes German rising star Sarah Nemtsov as resident composer; a concert at the ICA/Boston looking back at Pierre Boulez’s profound influence on the musical world 100 years after his birth, featuring Sound Icon; and a residency with the TAK Ensemble.

For three decades, the BU Center for New Music has bridged the gap between cutting-edge artists and Boston University music students. Students work closely with the season’s resident composer, learning about the artist’s works, presenting their own music to these major artists, and forming long-lasting connections.

This year, BU students will be engaging with one of the biggest rising stars in Europe in what will be her first extended residency and showcase in the United States, Sarah Nemtsov. Nemtsov is an oboist and recorder player as well as a composer who has taken the European concert and opera worlds by storm, winning prizes and being performed by leading ensembles, orchestras, and opera houses. She is currently a professor of composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Her catalog of more than 150 compositions moves between a wide variety of genres – from instrumental solo to orchestra, opera, electronic music or film. In her unique musical language, she combines different influences, from Renaissance and baroque music to jazz and rock. The intensity of her music is also created through the reference to other arts and extra-musical content, including political and social issues. Her residency will culminate in a concert at the CFA Concert Hall on January 31, 2025, featuring Boston’s Sound Icon conducted by Jeffrey Means.

This season also features a tribute concert at the ICA/Boston that will honor Pierre Boulez at 100 by highlighting his transformation from radical critic to builder of new stronger communities in the musical world. The program will feature a seminal work from his early period,  Le marteau sans maître, and one from his late period, Dérive 2, performed by Boston’s New Music Sinfonietta Sound Icon conducted by Jeffrey Means.

The 2024-2025 BU Center for New Music season concludes with a residency of the TAK Ensemble culminating in a concert at CFA’s Marshall Room featuring works written by BU students composers specially for TAK and rehearsed and workshopped throughout the season. Regarded as “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen), TAK delivers energetic performances “that combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” (The WIRE), and “impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity” (New Sounds, WQXR). 

“This season is very special as we both mark the now long history of new music with a look back at the towering figure of Pierre Boulez and look to the future with the first major US events featuring the amazing work of Sarah Nemtsov,” says Joshua Fineberg, director of the BU Center for New Music and professor of music, composition and music theory in BU School of Music. “We are also thrilled to collaborate again with TAK Ensemble and our long-time partner Sound Icon. Nemstov has started to have an enormous impact in the European new music scene and we are so excited to be able to bring her to the US. We are thrilled for our students to get to work with her closely and see her engaged vision for new music in the 21^st century.”

Composer Residency

Sarah Nemstsov, Composer in Residence

January 23 – February 1, 2025

Each year, the BU Center for New Music hosts a major figure from the world of contemporary music for an extended residency. This season celebrates German composer Sarah Nemtsov, considered one of the fastest-rising composers of her generation. Her catalog with more than 150 compositions ranges from instrumental solo to orchestra, opera, electronic music, or film. In 2021, she was elected as a member of the Saxon Academy of Arts, as well as to the Berlin Academy of Arts (Akademie der Künste Berlin). In 2022, two portrait festivals were dedicated to her work: Les Amplitudes in Switzerland and w e i t – Weingarten in South Germany.

From 2022 through 2023, Nemtsov was composer in focus at the Staatstheater Saarland. Her newest opera OPHELIA (2020-2021) – with a libretto by Mirko Bonné – was premiered in May 2023 at Saarländisches Staatstheater – “a shocking and overwhelming music theatre, full of ideas and allusions – completely transcending borders“ (Opernwelt). Her tetralogy TZIMTZUM for four soloists and orchestra had its premiere in November 2023 with the WDR orchestra and Nikel ensemble at Festival Essen NOW! Currently, she is working on a new opera: WE (after E. Zamyatin), a world premiere in 2026 at the Dortmund Opera House.

Nemtsov will be in residence and on the BU campus from January 23- February 1, 2025. Her visit will include masterclasses, lessons, and forum presentations. The culmination of Nemtsov’s residency will be a concert built around her work on January 31, 2025, at 8pm in the CFA Concert Hall.

Events

Sarah Nemtsov at the BU Composer’s Forum

Friday, January 24, 2025 • 9:30 – 10:45am • BU Electronic Music Studio Room B38 • 855 Commonwealth Ave

Sarah Nemstov Concert at CFA Concert Hall

Friday, January 31, 2025 • 8pm • CFA Concert Hall • 855 Commonwealth Ave

Boston-based Sound Icon performs works of Sarah Nemtsov, including a piece of recently deceased German master composer Wolfgang Rihm, Natasha Diehls, and Thomas Meadowcroft. The concert is free and open to the general public.

Special Event

Pierre Boulez Fold by Fold: the radical who rebuilt the musical world

January 24, 2025 • 8pm • ICA/Boston

BU Center for New Music is proudly producing a concert that will honor Pierre Boulez at 100 by highlighting his transformation from radical critic to builder of new stronger communities in the musical world. Over his career, he transformed the ways that new music is written and performed. However, his legacy goes deeper through his building of a new set of institutions and communities to replace those he spent his youth critiquing. The program will feature a seminal work from his early period,  Le marteau sans maître, and one from his late period, Dérive 2, performed by Boston’s New Music Sinfonietta Sound Icon conducted by Jeffrey Means.

The concert is $15 for BU students and ICA/Boston members and $25 for general admission.

tickets

Ensemble Residency

TAK Ensemble residency and concert

March 4-5, 2025

New York’s TAK Ensemble will work with BU student composers throughout the season, leading to a residency and concert on March 4-5, 2025. Founded on the principles of curiosity, change, and caring communication, TAK is dedicated to the commissioning of new works and direct collaboration with composers and other artists and they have premiered hundreds of works to date. The quintet has released seven albums to critical acclaim; recent records have been described as “sublime art… a masterpiece,” (AnEarful), and “one of the most distinct and eclectic releases of the year” (I Care If You Listen). Their recorded output fosters a “deep sense of connection and communication” (Bandcamp Daily), and features collaborations with Mario Diaz de Leon, Taylor Brook, Erin Gee, Brandon López, Ann Cleare, Tyshawn Sorey, Natacha Diels, Scott L. Miller, David Bird, and Ashkan Behzadi.

Their most recent release, Love, Crystal and Stone brought together composer Ashkan Behzadi, scholar Saharnaz Samaienejad, painter Mehrdad Jafari, and design-house Sonnenzimmer to fuse poetry, visual art, original essays, and music into an experience-based hybrid publication. The ensemble’s 2019 album Oor launched their in-house media label, TAK editions, that aims to support recorded musical endeavors from across the experimental music communities, highlighting direct conversations with artists through the TAK editions Podcast. Recent TAK editions releases have included those of Ensemble Interactivo de La Habana, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Nina Dante + Bethany Younge, and several of TAK’s own recordings

Events

TAK Ensemble at the BU Composer’s Forum

Tuesday, March 4, 2025 • 9:30 – 10:45am • BU Electronic Music Studio Room B38 • 855 Commonwealth Ave

TAK Ensemble Performs in CFA Marshall Room

Wednesday, March 5, 2025 • 8pm • CFA Marshall Room • 855 Commonwealth Ave

TAK Ensemble plays a program of world premieres by BU student composers. The event is free and open to the public.

STUDENT WORK READINGS

BU Center for New Music provides music students with opportunities to work on music with contemporary music groups based in or out of Boston, allowing them to learn different contemporary techniques beyond the classroom. This season, Sound Icon will be performing a public concert of BU student works.

Sound Icon Reading of Student Works

Sunday, February 9, 2025 • 7-10pm • CFA Concert Hall

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