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Marci Janas, Director of Conservatory Media Relations
440-775-8328 (office); 440-667-2724 (cell); marci.janas@oberlin.edu

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

OBERLIN’S AWARD-WINNING CONTEMPORARY MUSIC ENSEMBLE TO PRESENT WORKS BY FACULTY COMPOSERS AT VENUES IN NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA, AND SAN DIEGO JANUARY 2008

Acclaimed percussionist Steven Schick joins CME in New York and San Diego 

OBERLIN, OHIO (NOVEMBER 27, 2007) — Less than a year after performing to rave reviews in New York City as the house band for the American premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s opera Lost Highway, the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble (CME) returns to Manhattan for the opening leg of a tour that includes two world premieres and a very special guest — percussionist Steven Schick. Conductor Timothy Weiss, Director of Oberlin’s Division of Conducting and Ensembles and Ruth Strickland Gardner Professor of Music, will take the CME through their paces. 
            Oberlin Professor of Composition and Chair of the Department Lewis Nielson is enthusiastic about bringing together what is arguably the country’s finest new music ensemble in higher education with Schick, one of the most famous soloists currently working in contemporary music. “The audiences for these concerts will hear the widest spectrum of the best music being composed in the United States today,” says Nielson. “Every idiom, from conventional instrumental writing to mixed-media, will be on display, and the quality will be undeniable.”
            The concerts, which are sponsored by the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and its Contemporary Music Division, will feature works by composers on the Oberlin faculty. The New York concert will be presented on Sunday, January 27, 2008, at 8 p.m. at Miller Theatre on the campus of Columbia University. Other performances are scheduled for Temple University in Philadelphia on Tuesday, January 29, 2008, at 7:30 p.m. and at the University of California at San Diego on Thursday, January 31, 2008, at 8 p.m. Schick will be featured on the program in New York and in San Diego.
            General admission tickets for the Miller Theatre performance are $5 for students and $20 for the general public and can be purchased by calling Miller Theatre’s box office at 212-854-7799. Miller Theatre is wheelchair accessible and is located on the campus of Columbia University on Broadway at 116th Street, New York, New York.
Information about the performance in Philadelphia is available by calling Temple University at 215-204-6810. The number to call for the San Diego performance is 858-822-3725 at the University of California, San Diego.
            The program includes two world premieres. The first is Immaculata Erotica by Tom Lopez, Associate Professor of Computer Music and Digital Arts and Chairof Oberlin’sTIMARA Department (Technology in Music and Related Arts). His work is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, double bass, percussion, and electronics. Peter Swendsen, another faculty member from Oberlin’s TIMARA Department, has the second world premiere on the bill: Bright Days of Little Sunlight. Swendsen, who is Assistant Professor of TIMARA, scored his work for flute, clarinet, zeta violin, zeta cello, percussion, and electronics.
            Wendell Logan is Professor of African American Music and Chair of Oberlin’s Jazz Studies Department. He is represented on the program by Moments, scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion. Nielson’s Axis (Sandman), for solo percussion, two violins, viola, and two celli, is the final faculty work on the program, which concludes with Brian Ferneyhough’s Bone Alphabet for solo percussion.

 

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