HAYS – The fourth annual New Music Festival, presented by Fort Hays State University’s Department of Music and Theatre, will be held Friday and Saturday, Nov. 12-13.
Comprised of FHSU music faculty who share a passion for the music of living composers, the New Music Ensemble commissions composers to bring new and exciting works to Hays. These composers in residence work with FHSU composition students and present a lecture to faculty, students, and community members. They also rehearse with the ensemble on a brand-new work to premiere at the festival.
“It’s exciting to have a work written specifically for our ensemble, and our audience members will be the first people in the world to hear it,” said Dr. Kristin Pisano, associate professor of music and director of the New Music Festival at FHSU.
Pisano said that past works commissioned by FHSU have since been performed at other universities and national conferences, bringing recognition to Fort Hays State and its music department.
This year’s composer in residence will be Dr. Stephen Andrew Taylor, a professor of composition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has composed Piranesi for flute and piano, his new work that will be premiered at the festival’s evening concert.
The culminating event of the festival, “An Evening of the Music of Dr. Stephen Andrew Taylor,” will begin at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in Sheridan Hall’s Beach/Schmidt Performing Arts Center. A reception will follow in the lobby. Tickets are free to the public and will be available at the door or beforehand at the Hays Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, 2700 Vine.
The concert will feature other works by Taylor, including two works for viola and electronics, a duo for flute and clarinet, and a video installation set to the scenario “the spirit of the universe takes a journey.” Taylor will also perform an original piano composition.
Taylor composes music that explores boundaries between art and science. One work on the evening program is Solaria, a video created in collaboration with physicist Smitha Vishveshwara, who studies black holes.
Pisano said that Vishveshwara is passionate about the connections between science and art and that she and Taylor came up with this scenario “the spirit of the solar system takes a journey.”
“The 2021 New Music Festival will open the musical ears of the Hays community and provide the audience with a uniquely different musical experience,” Pisano said.
In addition to the concert, Taylor will give a lecture at 2:30 p.m. Friday in the university’s Malloy Hall 115. The lecture is free and open to the public.
