A Brief History of New Music
The San Diego Symphony’s annual January Festival returns in its fourth year entitled, Hearing the Future. Throughout the festival, which runs January 9 - 27, the organization explores and celebrates the power of music and art to give voice to the evolution and revolutions in the world at large. The festival, curated by composer-conductor Matthew Aucoin (b.1990), will shine a spotlight on the music being made today – from composers and performers who are still in high school, to a 90-year-old jazz master. The festival will also explore the way music from the past — from Haydn, Beethoven and Berlioz to the creators of African-American spirituals — engaged with the most urgent issues of their time.
A Brief History of New Music, presented by the San Diego Symphony: All music was “new music” once; plenty of now-familiar pieces once seemed startling and strange (and if we listen deeply, they can still sound startling and strange!). This chamber concert brings together four pieces written across nearly 250 years: first, one of Haydn’s early string quartets, through which he breathed new life into string quartet form; next, Schoenberg’s passionate early work Transfigured Night; John Adams’s jubilant Shaker Loops, a piece that gathers the joyous energy of Minimalism into an ecstatic dance; and finally, the meditative Its Own Accord, composed just last year by festival curator Matthew Aucoin.