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Composer Karl Husa, a Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of the 1983 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, will be the guest composer at the New Music Festival on Nov. 3-5 at the School of Music.
The festival features pieces by contemporary composers – most still living – performed by university groups. For three nights, a free performance will be offered in Comstock Hall.
The festival has been as it is now since 1998; in fact, Husa was the festival’s first guest composer.
The music pieces performed at the festival will be mostly retrospective with some highlights from Husa’s recent work. For each program, students will perform at least one work by Husa, including “Elegie et Rondeau,” “Five Poems,” “Celebrations” and “Symphonic Suite.”
Not only will the Music Festival feature an accomplished composer, but it will also showcase the talent of extremely celebrated student symphonies, including the Wind Ensemble, the Symphonic Band, the Symphony Orchestra, the New Music Ensemble, the Cardinal Singers and the Collegiate Choral.
“Music for Prague 1968” is one of the most anticipated pieces of the festival.
Under the direction of professor Frederick Speck, the piece will voice Husa’s protest against the invasion of his native Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops in 1968.
One of the most popular pieces in contemporary music literature, the piece has been played 10,000 times since its first performance in 1968, further punctuating the extent of Husa’s influence over contemporary orchestral music.
Works by Mark Alan Taggart, Steve Rouse and Marc Satterwhite will also be featured at the festival.
With such a celebrated composer working with the festival, the expectations placed on the student and faculty performers are high.
“The repertoire of all of the ensembles and soloists has extremely high professional performance demands and often calls for new performance techniques,” Speck said. “We see this not as an obstacle but as the very challenge that we look to as a way to elevate our performance levels.”
Husa’s association with the University of Louisville dates further back than the festival. He first became associated with the University when the School of Music commissioned him to write “Trojan Woman” for the opening of the current music building in 1980.
According to Speck, the festival is a true testimony that the students and faculty are at the forefront of the music of our time.
“Though there are many great masterworks of the past that we should continue to study and perform, our commitment to new music really advances our commitment to the motto of our university to ‘dare to be great,'” Speck said.
With a world-renowned composer and dedicated student and faculty performers, it is safe to say that the New Music Festival musicians have not only dared to be great, they have dared to be a leading force in the music of our time.
