2024 Birmingham New Music Festival
May 5 - May 13
FREE
The Birmingham Art Music Alliance (BAMA) announces the 10th Anniversary BIRMINGHAM NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL, seven concerts between May 5-13, 2024. This year’s festival presents a wide range of music by Alabama composers including solo piano, four chamber music ensembles, choral music, live electronics, improvised music, and new takes on Appalachian folk music. The festival will take place at Birmingham First United Methodist Church, East Village Arts, Samford University’s Brock Recital Hall, and UAB’s Hulsey Recital Hall. All concerts are free. The festival was implemented in 2014 to further BAMA’s mission of promoting music by Alabama composers and presenting concerts of recently created art music to communities in Birmingham. The 2024 festival honors two composers who died in 2023, Joe L. Alexander and Ed Robertson. Our guest composer is New York City-based Robert Voisey, who founded the 60X60 and Fifteen Minutes of Fame projects.
2024 Birmingham New Music Festival May 5-13, 2024
Free Admission http://fest.artmusic.org
Sunday, May 5, 2024 at 4 PM
TO BE A PEOPLE – Music of Ed Robertson
Birmingham First United Methodist Church
518 19th St North
Monday, May 6, 2024 at 7 PM
IN MEDIAS RES – Vuorovesi Trio / BAMA Players
Hulsey Recital Hall
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 7 PM
SOUNDSCAPES – Electroacoustic Music
Hulsey Recital Hall
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Friday, May 10, 2024 at 7:30 PM
AROUND STRAVINSKY – BAMA Players
Brock Recital Hall
Samford University
Saturday, May 11, 2024 at 2 PM
AU NATUREL – Solo Pianists / LeBaron Trio
Hulsey Recital Hall
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Saturday, May 11, 2024 at 5 PM
THE NEXT MOMENT – Mostly Improv
East Village Arts
7611 1st Ave North
Monday, May 13, 2024 at 7 PM
ESTHER & HOLLAND – New Old-Time Music
East Village Arts
7611 1st Ave North
TO BE A PEOPLE
The opening concert at Birmingham First United Methodist Church (518 19th St N ) on Sunday 5/5, 4 PM is dedicated to the music of Ed Robertson, one of BAMA’s founding members who served the organization as president and in other leadership roles. ASO concertmaster Daniel Szasz and pianist Eun-Hee Park perform Saints Fantasy, a set of variations on When the Saints Go Marching In for violin and piano. Adam Bowles presents Changing Landscapes for solo piano, and Craig Hultgren plays Night Scenes for scordatura cello (a winning entry in the Hultgren Cello Works Biennial competition). The concert closes with a selection of Robertson’s choral music conducted by Patrick Evans.
IN MEDIAS RES
On Monday 5/6, 7 PM, in Hulsey Recital Hall on the UAB campus, the BAMA Players (violinist Sarah Nordlund Dennis, violist Meredith Treaster, cellist Samuel Nordlund, and pianist Ken Watson) and Vuorovesi Trio (flutist Diane Boyd Schultz, oboist Mary Lindsay Bailey, and clarinetist Osiris J. Molina) present IN MEDIAS RES, a concert of acoustic chamber music. On the first set, The BAMA Players perform Brian C. Moon’s La Chose Verte for violin and piano, Tom Reiner’s Piano Quartet No. IV, and Charles Norman Mason’s Tree for piano trio, based on Richard Powers’ novel The Overstory. Then the Vurovesi Trio present Joseph Landers’ Six Pieces for Flute, Oboe, and Clarinet. The final set with the BAMA Players includes a piece from Matthew Scott Phillips’ Sundial series, Sic Praeterit Aetas for piano trio, Michael Coleman’s String Trio no. 1, and “Interlude 1” and “Movement II” from the multi-movement piano trio In Medias Res by William Price.
SOUNDSCAPES
In UAB’s Hulsey Recital Hall at 7 PM is the Tuesday 5/7 concert SOUNDSCAPES, a program of electroacoustic music performed in real time. This concert is dedicated to the memory of Joe L. Alexander, an active BAMA member during the first decade of the organization before securing teaching positions in Louisiana and Mississippi. Opening the concert are two works for cello and fixed media: Alexander’s Ce cE CE ceLLo and Monroe Golden’s turkey-call inspired Pinhoti, presented by Craig Hultgren. Lori Ardovino performs her Nattmara for clarinet and soundfile, and Joe’s long-time friend and colleague Alan Goldspiel plays the title track, Soundscapes for guitar and soundfile. Soprano Melanie Williams and performance group Iron Giant (Sam Herman, Brett Huffman, Seth Noble, and Justin Wallace) realize William Price’s A Play on Words for female voice and four male voices. Craig Hultgren closes the concert with three works for the ecello with live processing: Mark Lackey’s A Word with Narcissus, Brian C. Moon’s unLearn, and Holland Hopson’s Snakeskin (Verso).
AROUND STRAVINSKY
The concert on Friday 5/10, 7:30 PM, in Samford University’s Brock Recital Hall, centers on Igor Stravinsky’s Septet – a landmark composition that reflects the shift in his music from neoclassic to serialist. The BAMA Players (clarinetist Brad Whitfield, bassoonist Cameron Bonner, hornist Valerie Sly, violinist Sarah Nordlund Dennis, violist Chris Lowry, cellist Peter Garrett, and pianist Eun-Hee Park) perform Septet and premiere works by Joseph Landers, Mark Lackey, Holland Hopson, Wesley Johnson, and Matthew Scott Phillips that are inspired by Stravinsky’s pivotal work.
AU NATUREL
Themes of nature characterize this afternoon program of piano solos and art songs on Saturday 5/11, 2 PM, at UAB’s Hulsey Recital Hall. Kenneth Kuhn begins the concert with Overture to The Revelation of Nature, a piano realization of the opening movement of his large-scale orchestral work. Pensacola composer/pianist Michael Coleman performs his poco più di niente, Robert Voisey’s Persistence of Melancholy, and Kadisha Onalbayeva’s Alla. The LeBaron Trio (soprano Melanie Williams, clarinetist Lori Ardovino, and pianist Laurie Middaugh) plays a set that includes Ardovino’s Adventures in Wonderland, a setting of texts by Lewis Carroll relating to water animals. Adam Bowles closes the program with performances of Kyle McGucken’s meditative Pothos Variations and Joshua David Davis’ Prelude and Fugue titled The Arctic Snow.
THE NEXT MOMENT
Starting at 5 PM on Saturday 5/11 at East Village Arts (7611 1st Ave N) is an event featuring free improvisation and compositions with improvisatory elements. Performing are Birmingham’s leading improvisor Ladonna Smith, cellist Craig Hultgren, pianists Michael Coleman and Joshua David Davis, banjoist Holland Hopson, and guest composer/vocalist Robert Voisey. Voisey is based in NYC and is the founder of 60X60 and Fifteen Minutes of Fame, two projects that have given voice to composers around the world for decades.
ESTHER & HOLLAND
On Monday 5/13, 7 PM, at East Village Arts, fiddler Esther Morgan-Ellis and banjoist Holland Hopson present original tunes that push the boundaries of old-time music. Georgia-based Morgan-Ellis and Hopson embrace the tradition of ‘crooked’ tunes with a set of their own works that stretch the soundworld of southern Appalachian music.