UPDATE:
NEMPAC’S Winter Concert Series announces a Special Encore Performance with a late discount for through February 15th to watch our beautiful ‘New Music from New England’ program! To celebrate NEMPAC’s 20th anniversary and to further enjoy through Valentine’s, this event is brought to you directly from the historical Boston Athenaeum on the Sparrow Live platform at a discounted rate of $15.
Your ticket includes a World Premiere by composer Joseph Sowa, gorgeous, emotionally-charged music with Boston’s own Hub New Music and our Artistic Director Christina Wright-Ivanova, as well as short, informative introductions from the four featured New-England composers. Check the short clip below and don’t miss this great event!
Happy New Year from our NEMPAC family to yours! The start of 2021 marks our 20th anniversary as your community music school and performing arts center. There is so much our NEMPAC family has to be grateful for, to celebrate, and to honor as we reflect on this organizational milestone.
First and foremost, we are grateful for two decades of thriving at the intersection of arts education and professional performance. We celebrate 20 years of empowering artists of all ages and abilities. And we honor the unwavering community support that fueled our growth over the past two decades from a 501(c)(3) offering piano lessons to youth out of its founders’ homes to a community music school and professional performing arts center operating out of 15 locations throughout the City of Boston.
As a performing arts center, we transform urban settings into nontraditional concert venues to creatively bring live music to you and your loved ones. The pandemic continues to challenge us to be even more creative in our approach to connecting your family to renowned artists. On that note, we’re thrilled to launch our 20th anniversary celebration with a virtual presentation in our annual winter concert series, “New Music from New England,” on Friday, January 15, at 7 p.m.
Streamed live from the Boston Athenaeum, this online performance will star NEMPAC artistic director and pianist, Christina Wright-Ivanova, as well as Hub New Music, a quartet that is transforming Boston’s music scene one performance at a time. Hub New Music features clarinetist Nicholas Brown, who serves as a faculty member at NEMPAC, in addition to flutist Michael Avitabile, violinist Alyssa Wang, and cellist Jesse Christeson.
This special presentation will feature four works, including a world premiere of “Apple Fantasy” by composer Joseph Sowa. “Rogue Emoji,” written by Boston University faculty composer Kati Agócs, “Black Anemones,” created by Joseph Schwantner, and “Crossings,” written by Rice University faculty composer Pierre Jalbert will also be performed.
Wright-Ivanova described the sense of belonging that these four works will evoke among audience members:
There is a deep sense of unity and coming together evident in this program. Not only does one hear the separate, individualized voices present through each instrument, but one can hear how they interweave with one another in many different ways through each musical work. This symbiotic dialogue represents the theme of “New Music from New England”—coming together to form unity out of a particularly chaotic time in our history and our world. I believe audiences will be deeply moved by the different characteristics of these four works.”
Here at NEMPAC, we are committed to fostering connections between patrons and performers. Amid the global public health crisis, we foster these connections virtually. We partnered with Sparrow Live for this presentation in our Winter Concert Series to do just that.
Sparrow Live will equip us with the technical resources to facilitate exceptional audio and video quality for our audience members to engage with our artists virtually from the comfort and safety of their own homes. Meanwhile, Wright-Ivanova and HUB New Music will present the concert live from the Boston Athenaeum in accordance with social distancing and public health guidelines.
Wright-Ivanova commented on what this special program amid COVID-19 means to her as an artist.
Personally, when HUB New Music and I came together for our first rehearsal on the Jalbert work, I felt deeply emotional. I realized only later that the November rehearsal was the first time I had played chamber music in-person with a group of musicians in nine months. As a pianist who specializes in the joy of collaboration with other musicians, COVID-19 has been very difficult for me. To be able to come together to record this concert safely is truly a dream during this time, and this virtual program allows NEMPAC to safely support excellent professional artists such as HUB New Music and our four featured composers.”
We can’t wait to kick off the New Year and NEMPAC’s 20th anniversary celebration with you during this intimate virtual concert. To join us, purchase your livestream ticket to “New Music from New England” today and sustain the tradition of live performance.
“Ongoing performance and recording opportunities are critical to the continuation of live art music today, and both the support and the need for the arts is more important today than ever before,” said Wright-Ivanova. “This special virtual presentation in our annual winter concert series empowers our performers to shine and do what they deeply love, all while giving our audience members a plethora of emotions, education, and thrills throughout the concert experience.”
