The Block

GVSU New Music Ensemble, chamber ensemble

Saturday, February 25th, 7:30 pm

Doors and bar open at 6:45 pm

$20 and up

$10 student tickets

Buy Tickets

Director Bill Ryan and the New Music Ensemble at Grand Valley State University bring ‘music of our time’ to The Block. The group is known for its commissions, tours, recordings, collaborations, outreach events, and workshops.

The New Music Ensemble at Grand Valley State University promotes the music of our time through commissions, tours, recordings, educational events, workshops, and videos. Founded in 2006 by its director Bill Ryan, this undergraduate ensemble performs an incredible variety of music. From landmark compositions of the Twentieth Century, to the most recent works of this new century, their concerts are stimulating, entertaining and unpredictable.

The group has been profiled in numerous publications including Newsweek, the New York Times, and Billboard Magazine, and featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition, All Things Considered, and WNYC's Radiolab. In addition to concerts around campus, they have performed at the Bang On a Can Marathon in New York, the College Music Society National Conference in Atlanta, as members of the all-star ensemble assembled by the Kronos Quartet to perform on the In C 45th Anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall, New York’s le Poisson Rouge, New Music Detroit's Strange Beautiful Music marathon, the Make Music New York festival (Morningside Park), at Chicago's Millennium Park, and at New York’s Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival to help premiere Sila, by Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams.

The ensemble has released three critically acclaimed recordings named to best release lists by the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Weekly, Time Out Chicago, and many others. Tracks from their second CD, In C Remixed, can be heard on MTV's series Teen Wolf, as well as the upcoming documentary film As I AM: the Life and Times of DJ AM. Excerpts from their first CD, Steve Reich's, Music for 18 Musicians, were used as the soundtrack to Michael Langan's award winning short film Choros, which has been screened at over sixty-five film festivals around the world. The CD was named one of the top five classical recordings of the decade by WNYC’s John Schaefer, as well as the #1 classical recording of the decade in the WNYC Soundcheck listener poll.

The ensemble has completed two tours: a weeklong trip throughout the mid-Atlantic United States, and a ten-day trip to five National Parks throughout the Southwest United States last summer. Through the support of a New Music USA Project Grant, in 2015-16 they will be touring their Music in their Words project, in which notable composers were commissioned to create works based on the speaking voice of landmark Twentieth Century composers.

Actively engaged in the creation of new works, the ensemble has commissioned and premiered compositions by Marc Mellits, Belinda Reynolds, Robin Cox, Zoe Keating, David Lang, Mason Bates, Jad Abumrad, Rob Smith, Armando Bayolo, David Biedenbender, and Kurt Ellenberger, as well as over 150 GVSU student compositions. Their YouTube videos recently passed 1.5 million views, all without the aid of a cat or Lady Gaga tune.

GVSU New Music Ensemble, chamber ensemble

Saturday, February 25th, 7:30 pm

Doors and bar open at 6:45 pm

$20 and up

$10 student tickets

About

Director Bill Ryan and the New Music Ensemble at Grand Valley State University bring ‘music of our time’ to The Block. The group is known for its commissions, tours, recordings, collaborations, outreach events, and workshops.