27th New Music & Art Festival

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Special guest composer Frederic Rzewski will headline Bowling Green State University's 27th annual New Music & Art Festival Oct. 19-21. A showcase for the work of nearly three-dozen composers and artists, the three-day international festival includes concerts, video screenings, lectures, exhibitions and workshops.

Hosted by the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music in the College of Musical Arts and the School of Art at Bowling Green, the festival brings together internationally recognized composers, performers and visual artists in a celebration of new work and new media.

Rzewski's “ferocious, gritty and at times dreamy” compositions have been performed around the world. During the mid-1960s in Rome, he co-founded the MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva) group, which pioneered live electronics and improvisation in performance. Since 1977 he has taught composition as a professor at Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liege, Belgium.

He has also taught at the Yale School of Music, University of Cincinnati, State University of New York at Buffalo, California Institute of the Arts, University of California at San Diego, Mills College, Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Hochschule der Kuenste in Berlin and the Hochschule fuer Musik in Karlsruhe.

Joining Rzewski as special guests at this year's festival will be the Thelema Trio, a young chamber ensemble of clarinet, saxophone and piano from Belgium, and the cellist Madeleine Shapiro, a fixture on the New York new music scene for many years.

Organized by Dr. Burton Beerman, director of the center, and Jacqueline Nathan, director of the BGSU Fine Arts Center Galleries, the festival supports the creation of new work and engages the University and arts community in art appreciation and awareness.

Festival sponsors include the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music, the Fine Arts Center Galleries, the College of Musical Arts, the Ethnic Cultural Arts Program and the Medici Circle at BGSU, as well as the Ohio Arts Council.

Most festival events are free and open to the public. For ticket information, contact the Moore Musical Arts Center box office at 419-372-8171 or 1-800-589-2224.

For a schedule of festival events, contact the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at 419-372-2685.

# # #

(Posted October 17, 2006)