New Music Collective Expands The Recital Hall Concert Tradition

The New Music Collective is a new unofficial, for-credit ad-hoc group in the Ohio State University School of Music. Having given its premiere performance during the Spring Quarter of 2009, the Collective’s membership includes undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members from all areas of musical study. The name “Collective” reflects the ensemble’s participatory nature: members of the Collective suggest repertoire, conduct, design printed material, develop publicity plans, and in general are encouraged to participate in all artistic and administrative aspects of producing new music.

The New Music Collective’s mission is to perform a wide spectrum of contemporary music, with emphasis on works from the past 50 years, as well as to present important earlier 20th-century works. Participation in the group gives members in-depth contact with an important body of literature to which they might otherwise be marginally exposed, as well as provides them with experience with new-music performance practices and techniques. The group will involve students with musics of varied styles, aesthetics, and instrumentation – conventionally notated works, works that involve improvisation, indeterminacy, graphic notation, electro acoustic music, and other techniques. Another important mission of the ensemble will be to premiere new works by composers at early stages of their careers, as well as by established, but no-so-widely known composers.

Furthermore, the New Music Collective strives to expand upon the recital-hall concert tradition with which many younger audiences are uncomfortable. To this effect, the Collective’s inaugural concert in May of 2009 was given in tandem and collaboration with a concert of electronic music and improvisational dance presented by the OSU Department of Dance. At the end of the night, audience members and performers from both concerts met together in the outdoor space between Sullivant Hall and Mershon Auditorium for a “Happening” of improvised music, dance, poetry, and installations.

The New Music Collective was featured in a Columbus Dispatch Weekender article on May 21st, 2009. A video of the Collective rehearsing Stop, für Orchester by Karlheinz Stockhausen is available at http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/multimedia/video/index.html?maven_p...

Dr. Thomas Wells, professor of composition in the OSU School of Music, and President of the Society of Composers Incorporated, serves as faculty adviser for the thirty-member ensemble. The Collective will be giving its second concert on Friday, November 20th at 8:00PM in Weigel Hall on the Ohio State University campus. The concert is free and open to the public.