NuMusWes24: A Composer’s Convection
NuMusWes24 evolved out of a desire to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts and to bring together different generations of Wesleyan composers. So the event has elements of reunion and retrospection, but also of convection where old friends meet and new friends are made, where old pieces are played and new music is discovered.
This celebration will serve to reflect on what Experimental Music at Wesleyan has been and what it might become. In this way, its goals are the same as the “oral examinations” composers endure when they complete their study and, indeed, gives those composers a chance to return the favor by giving the overall program an oral exam of its own.
The reunion will extend from Friday, May 10, 2024 at 4pm to Sunday, May 12, 2024 at 4pm. Installations and exhibitions will be presented in Olin Memorial Library throughout the weekend. Friday late afternoon and evening will feature performances of works by returning alumni. On Saturday, three sound installations will be presented from 8am to midnight. A series of talks and discussions will be given throughout the day together with a midday tele-performance by alumni gathering at the University of the Arts in Berlin, Germany. Saturday evening will feature an elaborated reconstruction of “An Evening with John Cage,” a concert presented in 1974 as part of the opening year of the Center for the Arts. Sunday will feature a panel on how these compositional ideas reach into public education, work with the disabled, and the practical teaching found in help lines. The last event in the symposium will be an open discussion of the event. A concluding performance will feature projects developed in the Student Forum on Disengineering.
John Cage had a significant impact on the figures who played central roles in the development of Experimental Music at Wesleyan: Richard K. Winslow, Jon K. Barlow, Neely Bruce, and Alvin Lucier. Later, Anthony Braxton joined the faculty in 1990 with written support from both John Cage and Chick Corea. The Wesleyan World Music program was founded on the belief that all of the world’s musics warrant close study. Professor Braxton’s example extended this credo to the recognition that composed and improvised musical forms are deeply entangled and not fully distinguishable. To celebrate these connections and their impact, the concert will feature the original program from 1974 intertwined with pieces by and for those figures.