SFNM² Programs Announced and Tickets On Sale!

SFNM is excited to announce the programs for our June SFNM² events, The Southwest Festival of New Music. The 3-day event examines the theme of “Music as Environmental Consciousness,” conceived in homage to the 2012 centenary of John Cage. Says SFNM’s Artistic Director John Kennedy, “Cage opened our ears and minds to the possibility of hearing all the world as music, and our festival will focus on the younger generation of composers and practitioners who have carried the spirit of his work forward into today. Our curatorial approach to our subject will not be to present works which imprint an extra-musical ‘nature’ theme on work which is already stylistically coded, but rather to feature works which derive from – and assert – the notion that music is an element of the ecosystem.”

Highlights of the festival’s concerts include commissions from Christian Wolff (the last surviving member of the “New York School” of composition that included Cage and Morton Feldman), as well as the young composers Lisa Coons, Nathan Davis, and Christopher Marianetti. The festival will also present a special conception of a new work by composer and acoustic ecologist David Dunn, which will be presented as an evolving work over the three evenings of the festival.

The festival’s primary concerts will consist of these programs:

Thursday, June 21 – 7:30pm
John Cage	Inlets (1988)
Nathan Davis	Bells (2011)
David Dunn	Thresholds and Fragile States, part one (June 21, 2012)
Steven Paxton	Woods Mix (2011)
John Kennedy	Island in Time (2012)

Friday, June 22 – 7:30pm
John Cage	Five (1977)
David Dunn	Thresholds and Fragile States, part two (June 22, 2012)
Michael Pisaro	Fields Have Ears IV (1994)
Lisa Coons	Music Painted from Memory (2009)
Nathan Davis	SFNM Commission (2012)

Friday, June 22 – 10pm
Phillip Mantione	Depth of Field
Nathan Davis	Diving Bell
	Crawlspace
Christopher Marianetti	New Work
Saturday, June 23 – 7:30pm
John Kennedy	iPhone 4tet (1991)
David Dunn	Thresholds and Fragile States, part three (June 23, 2012)
Lisa Coons	SFNM Commission (2012)
Christopher Marianetti	SFNM Commission (2012)
Christian Wolff	Santa Fe SFNM Commission (2012)