Partnering with Utah’s New Music collective Salty Cricket, NEXT Ensemble is proud to present 20/20: Ways of Seeing, a concert to toast the New Year featuring brand new works for piano quartet composed by 4 Utah-based composers: Igor Iachimciuc, Aaron J. Kirschner, Esther Megargel, & Alfonso E. Tenreiro.

Gabriel Gordon - Violin Sunny Johnson - Viola Julie Bevan - Cello Nicholas Maughan - Piano

Today’s composers live in the same world the rest of us do: they are subject to the same politics, modern-day means of production and consumption, and technologically-induced pace of life. Whether or not their pieces tell a story or are otherwise explicitly “about” the present world, they are nonetheless and inescapably part of it.

Today’s composers represent a diversity of voices simply not represented in the world of “historical” classical music, where works by women and persons of color were often systematically excluded.

Without bringing new ideas and new voices to the table, classical music as an art form ceases to develop. It will live on, but as in a museum, and it will stop reflecting the world we know today. Despite the unprecedented ease for audiences to access contemporary music, It is extremely difficult for new composers to emerge in the classical music landscape; we must to what we can to support the creation and performance of music of our own time, for music that is new today will soon become our legacy, a window into our world for those who come after us. Indeed, contemporary music and other art forms are leaving the traces of a history we are writing right now.

$10 Adults Free Children under 18