FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jim Connolly | Collage New Music | General Manager
jconnolly@collagenewmusic.org | 781-296-6541
Collage New Music Announces 2024-25 Season,
Its First Under Artistic Director Eric Nathan
Four themed concerts: October 6, November 3, March 2, and May 4
Soprano Tony Arnold Appointed Collage’s 2024-25 Artistic Partner
BSO’s Assistant Conductor Anna Handler to Conduct March 2 Concert
David Hoose returns as Music Director Emeritus on May 4 Concert
Partnerships with Longy School of Music and Goethe-Institut Boston
The four-concert season features 5 world premieres of Collage-commissioned works, introduces music from new and vibrant voices to Collage’s audience, and builds a creative partnership with Longy School of Music, among other exciting collaborations.
Boston, MA — Collage New Music is thrilled to announce its 2024-25 season, the 52nd in the ensemble’s rich history and its first under Artistic Director Eric Nathan. The four themed concerts, thoughtfully programmed by Nathan, include premieres of Collage commissions by Wang Lu, John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Yaz Lancaster (co-commissioned with Hub New Music and the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center), Jingmian Gong (2024-25 Collage Fellow), and Eric Nathan (Short Stories, live-in-person world premiere).
Soprano Tony Arnold, Collage’s 2024-25 Artistic Partner, is soloist in three concerts, including a special Collage-presented recital, joined by renowned vocalists Lucy Shelton and William Sharp. Arnold is a member of Collage’s Artistic Advisory Panel along with Matthew Aucoin, Marcos Balter, Anthony Cheung, Tania León, and Joan Tower.
Conductors include Eric Nathan, in his inaugural concert as Artistic Director (Oct. 6), Boston Symphony Orchestra Assistant Conductor Anna Handler (March 2), and David Hoose, in his first concert as Collage’s Music Director Emeritus (May 4).
“I can’t wait to share this season, full of music I love, with our audiences, bringing many new musical voices to Collage,” says Artistic Director Eric Nathan. “I hope that each program will open our ears, thrill us, move us, and ask us to think in new ways about the world in which we live.”
As has been previously announced, Frank Epstein – Collage Founder, first Music Director, current President of the Board, and former BSO percussionist – will retire from his role on the board at the conclusion of the 2024-25 Season, after 52 years with Collage. The season finale concert (May 4), “We Carry Our Homes Within Us,” is curated in Epstein’s honor, to celebrate his legacy and the immense impact he has had with Collage in the musical community. More details are forthcoming about a formal celebration of Epstein’s visionary work and contributions later in the season.
“This year (our 52nd season) marks an exciting new direction for Collage New Music,” says Frank Epstein. “Eric Nathan as our new Artistic Director will lead us with renewed vigor and new visions for Collage and its followers. The ensemble ably led by David Hoose for 33 years now shifts to Eric Nathan. We look forward to our guest conductors this season, a newly created title for singer Tony Arnold and will enjoy David Hoose explore his new role as Music Director Emeritus. We look forward to welcoming you at our upcoming next season.”
Partnerships
Collage embarks on a yearlong creative partnership and educational residency with Longy School of Music. Collage will perform three concerts at Longy’s Pickman Hall and will provide guest composer masterclasses, student composition reading sessions, and two side-by-side performances with students from Longy’s Historical Performance and Vocal Studies programs (Nov. 3, May 4). Longy will also host the Collage Composers Colloquium (Oct. 5), a valuable workshopping and networking event for student and early-career composers, returning for the first time since 2019. Guest mentor composers for the colloquium include Juri Seo and Wang Lu, whose music is programmed by Collage (Oct. 6), as well as Longy’s Chair of Composition, Alexandra du Bois.
"We are so excited to announce Longy's artistic partnership with Collage New Music,” says Karen Zorn, President of the Longy School of Music. “At Longy, we believe music demands innovation, so we feel a strong alignment with Collage and its legacy of championing new music. We look forward to the opportunities this will give to Longy students to hear new works, participate in masterclasses and workshops, and perform alongside great musicians."
Additionally, Collage New Music expands its reach into Boston proper as a cooperating partner of the Goethe-Institut Boston (March 2). Collage will be joined for this concert by German-Colombian conductor Anna Handler, a new Boston Symphony Orchestra Assistant Conductor, presenting an international program of music by Olga Neuwirth, Jörg Widmann, Gabriela Ortiz, Gabriella Smith and Syrian-born Boston-based composer Kareem Roustom.
Collage is also proud to continue a partnership with the Korean Cultural Society of Boston, which had previously co-commissioned Texu Kim’s Ominous Omnibus for Collage's 50th anniversary, premiered in February 2024. Composer Juri Seo's participation in both the upcoming Collage Composers Colloquium (Oct. 5) and season-opening concert (Oct. 6) is co-sponsored by the Korean Cultural Society of Boston.
Tickets and additional information are available on Collage’s website.
For media inquiries and interviews with Eric Nathan, please contact Jim Connolly, General Manager, at jconnolly@collagenewmusic.org | 781-296-6541
Season Details
1) New Beginnings
October 6, 2024, at 7:30pm
Longy School of Music, Pickman Hall (Cambridge, MA)
Pre-Concert Talk at 6:30pm with Artistic Director Eric Nathan and featured composers
Eric Nathan, CONDUCTOR
Sarah Brady, FLUTE; Alexis Lanz, CLARINET; Seychelle Dunn-Corbin, SAXOPHONE; Heather Braun, VIOLIN; Jan Müller-Szeraws, CELLO; Christopher Oldfather, PIANO/HARPSICHORD; Craig McNutt, PERCUSSION
The season-opener marks Eric Nathan’s inaugural concert as Artistic Director and features music that builds on the past to find new sonic futures, featuring composers who find inspiration from both J.S. Bach and improvised music. The concert features two newly commissioned world premieres for the occasion connecting Collage’s past to its future.
Wang Lu: New Work (2024) world premiere (Collage Commission)
flute, clarinet, saxophone, violin, cello, piano/harpsichord, percussion
Vijay Iyer: Run (2015)
solo cello
Juri Seo: Rondeau, Ostinato, Fantasia (2018) Boston premiere
clarinet, saxophone, violin, cello, piano/harpsichord, percussion
Intermission
J.S. Bach: Aria from Goldberg Variations
harpsichord
John Harbison: New Work (2024) world premiere (Collage Commission)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano/harpsichord, percussion
Eric Nathan: Short Stories (2021) live audience world premiere (50th anniversary Collage Commission)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion
November 3, 2024, at 3pm
Longy School of Music, Pickman Hall (Cambridge, MA)
Post-Concert Talkback with Artistic Director Eric Nathan and guest soloists
Tony Arnold, SOPRANO
Lucy Shelton, SOPRANO
William Sharp, BARITONE
Seth Knopp, PIANO
Students from Longy's performance programs
Collage presents an intimate vocal concert highlighting 2024-25 Artistic Partner Tony Arnold, including a collaboration with a choir of Longy School of Music students. The program centers on the bravery of finding one’s voice and giving voice to others. The centerpiece is the Boston premiere of Eric Nathan and librettist Mark Campbell’s dramatic song cycle, Some Favored Nook, the story of two individuals and their struggles—Emily Dickinson’s to be a poet as a woman in a patriarchal society, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s to fight for the abolition of slavery and advocate for female writers’ voices.
Amy Beach: I Shall Be Brave
Text by Katherine Adams
Margaret Bonds: When the Dove Enters In
Florence Price: Hold Fast to Dreams
Text by Langston Hughes
William Sharp, baritone; Seth Knopp, piano
Sofia Gubaidulina: Aus den Visionen der Hildegard von Bingen (1994)
Lucy Shelton, solo soprano
Hildegard von Bingen: Various Works for chorus
Tony Arnold and Lucy Shelton, sopranos
Longy students
Bernard Rands, Memo 7 (2000)
Tony Arnold, solo soprano
Text by Emily Dickinson (“Bind me—I still can sing”)
Intermission
Eric Nathan, Some Favored Nook (2017) Boston Premiere
Texts by Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Tony Arnold, soprano; William Sharp, baritone; Seth Knopp, piano
March 2, 2025, at 7:30pm
Goethe-Institut Boston (Boston, MA)
Presented in partnership with Goethe-Institut Boston
Pre-Concert Talk at 6:30pm with Artistic Director Eric Nathan, composer Gabriela Ortiz and featured composers
Anna Handler, CONDUCTOR
Tony Arnold, SOPRANO
Sarah Brady, FLUTE; Alexis Lanz, CLARINET; Heather Braun, VIOLIN;
Jan Müller-Szeraws, CELLO; Christopher Oldfather, PIANO; Craig McNutt, PERCUSSION
The program revolves around themes of language, memory, life, and death in the human and natural worlds, as well as the supernatural. Vocal works bookend the program: Kareem Roustom’s Xarja, which speaks of love, loss, and refuge, and Jörg Widmann’s Sieben Abgesänge auf eine tote Linde, a requiem for a tree, in part from the tree’s perspective.
Kareem Roustom: Xarja (2017)
soprano and percussion
Olga Neuwirth: Magic Flu-Idity (2018)
flute and typewriter/wine glasses
Gabriela Ortiz: El águila bicéfala (2005)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano
Intermission
Jingmian Gong (Collage Fellow): New Work (2025) world premiere (Collage Commission)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion
Gabriella Smith: Anthozoa (2018)
violin, cello, piano, percussion
Jörg Widmann: Sieben Abgesänge auf eine tote Linde (1997)
soprano, clarinet, violin, piano
Concert in Honor of Frank Epstein’s Retirement from Collage New Music
May 4, 2025, at 7:30pm
Longy School of Music, Pickman Hall (Cambridge, MA)
Pre-Concert Talk at 6:30pm with Artistic Director Eric Nathan and featured composers
David Hoose, CONDUCTOR
Tony Arnold, SOPRANO
Students from Longy's performance programs
Sarah Brady, FLUTE; Alexis Lanz, CLARINET; Heather Braun, VIOLIN; Mary Ferrillo, VIOLA; Jan Müller-Szeraws, CELLO; Adam Gautille, TRUMPET; Christopher Oldfather, PIANO; Craig McNutt, PERCUSSION
This season finale marks founder Frank Epstein’s retirement from Collage and David Hoose’s first performance as Collage’s Music Director Emeritus. Marcos Balter’s We Carry Our Homes Within Us Which Enables Us to Fly inspires the program’s theme of “home” and the processes of finding, carrying and remembering what we each call home. The concert celebrates milestone Collage commissions – Yehudi Wyner’s 10th anniversary commission, the world premiere of Michael Gandolfi’s 50th anniversary commission, and the Boston premiere Yaz Lancaster’s commission to mark the conclusion of Eric Nathan’s first season as Artistic Director. Collage also celebrates the memory of John Heiss, a longtime friend of Collage who passed in 2023.
John Heiss: Soliloquy (2007)
flute and piano
Yehudi Wyner: Passage (1983) (10th Anniversary Collage Commission)
flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin, viola, cello, piano
Reinaldo Moya: The Earth Outlived the Hands that Held It (2018)
clarinet, violin, piano
Michael Gandolfi: New Work (2025) world premiere (50th anniversary Collage Commission)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion
Tony Arnold, soprano
Intermission
Yaz Lancaster: New Work (2024) Boston premiere (Collage Co-Commission with Hub New Music and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello
Marcos Balter: We Carry Our Homes Within Us Which Enables Us to Fly (2015)
flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, trumpet
Tony Arnold, soprano
Longy students
About Eric Nathan
Eric Nathan’s (b. 1983) music has been called “as diverse as it is arresting” with a “constant vein of ingenuity and expressive depth” (San Francisco Chronicle), and “thoughtful and inventive” (The New Yorker). A 2013 Rome Prize Fellow and 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, Nathan has garnered acclaim internationally through performances by Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Koh, Stefan Jackiw, and Gloria Cheng. His music has been featured at the New York Philharmonic’s 2014 and 2016 Biennials, Carnegie Hall, and the Aldeburgh, Tanglewood, and Aspen festivals.
He serves as Associate Professor of Music at Brown University and is currently the New England Philharmonic’s Composer-in-Residence. He received his doctorate from Cornell. Further details about Eric Nathan can be found at www.ericnathanmusic.com.
About Collage New Music
Praised by the Boston Musical Intelligencer as “among the finest artists of contemporary (or any other) music,” the musicians of Collage New Music include some of the most outstanding instrumentalists and singers skilled in the musical intricacies, technical virtuosity, and emotional depth that new music requires. The ensemble includes some of the East Coast’s finest musicians, including members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the area’s extraordinary freelance community. The initial ensemble consisted entirely of players from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and over the years players from the freelance community have entered the group.
Collage was founded by BSO percussionist Frank Epstein in 1968 who then served as its first Music Director for twenty years. Composer John Harbison then became Co-Music Director for a short period, followed by David Hoose who became Music Director and conductor for thirty-two years, retiring from the position at the end of the 2023-24 season. Starting with the 2024-25 season, Collage’s 52nd, composer Eric Nathan assumes the title of Artistic Director and David Hoose becomes Music Director Emeritus.
Collage’s five decades of compelling music-making have placed it as a leader among adventurous ensembles that nurture that vital intersection of composer, performer, and listener. The ensemble’s repertoire, both wide and deep, reaches from classical twentieth century works, to extraordinary less-known older works, and to marvelous, brand-new creations of American composers. Its diverse programs include solo repertoire, music for larger ensembles, theatrical works, fully-staged chamber operas, and music with extensive electronics.
The ensemble appears on the New World, Koch, and Albany labels, and its recording of John Harbison’s Mottetti di Montale was a 2005 Grammy Nominee for Best Performance by a Small Ensemble. Each season, Collage also hosts a Collage Fellow, an emerging composer-in-residence, and hosts its Collage Composers Colloquium, a day-long examination of young composers’ music.
