Alumni Spotlight: Celebrating 50 years of Contemporary Musical Arts
Celebrating it's 50th anniversary season, the Contemporary Musical Arts program (formerly CI/Contemporary Improvisation) at New England Conservatory has been at the forefront of creative musical expression. The department marks five decades of crossing boundaries, pushing limits, and training creative contemporary musicians and artists with a year-long celebration featuring faculty, students and alumni in a full season of cutting-edge musical events. With its legacy of innovation, CMA provides the grounding that students need in ear training, technique, conceptual ideas, interdisciplinary collaboration, songwriting, and a wide range of improvisational traditions, including world music, jazz, and the latest innovations—everything required to become a leading composer/performer/improviser/in today’s world.
Serving as Co-Chairs of the Contemporary Musical Arts department at New England Conservatory, Eden MacAdam-Somer ’13 DMA and Hankus Netsky ’76, ’78 MM share their time as students and faculty members at NEC, and what the CMA program means to them.
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Eden MacAdam-Somer ’13 DMA |
Hankus Netsky ’76, ’78 MM |
Contemporary Musical Arts's 2022-2023 Season Programming
All of these events are open to the public!*
| Tuesday, September 6 7:30 PM | Jordan Hall |
Opening Night Faculty Concert Kickoff performance showcasing a wide array of music performed by current NEC Contemporary Musical Arts faculty. Performances by Ran Blake, Hankus Netsky '76, '78 MM, Eden MacAdam-Somer '13 DMA, Balla Kouyaté, Bert Seager '85 MM, Mark Zaleski '08, Farayi Malek, Lautaro Mantilla '11 MM, '12 GD, '17 DMA. |
| Sunday, September 11 All day |
CMA Open House A day-long series of workshops with NEC Contemporary Musical Arts program faculty offer NEC conservatory and prep students the opportunity to get outside of their comfort zones and try something new. No experience with global music or improvisation necessary. |
| Sunday, November 13 6:30 PM |
Celebrating CMA Department Chair Emeritus Ran Blake’s Legacy of Innovation: “Living with Imperfection: A Portrait of Ran Blake” Eben Jordan Theatre Screening of a new film by Antoine Polin. |
| Tuesday, November 15 7:30 PM | Jordan Hall |
Pushing the Limits A retrospective concert directed by CMA co-chair Hankus Netsky '76, '78 MM showcasing the innovative legacies of CMA faculty and alumni, featuring CMA student performances of music and arrangements by Carla Kihlstedt, Anthony Coleman '77, Peter Row, Magdalena Abrego '19 MM, Hankus Netsky '76, '78 MM, Ted Reichman, Ran Blake, Joe Maneri, Linda Chase '00 MM, and Lautaro Mantilla '11 MM, '12 GD, '17 DMA. |
| Wednesday, November 16 5:30 PM |
"A Revolution in Music Education – Gunther Schuller’s Educational Legacy" An in-person and online mini-conference panel discussion co-sponsored by the Gunther Schuller Society exploring how Gunther Schuller '78 hon. DM, Ran Blake, and Carl Atkins '75 MM reshaped conservatory music education and how NEC's Contemporary Musical Arts program re-shaped how its faculty and alumni teach music at every level. |
| Thursday, December 8 7:30 PM | Jordan Hall |
Crossing the Boundaries with special guest NEC alumnus Don Byron '84 Ken Schaphorst '84 MM directs the NEC Jazz Orchestra with special guest clarinetist Don Byron '84 and soloists from the CMA program in repertoire ranging from his own Film Noir interpretations to music inspired by diverse global and improvisational traditions. The program includes a tribute to NEC’s own George Russell along with arrangements and compositions by Randy Weston & Melba Liston, Anthony Braxton, and others. Byron will also conduct a talk about his music and a master class. |
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Tuesday, February 14 |
NEC Wind Ensemble Collaboration with CMA Department The program will feature CMA Co-chair Hankus Netsky '76, '78 MM and singer/songwriter Delfina Cheb Terrab '21 MM, a CMA alumna. |
| Wednesday, February 15 7:30 PM | Jordan Hall |
Prodigal Daughter: Americana Revisited, featuring Aofie O’Donovan '03 NEC CMA alum Aoife O'Donovan '03 is an American singer and songwriter based in Brooklyn. While she is best known as the founder and frontwoman of the string band Crooked Still, she is also one-third of the female trios Sometymes Why and I'm with Her, and has appeared on the Prairie Home Companion radio program. Her collaborators have been numerous and stylistically wide-ranging, including such varied artists as jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile's Goat Rodeo Sessions band, the Boston Pops, and Kronos Quartet. She has become a go-to vocalist in the American contemporary folk, bluegrass, and progressive Americana scenes, working with Jerry Douglas, Sarah Jarosz '13, Darol Anger, and the Infamous Stringdusters. After a pair of EPs, O'Donovan issued her acclaimed solo long-player, Fossils, for Yep Roc in 2013. The following year at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival with Sara Watkins '02 MM and Sarah Jarosz '13 led to the formation of the touring outfit I'm with Her. They released their debut, See You Around, for Rounder in 2018 and won a Grammy for Best American Roots Performance at the ceremony in 2019. O'Donovan delivered her third solo album, the Joe Henry-produced Age of Apathy, in 2022. |
| Tuesday, April 11 7:30 PM | Jordan Hall |
The Music of Fay Victor Concert Fay Victor is an improvising vocalist, composer, lyricist and educator riding all the chasms and seams of musics that are improvisational and conversational in nature. A Brooklyn-based sound artist/composer, she hones a unique vision for the vocalist’s role in jazz and improvised music. Victor utilizes a distinctive vocalizing, language and performing approach with the foundation of the jazz vocal idiom, now encompassing an “everything is everything” aesthetic, bringing in references that span the globe. Victor sees the vocal instrument in itself as full of possibilities for sound exploration, the voice a direct and powerful conduit for language and messages in an improvising context. All of these ideas aim to push the vocal envelope to forge greater expressive possibilities. In Victor’s 10 critically acclaimed albums as a leader one can hear the through line of expansive expression leading up to her most recent release, BARN SONGS (Northern Spy Records) with her Chamber Trio featuring Darius Jones (alto saxophone) & Marika Hughes (cello). |
| Sunday, May 7 All day |
NEC Contemporary Musical Arts Ensemble Festival Day-long event showcasing CMA ensembles. |
*IMPORTANT COVID-19 PROTOCOLS
The health and safety of our guests are our top priorities. Per NEC's Covid-19 protocol, all guests must present one of the following at the security desk to access indoor spaces:
1. Proof of full vaccination
or
2. A negative PCR test within 72 hours of the visit
Any guest who does not comply with NEC’s COVID-19 protocols will not be granted entry into the event.
Questions? Please contact the NEC Alumni Team at [email protected].
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