My Idols Are Dead - Dr. Marcus Norris
October 5, 2024 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

My Idols Are Dead for String Orchestra - Dr. Marcus Norris

Travelogue - Leah Asher
October 5, 2024 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

Travelogue - Leah Asher

3 Pieces for Orchestra - Jonathan Hannau
Jonathan Hannau, piano
October 5, 2024 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

3 Pieces for Orchestra - Jonathan Hannau

Beauty despite daylight - Oswald Huynh
October 5, 2024 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

Beauty despite daylight - Oswald Huynh

Laura Schwendinger, Composer; Conor Nelson, Flute; Christopher Taylor, Piano
Anaphora (2024)
for alto flute and piano (13:25)
Dedicated to flutist Conor Nelson
Movements
I. Journey
II. Mists
III. Contemplation 
IV. Departure

Anaphora for Alto Flute and Piano

Performance in 2023 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, curated by Aaron Jay Kernis. In this aria, Artemisia Gentileschi sings about how Galileo Galilei showed her the moon through a glass, like the glass that the oculist uses to look at her eyes. The two did indeed know each other and wrote letters to one another. The aria is tinged with sadness as our Artemisia is losing her eyesight. The real Artemisia wrote how she needed funds for a medical treatment. It was surmised by our librettist Ginger Strand that that may have been for her eyesight-perhaps she had cataracts, so the arc of this opera imagines that Artemisia was losing her eyesight- as we know in those later letters that she voiced concerns- this could be the medical treatment she needed. Of course the allusion to Artemis and the moon are there, for our Artemisia, as well. 

Lucy Fitz Gibbon sings the Moon aria from Artemisia by Laura Schwendinger

sic rerum summa novatur semper - Oswald Huynh
April 26, 2025 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

sic rerum summa novatur semper - Carlos Bandera

Sonder & Ozurie - Ephraim Champion
April 26, 2025 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

Sonder & Ozurie - Ephraim Champion

Water Realms - Ania Vu
April 26, 2025 | St James Cathedral
Chicago Composers Orchestra
Music Director - Allen Tinkham

Water Realms - Ania Vu

A solo piano work, dedicated to Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president (1994–99) and to the Freedom Charter

Long Road to Freedom

Point of Balance

Hailed as “…an energized, risk-taking orchestra that advocates for contemporary music in such a way as to make composers, performers, and listeners feel part of the same engaged community" (Chicago Tribune), the Chicago Composers Orchestra is one very few orchestras to be solely devoted to contemporary music. The orchestra’s mission is to present music by living composers, and to extend the orchestral tradition to be open, vibrant, and diverse, and to speak to our lives today.

My Idols Are Dead for String Orchestra - Dr. Marcus Norris

ChicagoComposersOrchestra