The Evolution Contemporary Music Series
presents Season 7: Beyond Music
In the words of conductor Daniel Barenboim, “you can only live in music…if you see the parallels
with literature, if you see the parallels with painting, if you see the parallel with the development of
political processes.” In this spirit, the 2011-12 Evolution Series takes as its focus the myriad
intersections between music and other facets of art and life. The new season also marks the
beginning of dynamic educational partnerships with the Baltimore School for the Arts and the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program.
The Evolution Series is pleased to announce that online ticketing is now available for all events! Purchase tickets to individual events for $15/$10 students, or a season subscription for $60/$40 (excludes September 20 season preview/fundraiser).
upcoming:
SOUNDS AND SWEET AIRS
02/07/2012 at 8:00pm
Evolution presents two remarkable, vastly different musical treatments of Shakespeare’s The Tempest: local composer Ronald Pearl's Be Not Afeard: Music from Prospero's Island and Paul Moravec’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tempest Fantasy. Both composers will take part in the pre-concert conversation.
February 7, 2012 at 8pm
7:00pm pre-concert conversation
Tickets:
7:00pm pre-concert conversation
Tickets:
- $15/$10 students
SEASON 7: BEYOND MUSIC
BEYOND MUSIC
September 20, 2011
8:00pm season preview and fundraiser
Join us as we kick off the new season with an informal wine reception, featuring a silent auction and brief performances of music from upcoming concerts.
More Information:
THE WRECKAGE OF FLOWERS
November 1, 2011
7:00pm pre-concert conversation, 8:00pm concert
Violinist Miranda Cuckson and pianist Blair McMillen perform music by Peabody Institute faculty member Michael Hersch, alongside stunning drawings by local artist Nicholas Cairns. The wreckage of flowers: 21 pieces after poetry and prose of Czeslaw Milosz represents the composer’s deeply personal response to the events of September 11, 2001.
More Information:
LIEDERABEND 2.0
December 6, 2011
NO pre-concert talk, 8:00pm concert
An evening of contemporary vocal works, paired with solo piano pieces, by George Crumb, Peter Lieberson, Arvo Pärt, and Evolution Series director Judah Adashi.
More Information:
SOUNDS AND SWEET AIRS
February 7, 2012
7:00pm pre-concert conversation, 8:00pm concert
Evolution presents two remarkable, vastly different musical treatments of Shakespeare’s The Tempest: local composer Ronald Pearl's Be Not Afeard: Music from Prospero's Island and Paul Moravec’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tempest Fantasy. Both composers will take part in the pre-concert conversation.
More Information:
THE MUSIC OF MARTIN BRESNICK
March 6, 2012
7:00pm pre-concert conversation, 8:00pm concert
The longtime director of the composition program at Yale joins the Evolution Series for a concert devoted to his solo and chamber music, inspired by the words and images of Franz Kafka and
Francisco Goya. In the words of the New Yorker’s Alex Ross, “Bresnick creates a rich world in even
the humblest forms.”
More Information:
INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE
April 3, 2012
7:00pm pre-concert conversation, 8:00pm concert
Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the most adventurous and accomplished groups in new music,” the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) returns to the Evolution Series to debut new pieces commissioned for its ambitious ICELab program, alongside recent masterworks. Students from the Baltimore School for the Arts, mentored by ICE, will open the concert as part of a new educational partnership with the Evolution Series.
More Information:
NEWS
08/24/2011
City Paper previews exciting new season
The Evolution Contemporary Music Series, curated by local composer Judah Adashi, enters its seventh season with a theme explicitly linking contemporary music with the other arts...
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08/24/2011
Baltimore Sun previews season 7
Composer Judah Adashi, founding director of the series, devised a theme for the new season that reflects remarks made by conductor/pianist Daniel Barenboim: "You can only live in music … if you see the parallels with literature, if you see the parallels with painting, if you see the parallel with the development of political processes..."
→Read more
→Read more
12/31/2010
Evolution's "mesmerizing" Little Match Girl Passion one of the Top 10 Classical Musical Events of 2010 in Baltimore/DC
Dec. 6: The Evolution Contemporary Music Series at An die Musik. Judah Adashi led a finely responsive vocal quartet in a mesmerizing account of David Lang's "The Little Match Girl Passion," winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for music...
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→Read more
12/07/2010
Evolution's Little Match Girl Passion "a major achievement"
Every now and then, you get lucky enough to be blown away by hearing a piece of music for the first time. I had that experience Monday night at An Die Musik where the Evolution Contemporary Music Series presented a performance of David Lang's "The Little Match Girl Passion," a work inspired by a sobering Hans Christian Andersen story...→Read more
12/07/2010
Praise for Evolution's Little Match Girl Passion from The League of Ordinary Gentlemen
When I go to symphony halls or other elegant classical music spaces, I sometimes feel like an intruder in the courts of the cultured. An die Musik is different: you don’t have to be high-class; you just have to like music. Last night I went there to see a performance of David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion, which was being performed as part of Judah Adashi’s thus-far excellent Evolution Contemporary Music Series...→Read more
10/20/2010
Evolution Series highlighted in Where Magazine
The brainchild of composer and Peabody Professor Judah Adashi, the Evolution Series celebrates music by living composers with concerts performed at Mt. Vernon’s plush An Die Musik, a jazz CD store with an intimate music venue upstairs...→Read more
09/14/2010
"Pioneering" Evolution Series praised on NewMusicBox
Within the last few weeks, our two pioneering new music series made their 2010–11 season announcements, and both appear poised to raise Baltimore's profile...Judah Adashi's Evolution Contemporary Music Series will present David Lang's Pulitzer-Prize winning The Little Match Girl Passion, and will bring ICE and Derek Bermel into town to play concerts and Alex Ross to talk about his new book. Locals are extraordinarily lucky to be able to hear these people in the intimate upstairs space at An Die Musik.→Read more
09/13/2010
Evolution "brings its 'A' game" for Season 6
I am not only thrilled about the new season of classical and contemporary music in Baltimore… I am drooling over it. Unladylike to be sure....To whet your appetite, I bring you the Season 6 announcement for the Evolution Contemporary Music Series. Judah Adashi, founder/director, certainly brings his “A” game to programming each season.→Read more
03/31/2010
Evolution Series director Judah Adashi featured in City Paper cover story on new music in Baltimore!"
WIND THROUGH the warren of gates, passages, buildings, and hallways that make up the city-block-sized Peabody Institute and you eventually find yourself in an office whose sparse decoration consists mostly of a set of fliers for the Evolution Contemporary Music series...→Read more
03/03/2010
"When in Rome" a Critic's Pick in the Baltimore City Paper!
Every year, the American Academy in Rome selects a handful of American composers to come study in the Eternal City for a year. The Rome Prize is a big deal in the galaxy of competitions, fellowships, and prizes that help make up the classical-music universe (Samuel Barber won twice)...→Read more
03/03/2010
Evolution Series director Judah Adashi interviewed on WYPR
Composer and Evolution Series founder and director Judah Adashi was featured on WYPR's "Maryland Morning," discussing his own music and, in the second half of the interview, the Evolution Series.→Read more
01/26/2010
Evolution "goes where few local organizations have dared go before"
On Tuesday evening at An die Musik, the Evolution Contemporary Music Series goes where few local organizations have dared go before -- contemporary Finland. Works by two very big names on the composer front, Kaija Saariaho and Magnus Lindberg, will be performed, along with music by Esa-Pekka Salonen...→Read more
01/21/2010
"Finlandia" a City Paper "Critic's Pick"!
Perhaps no composer is as closely identified with his or her native country as Jean Sibelius is with Finland. He not only defines Finnish culture for many throughout the world, he literally helped define it with a host of renowned pieces based on his country's landscape and myths...→Read more
12/14/2009
Review: "Compelling" Evolution Series presents contemporary English music
One week ago, the Evolution Contemporary Music Series presented a program titled Across the Pond, featuring works by Knussen, Harvey, Birtwistle, Adès, and a world premiere by Peabody professor Oscar Bettison. The Evolution Series uses the intimate space of Baltimore’s An Die Musik LIVE!, where instead of cramped seating, rows of pink overstuffed chairs help create the intimate atmosphere of a salon. Evolution Series director Judah Adashi mentioned that English contemporary music, as with its predecessors, characteristically calls for a high degree of quiet introspection, making this venue particularly well suited for this program. To set the mood, Vaughan Williams’s instrospective Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis was quietly piped through onstage speakers prior to the performance...→Read more
12/02/2009
Evolution Series "Across the Pond" a Critic's Pick in City Paper, Urbanite Magazine!
Judah Adashi was thinking about music—not unusual, since he teaches at the Peabody Institute. He had noticed a lack of concert series and ensembles devoted to the music of living composers. “People are doing everything under the sun,” he says, “but if you go to a symphony concert probably one of the latest pieces you’ll hear is Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring”—which premiered in 1913...→Read more
Concert halls rarely go more than a week or two without multiple pieces of music from German, Austrian, French, or Russian composers on the bill. Pieces by English composers are fewer and farther between, however, and pieces by English composers more contemporary than early 20th-century eminences like Britten and Vaughan Williams scarcer still...→Read more
10/20/2009
New music flourishes in Baltimore
Evolution series shows city has 'a vibrant scene going'
Has Baltimore become a haven for new music? It sure looks that way.
"I've always been optimistic about new music here," says Baltimore-born, Peabody-trained composer Judah Adashi, founder of the Evolution Contemporary Music Series.
"I'd definitely say that, with our series, Mobtown Modern, what Marin [Alsop] is doing at the BSO, and the High Zero Festival, we have a vibrant scene going. You might find something like this on every street corner in New York, but given the relative size of our town, there are really dynamic things on almost any given night," Adashi says. →Read more
"I've always been optimistic about new music here," says Baltimore-born, Peabody-trained composer Judah Adashi, founder of the Evolution Contemporary Music Series.
"I'd definitely say that, with our series, Mobtown Modern, what Marin [Alsop] is doing at the BSO, and the High Zero Festival, we have a vibrant scene going. You might find something like this on every street corner in New York, but given the relative size of our town, there are really dynamic things on almost any given night," Adashi says. →Read more
10/05/2009
5th anniversary season
The Evolution Contemporary Music Series is pleased to announce its fifth season! Click here for details, and check back often for updates.
3/5/2009
Mobtown, Evolution give Baltimore needed jolt
Last night, the Evolution Contemporary Music Series, founded and directed with great commitment by Judah Adashi and based at An die Musik, saluted Theofanidis, who recently left the Peabody faculty for Yale's. The program provided a fascinating sample of the composer's solo and small ensemble pieces, all of them reflecting the Theofanidis trademarks of refined craftsmanship, structural clarity and neo-tonal, unapologetic accessibility. →Read more
1/27/2009
Amy Briggs brilliant in tough American piano music
In the space of about two hours last night, pianist Amy Briggs dove into the daunting field of modern American music -- at one point, nose-first (literally) -- and demonstrated the diverse richness of that repertoire in brilliant fashion. →Read more
3/27/2008
Concert honors Marin Alsop's advocacy for new music
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop was hailed -- and hailed and hailed -- last night as a champion of living composers during a nearly three-hour event presented by the Evolution Contemporary Music Series that drew a standing-room-only crowd to An die Musik. Two of those composers, Christopher Rouse and Kevin Puts (who has studied with Rouse), were on hand to join in the praise during a pre-concert discussion with her and, later, in remarks to the audience before their works were performed…the remarkable concert balanced works by Rouse and Puts with those by two other composers whose music Alsop has long advocated, John Corigliano and John Adams. →Read more
2/13/2007
Modern voices at An die Musik
Founded and directed by An die Musik's composer-in-residence, Judah Adashi, the Evolution project has added a welcome dose of newness to the local concert scene. This particular venture was rich in unusual experiences. →Read more
11/21/2006
Bold new piano music
Baltimore doesn't have a thriving new music scene, but it got a welcome boost with the arrival last year of the Evolution Contemporary Music Series at An die Musik, run by composer Judah Adashi. For its season-opening concert Friday night, the series offered a heady and hefty sampling of American piano music from the past 25 years. I caught the first half of the program, which included two particularly impressive achievements. →Read more
2/09/2006
Long-overdue attention for composer Maw
Like prophets, some composers don't get heard often enough.
British-born Nicholas Maw, a longtime Washington resident and faculty member at the Peabody Conservatory, should be a household name here. This composer of uncompromising seriousness, extraordinary imagination and uncommon expressive weight is hardly ever acknowledged locally. →Read more
