Scene from a recent performance of Stacy Busch’s opera “She Breathes Fire” (photo by Lindsay Clipner)
Diving into Kansas City’s new music scene
The new music community is eclectic, resourceful, imaginative and very present in Kansas City and the surrounding region.
Between local ensembles committed to new music, university programs and touring groups, audiences have a variety of performances each season to experience new sound worlds, consider a more diverse creative landscape and connect with composers of today.
The term “new music” may seem a little confusing, as it encompasses just about everything and anything “new,” so many in the genre also use the term “contemporary classical” to distinguish this category of music, which can be anything from symphonies to solo projects to operas to chamber music to collaborations with artists in other genres.
The genre classification in new music is somewhat time-period specific (most organizations will set stipulations, such as only programming music by living composers or music written in the 21st century), but it’s primarily an aesthetic determination.
For composer Laura Whitney-Johnson, it’s the “modern stylistic elements” that set the genre apart. “That can mean a lot of things and is definitely subjective, so to keep this simple I would define it by what is it not — it is not neoclassical or neoromantic or strictly imitative of any other pre-1945 style,” she said.
Whitney-Johnson is on the board of newEar Contemporary Ensemble, one of the leading proponents of new music in the region, and has served as artistic director of the organization.
“I started composing when I was about 14, but I knew absolutely nothing about the contemporary music scene until I started taking composition lessons at KU,” she said. (She graduated with a degree in composition from UMKC Conservatory). “Discovering new music opened up a whole world to me. It was like discovering colors I’d never seen before. Imagine you’d only seen primary colors and then saw fuchsia, lavender, chartreuse, gold, and so on for the first time. That’s what really good contemporary music is like for me.”
While the field of “classical music” is historically dominated by the voices of white, male composers and their experiences and viewpoints, in contemporary classical music the gate is thrown wide, creating more opportunities for other genders, ethnicities, mindsets, traditions and stories.
“Most people have no idea that they’re missing out on 80 years of innovation that could enrich their lives so much,” said Whitney-Johnson.
NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLES
newEar has a collaboration coming up with contemporary music choir KCVITAs. Both groups have brought contemporary classical music to Kansas City audiences for quite some time. newEar was founded in 1993; KCVITAs, founded by Jackson Thomas, celebrates its 10th season.
“We are excited to further promote a culture of open-minded listening, challenging (our musicians) and audiences to be ‘up for anything,’” said Thomas.
“Eklektikos,” to be presented Nov. 8 and 10 at Country Club Christian Church, speaks both to the “anything goes” nature of new music as well as the eclectic programming for this concert, which will include Missy Mazzoli’s multi-movement work “The Year of Our Burning,” William Kenlon’s “Last Lines,” for choir and soprano saxophone, and the open form composition “Creative Construction” by George Lewis.
Though the founders of newEar no longer perform with the ensemble, many still experiment with form and sound. Multi-instrumentalist Thomas Aber and Dwight Frizzell, professor of sound and converging media at the Kansas City Art Institute, also founded the Myth-Science Ensemble. Recently, they’ve participated in a four-part series of concerts at Charlotte Street: “Spirit in Sonic Art.” The next two performances are Thursdays, Nov. 7 and Dec. 8.
Charlotte Street has also hosted performances of the Extemporaneous Music & Arts Society (EMAS), as well as premieres of Stacy Busch’s operas “When/Time” and “She Breathes Fire,” and performances of touring percussion artist Tatsuya Nakatani and the Nakatani Gong Orchestra.
Though based in Springfield, Missouri, the American Wild Ensemble, a contemporary classical chamber music group, performs in and around Kansas City and Lawrence, Kansas.
ON CAMPUS
College music programs offer exceptional opportunities to familiarize yourself with new music.
Closest to home, at the UMKC Conservatory, there are many entry points to new music. There are four award-winning composition professors on faculty: Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Paul Rudy and Yotam Haber, (and if you include the jazz program, Marcus Lewis). Together, they not only foster their students’ diverse artistic voices, but also encourage a community of experimentation and connection. In the UMKC Conservatory percussion studio, the members of the Grammy Award-nominated Sandbox Percussion coach students as faculty and ensemble-in-residence, when they aren’t performing around the world. And many of the faculty encourage their students to perform and research new music, like saxophone professor Zach Shemon, a member of the PRISM saxophone quartet.
While in school and even after graduation, these relationships garner many collaborative opportunities. For instance, UMKC Conservatory composition doctoral candidate Kwan Leung Ling recently put together a duo, (i)-ll-us-ion, with Georgia-based pianist Nicole Ying — they met at California Institute of the Arts — to perform new music written specifically for suona, a traditional Chinese instrument, and piano. They are “dedicated to commissioning new works, challenging labels, and bridging cultural and musical gaps,” said Ling.
This project is the “first of its kind,” he said, something that has never been done before in the world.
“The suona is often considered ‘old fashioned’ because of its traditional role and association to funeral and wedding ceremony,” the duo explained. “The piano, on the other hand, has an elevated and modern impression to the Chinese audience, becoming one of the most popular and beloved instruments.” With this ensemble, they will also incorporate unconventional elements such as extended techniques, electronic music, and multimedia.
In September, (i)-ll-us-ion had a residency with the UMKC Conservatory composition department, and they return to UMKC in November for a concert of world premiere works, as well as Chen Yi’s “Chinese Ancient Dances” for suona and piano.
At the University of Kansas School of Music, composers Ingrid Stölzel, a graduate of the UMKC Conservatory, and Forrest Pierce, familiar to many in Kansas City’s classical music scene, were joined this year by Kristopher Bendrick. In the close-knit world of new music, one of his teachers was Christopher Biggs, who earned his doctorate in composition at UMKC Conservatory and was co-founder of the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance. The composition department runs Kansas New Music, which hosts a festival each year.
At the University of Missouri School of Music, composer Stefan Freund is artistic director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative, faculty advisor for Mizzou New Music Ensemble student group as well as a founding member of 20-member professional ensemble Alarm Will Sound, which performs each summer at the Mizzou International Composers Festival. The composition faculty also includes Utku Asuroglu.
EMBRACE THE UNEXPECTED
The conventional concertgoer may encounter more new music than one might assume, as many traditionally focused organizations also appreciate and perform new music, commissioning works for their specific ensembles. The Bach Aria Soloists have performed work by contemporary composers, including Narong Prangcharoen, and performed at the Thailand International Composition Festival. The Kansas City Baroque Consortium frequently commissions new work for baroque instruments for their summer series. Chamber ensemble NAVO recently performed a variety of Stölzel’s work, including two world premieres: “Genius Loci – the Spirit of Place,” with the Park ICM Orchestra, and “Three Silent Things.”
The Kansas City Symphony just opened their season with their new music director, Matthias Pintscher, himself a composer and proponent of new music. For the past decade, he was artistic director of Ensemble intercontemporain, a Paris-based contemporary music ensemble founded by famed composer/conductor Pierre Boulez in 1976.
Contemporary music has frequently been a part of the Kansas City Symphony’s classical season, and the ensemble presents world and national premieres of new work most years. This season, hear contemporary classical work by Carlos Simon, Michael Tilson Thomas, Ellen Reid, Brian Raphael Nabors and Alissa Firsova, as well as world premieres by Conrad Tao and Joan Magrané Figuera (though often these modern pieces are omitted from the organization’s new Piazza series concept, which has shorter concerts on Friday evenings).
And while Pintscher has not yet programmed any of his own work with KC Symphony, newEar performs his “Study II Treatise on the Veil” at their March 2025 concert.
“The broadest definition of “new” would extend back 79 years to the beginning of the post-WWII era, but style has changed a lot since then,” said Whitney-Johnson. “From a programming perspective, I personally love to see a balance of extremely recent compositions — ideally commissions that will give composers a nice payday — next to great works by the elders of the composer community.” Though she focuses specifically on working in the contemporary classical community, the concept of intriguing juxtapositions applies whether pieces were written this year, in the last decade — or centuries ago.
ABUNDANT CURIOSITY
While we can’t ask Clara Schumann about her influences or Jean Sibelius about his creative struggles, with the new music community you can interact with living composers. Nothing is created in a vacuum, and extra-musical connections can add nuance and depth to a performance that might otherwise seem aurally intimidating.
Performing new music also helps ensembles be more a part of the creation process, too, as composers try out new ideas, tinker with pieces and hear their work in real time. “For many choirs, taking the chance on a piece of music that might not be the final version of itself in that moment can be seen as a risk, but we see it as a beautiful opportunity,” said Thomas.
If you think you don’t like contemporary classical music, consider this:
It may just be lack of exposure.
Remember, many of the familiar names in classical music now — like Hildegard of Bingen, Josquin des Prez, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Igor Stravinsky, George Gershwin — were, in their time, pushing the boundaries of expectation, exceeding the limitations of the instruments and challenging social norms, just like composers of recent generations.
What is known as the “mere exposure effect” is a psychological effect in which increased exposure, and therefore familiarity, determines whether someone likes a certain food, a certain scent, a certain song.
“This is a wild, real phenomenon I’ve experienced many times,” said Whitney-Johnson.
Simply, just by exposing oneself to more contemporary classical music, the more favorably one experiences it.
“Here’s something that might be controversial to admit, but for people who have never been to a new music concert… you might hate some of it the first time you hear it,” said Whitney-Johnson. “But… keep listening and see what happens.”
