Fri 3/4 –Wed 3/16
New orchestral music is alive and well in the Rock Hall City.
In a nutshell, that’s the rally cry of NEOSonicFest, which showcases Northeast Ohio composers and performers. The third annual event takes place Fri 3/4-Wed 3/16 at various venues around the region including SPACES Gallery, Rising Star Coffee Roastery, Cleveland State University and Baldwin Wallace University.
This year’s affair features No Exit presenting Carlton Vickers (3/4 & 5 at SPACES & Heights Arts), FiveOne Experimental Orchestra (3/5 at Rising Star Coffee Roastery), Cleveland Chamber Symphony and Young & Emerging Composers (3/9 at Cleveland State University), Contemporary Youth Orchestra presenting “Music and its Industry” (3/12 at Cleveland State University), Cleveland Composers Guild (3/13 at Baldwin Wallace University) and Cleveland Chamber Symphony & Verb Ballets presenting music of David Lang (3/16 at Baldwin Wallace University).
CoolCleveland talked to Cleveland Chamber Symphony music director and conductor Steven Smith about this growing festival that isn’t afraid of challenging musicians and audiences equally.
First of all, what’s the origin of NEOSonicFest?
The idea was to provide an umbrella by which a number of different individuals and groups pursuing contemporary music could band together, create higher visibility and an interesting concentration of activities within a single period to expose some collaborations and to provide an opportunity for people to have a concentrated experience of a wide variety of music.
What stands out about the schedule is there appears to be special concerts designed specifically for NEOSonicFest, as well as individual performances from participating entities.
There’s our own Cleveland Chamber Symphony concert and our collaboration with Verb Ballets, for example. And then some of the other events, such as the Cleveland Youth Orchestra and the Cleveland Composers Guild are self-produced events but they fall under the umbrella of the festival. But it’s a festival. And it’s pretty exciting bringing everyone together into one big thing. Each of us have our own loyal followings and the more we can connect to other groups — as has been our experience over the last couple of years — people become more excited about the range of activities that take place, and not just during the festival but throughout the entire year around Northeast Ohio.
As far as getting NEOSonicFest off the ground, how hard was it to convince your peers to join in?
People have been very eager, and each year we’ve had different participants. We have a few constants, but in other cases like No Exit and the Cleveland Composers Guild, they’re both appearing this year for the first time. And there are groups that appeared in previous years that are not this year. We’ve had an enormous amount of interest, which is really exciting.
It seems as though one hurdle regarding NEOSonicFest and the mainstream public has to do with perception. Often when they hear symphony and orchestra, their expectations are the performances will be Bach or Beethoven, not new orchestral music.
Yes, that’s absolutely true. Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s mission is exploring music of living American composers. We occasionally sprinkle in some old favorites from the early 20th century, established contemporary masterpieces, but primarily we do exist to serve living composers and bring that music to new audiences. Each of the groups participating is devoted to the same idea of performing contemporary music. And NEOSonic by its name is new sounds, basically. It’s meant to capture the idea that it is a festival that is focused entirely on the enormously wide range of contemporary music that exists. Another really important point is about the breadth of the festival. There are some things people might think are a little bit more traditional, there are other things that are very experimental and yet other things that fall in between.
Looking at this year’s schedule, can you point out a few performances of note?
This year the Cleveland Youth Orchestra is actually doing a program about music written for videogames. That’s a whole different kind of genre of music being written today. And Verb Ballets has a wide range of music as well. Their collaboration with Cleveland Chamber Symphony is specifically the music by composer David Lang, a very well-known New York composer and one of the founders of the Bang on the Can Festival. That’s an example of the wide range of music people can hear.
Finally, what’s the future of NEOSonicFest?
I think we can expand it. I think as you’re getting any new endeavor going the first couple of years, you’re sort of feeling your way and seeing how it is. Honestly, we didn’t know when we first brought the idea up who might be interested or might be out there. We heard from groups we didn’t even realize were there, which made us even more excited about the idea of doing it because I think we are providing great visibility for a lot of folks who might not have gotten it otherwise.
All NEOSonicFest performances, except the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, are free and open to the public. NEOSonicFest encourages a $10 suggested donation per performance and $5 for students.