Five College New Music Festival Returns to UMass Amherst in September

Biennial event will feature live performances for the first time since 2019

From September 9 to 11, the UMass Amherst Department of Music and Dance will once again play host to the Five College New Music Festival. This year’s event, titled “Finding the future, reconciling the past,” will feature four programs of new and recent compositions by twenty-three composers representing a range of contemporary music being created in our region, the U.S., and around the world.

All four festival concerts will take place in Bezanson Recital Hall in the UMass Bromery Center for the Arts, and are free and open to the public.

The festival weekend will include nearly 40 performers and composers, primarily current and former Five College faculty but also current students and community musicians, performing works by Five College faculty composers and contemporary composers. The event will feature numerous world-premieres, including Chelsea Komschlies’ “Beyond Machines,” the winning piece from the festival’s composition competition.

The 2022 festival schedule is as follows:

Friday, Sept. 9, 7:30 p.m. – Probabilities and Paradoxes

Composers: Kate Soper, Chen Yi, Daniel Warner, Unsook Chin & Julius Eastman

Saturday, Sept. 10, 2 p.m. – An Afternoon of Premieres

Violin duos by Francine Trester, Jason Robinson, John McDonald, John Aylward & Katherine Pukinskis, plus Composition Contest winner Chelsea Komschlies: “Beyond Machines”

Saturday, Sept. 10, 7:30 p.m. – New Directions

Composers: George Walker, Cecilia Livingston, Ye Xiaogang, Helen Grime & Eric Sawyer

Sunday, Sept. 11, 3 p.m. – Underground Fluidity Inverted Again

Composers: David Sanford, Aron Dahl, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Kate Soper, Lauren Bernofsky, Chou Wen-Chung & Alvin Singleton

The 2022 New Music Festival event is coordinated by Elizabeth Chang and Salvatore Macchia (UMass), along with Eric W. Sawyer (Amherst College) and Jiayan Sun (Smith College). Sponsors of the event are Five Colleges, Inc., UMass Amherst Department of Music & Dance, and the Music Departments of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke & Smith Colleges.