Program of works by Sir George Benjamin, Oliver Knussen, and Augusta Read Thomas open Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition's 2022/23 Season

CHICAGO (HYDE PARK) - The University of Chicago’s Center for Contemporary Composition (CCCC) opens the 2022/23 concert season with a concert tribute to two of music’s greatest contributors —?Sir George Benjamin and the late Oliver Knussen on Saturday, October 1 at 7:30 p.m. at the Logan Center for the Arts. Stefan Asbury conducts musical performances by members of the CCCC’s resident Grossman Ensemble, piano soloist Gilles Vonsattel, and other guest artists. The evening will also feature readings of original poems by poet and novelist Rachel DeWoskin. Guests are invited to join the artists for an after-party to celebrate the performance. 

Sir George Benjamin is one of today’s most prominent composer-conductors. He began composing at the age of seven and was only 20 years old when?Ringed by the Flat Horizon?was played at the BBC Proms by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Mark Elder. Recent seasons have seen major surveys of Benjamin’s work at the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Composer Festival at Konzerthaus Stockholm and Radio France’s Festival?Présences. This operatic works Into the?Little Hill, Written on Skin, and Lessons in Love and Violence have garnered many international prizes and have been broadcast by BBC television. Since 2001 Benjamin has been the Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King‘s College London. His works are published by Faber Music and are recorded on Nimbus Records. He has received numerous honorary fellowships and international awards, was made a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2015 and was knighted in the 2017 Birthday Honours. In 2019 he was given the Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement from the Venice Biennale. 

Legendary composer Oliver Knussen (1952-2018) was just fifteen when he wrote his First Symphony (later conducting its premiere with the London Symphony Orchestra). As one of the foremost musicians in the world, Knussen was renowned for his unfailing advocacy across a wide range of contemporary music including his Third Symphony, which is now widely regarded as a twentieth-century classic. He was the recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor Award in 2009, Artist in Association with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (2009-2014), Music Director of the London Sinfonietta (1998-2002), Head of Contemporary Music at the Tanglewood Music Center (1986-93), and Artist in Association with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. He was Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival from 1983 to 1998, and in 1992 established the Britten-Pears Programme’s Contemporary Composition and Performance Courses in collaboration with Colin Matthews.In 2014 he became the inaugural Richard Rodney Bennett Professor of Music at the Royal Academy of Music, London.?Other accolades included the Ivor Novello?Award for Classical Music, the ISM Distinguished Musician Award, and the 2015 Queen’s Medal for Music. 

As part of the concert honoring Benjamin and Knussen, August Read Thomas’s Dance Mobile (in memoriam Oliver Knussen) will receive its Chicago premiere. This is the first work of Thomas’s to be performed at a CCCC concert. She is founder and director of the Center.  

As part of the program, poet and novelist Rachel DeWoskin will read her poems "anthrosphere" and "arrhythmia," from her collection "absolute animal." DeWoskin is the award-winning author of five novels:?Someday We Will Fly;?Banshee;?Blind; Big Girl Small; Repeat After Me;?the memoir?Foreign Babes in Beijing; and the poetry collection,?Two Menus. Her essays, poems, and articles have appeared in?publications including?The New Yorker,?Vanity Fair,?Ploughshares,?and?New Voices from the Academy of?American?Poets. DeWoskin’s awards include a National Jewish Book Award, a Sydney Taylor Book Award, and an American Library Association’s Alex Award, among others. Three of her books are being developed for television. She is on the fiction faculty at the University of Chicago, and affiliated?faculty in Jewish Studies and East Asian Studies. 

A remarkable group of musicians take the stage throughout the evening including members of the CCCC’s resident Grossman Ensemble, "immensely talented" and "quietly powerful pianist" (New York Times) Gilles Vonsattel, and a small roster of Chicago area new music specialists.  

The concert will be followed by an after-party in the Gidwitz Lobby of the Logan Center for the Arts where guests can meet and mingle with the artists. Tickets are $20 and free for students with a valid student ID. For more information, visit cccc.uchicago.edu.