Zeitgeist's 5th Annual New Music Cabaret features an eclectic variety of new music from the top musicians in the Twin Cities, including contemporary music group RenegadeEnsemble. RenegadeEnsemble performs at the Cabaret on Nov. 8, 7:30 p.m. In addition, their season opener concert, Poppies in October, is tomorrow night, October 26, at Studio Z.
We had a chance to catch up with RenegadeEnsemble Assistant Director Solange Guillaume to hear a bit more about what the group is up to.
RenegadeEnsemble is almost 10 years old—how has the group grown over the years?
RenegadeEnsemble started out in 2004 as a group of students at the University of Minnesota interested in performing contemporary vocal music. (If I remember the story correctly) there were a ton of students at the first meeting! And then that dwindled...and then we realized that what we had a dedicated mixed ensemble of vocalists and instrumentalists and that form for us stuck. As members of the group graduated, we have been transitioning to a professional contemporary ensemble, currently with some of our members students at the University. We have explored some large ensemble works like Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians during our group's existence, but the core member numbers tend to be about 6-8 people. The group currently consists of mezzo soprano, clarinet, saxophone, percussion, and two pianos.
You’ve worked closely with some of the composers whose works you perform. What has that collaboration been like?
Collaboration has been so exciting for our group! We love engaging with composers and sculpting a work with them. Sometimes it's more active and we receive notes about the piece as we work on it. At other times, like when we have a call for scores, we receive music from people far away and they don't often get to interact with us as regularly. The best part is working with music that's being created here and now, dealing with current topical issues, the thread of thought that we have the privilege of discovering and revealing.
Share a little bit about the composer-in-residence program.
Our composer-in-residence program happens every other year, in which we put out a call for scores and choose who we'd like to work with for 1-2 years. Sometimes the composers will already have music written for our ensemble instrumentation; at other times, like in our most recent concert, composer Randy Bauer wrote music specifically for the ensemble. We'll be performing Randy's latest work, One bright, moonlit night, tomorrow night at Studio Z for our "Poppies in October" concert. This is a really exciting piece for us because it was written to include the whole group.
How is new music growing? What can musicians and listeners do to encourage this growth?
New music is growing in so many interesting ways. There are more enthusiastic composition students graduating and creating music now; and a number of new ensembles are being created by young professionals. We have a great foundation with music groups like Zeitgeist and Bang on a Can, who really forged the way to make what we do possible and encouraged in society. One of the challenges of new music is that, outside of music enthusiasts, it's really difficult to reach a wider audience unless we take some bigger leaps in that outreach (even more than using Facebook and Twitter).
Some of it has to do with educating, in early education through secondary school, about how cool modern composition is; sometimes, too, it's finding the right fit for inserting new music into interesting projects, like free jazz ensembles plus on-the-fly electronic music manipulation, or composers writing new works for live theater. One of the best things about contemporary music that also makes it the most difficult to pin down is its incredible flexibility. The last point about encouraging the growth of this music is that it needs to keep happening in venues outside of the concert hall, like at Studio Z, where the audience is small and people can chill, have a beer, and converse about the show.
Zeitgeist's New Music Cabaret
Nov. 7-10
(RenegadeEnsemble performs Friday, Nov. 8 at 7:30 p.m.)
Studio Z: 275 E. 4th Street, Suite 200, St. Paul
Tickets are $10 each night and can be purchased here.
RenegadeEnsemble: Poppies in October
Saturday, Oct. 26, 7:30 p.m.
Studio Z: 275 E. 4th Street, Suite 200, St. Paul
Tickets are $10 ($8 students/seniors) and can be purchased here.
Featuring works by James Holdman, Ned Rorem, Roshanne Etezady, Miriama Young, Caleb Burhans, and RenegadeEnsemble composer-in-residence Randy Bauer.
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