University News

New Music Festival 2022 March 7-8 at Western

March 3, 2022

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MACOMB, IL – The School of Music at Western Illinois University, will present its 35th annual New Music Festival 2022 Monday-Tuesday, March 7-8.

The events that make up the festival will be held in Browne Hall and in the College of Fine Arts and Communication Recital Hall. The festival is being directed by WIU School of Music Professor James Romig and Assistant Professor Hong-Da Chin, both composition faculty.

This year's featured performer is cellist Craig Hultgren and the featured composer is Baljinder Sekhon.

Hultgren has performed as a cellist with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and has taught at Birmingham-Southern College, the University of Alabama Birmingham and the Alabama School of Fine Arts. His work is featured in four solo CD recordings. For 10 years he produced the Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial, an international competition to highlight the best new cello compositions.

Sekhon's work has been presented in more than 500 concerts in 20 countries. His wide range of musical interests and styles for saxophone and percussion instruments are recognized as pioneering work. He is an assistant professor of composition at the University of South Florida and has also served as a percussionist at the L.S. Philharmonic's Green Umbrella Series in Walt Disney Hall, Festival Spazio Musica in Cagliari, Italy and at the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York City.

"We are very excited that our WIU composition students have had the opportunity to work closely with Craig Hultgren as they worked on writing the compositions he will perform at this year's festival," said WIU Music Professor James Romig. "Craig was a guest for last year's festival, held over Zoom because of the pandemic, so our students have known Craig for a year now and have been emailing scores and recordings back and forth with him for these past months. Having him perform the student works here, in person, is the culmination of a lot of hard work and I know that our composition students will learn and grow from the experience of collaborating with a master performer who also happens to be a generous and supportive teacher and advocate for young composers."

This year's festival schedule include:

Monday, March 7

• 7:30 p.m., COFAC Recital Hall: Concert 1: Hulgren playing works by Sekhon, Chin and Romig. This is a recital of works for unaccompanied cello, including world-premiere


Tuesday, March 8

• 2 p.m., COFAC Recital Hall: Concert 2, An open rehearsal with Hultgren, cello – open to the public.

• 7:30 p.m., COFAC Recital Hall; Concert 3, Hultren playing works by WIU student composers Jessica Schaumberg, Hunter Logan Stuart, Garrett Davis, Libbey Lazowski, Alice Müller, Ryan Simester, Adam Nyquist, Mary Bausman, Robin Butler,and Jeremiah Hendricks. The concert is open to the public.

"Baljinder Sekhon is a fantastic composer and expert teacher," said Romig. "Having him here on campus is a great opportunity for our music students to hear two of his works performed on Monday night, and they'll also have a chance to hear him speak about his compositions, his career, and his teaching methods during in-class presentations on Monday and Tuesday."

The New Music Festival is supported by the School of Music and the WIU Performing Arts Society. For more information, call the COFAC Recital Hall office at (309) 298-1843 or visit bit.ly/WIUNewMusic.



Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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