The Mizzou New Music Ensemble will hit the road this spring to perform a concert in Fort Worth, TX, followed by a tour of South America that will take them to Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay.

The journey will begin with a performance at 3:00 p.m. Saturday, May 9 at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Ft. Worth, TX, where the Ensemble (pictured) will perform a program of new works created by Mizzou composition students in response to images from the museum’s collection.

Junior composition major Ben Dawson’s piece is inspired by the Carter Museum’s collection of 19th Century Landscapes, while freshman composition majors Isabelle Borchardt, Camden Hernandez and Sam Whitty have based their respective works on the collections devoted to Contemporary American Creativity, Western Living – Sculptures and Paintings, and 20th Century Modern Abstractions.

Admission to the concert is free, but reservations are required and can be made starting Wednesday, April 1 via the museum’s website at https://www.cartermuseum.org/.

Later in the month, the Ensemble will travel to South America for a tour from Monday, May 18 through Friday, June 5 that will include three residencies with concerts in Argentina, plus residencies and concerts in Brazil, Peru and Uruguay.

All six concerts will feature a core program of works by Mizzou faculty members Stefan Freund and Carolina Heredia, Mizzou composition alumnus José Martínez, and current graduate students Luis Hermano Bezerra and Daniel Fitzpatrick.

Those works include a new arrangement of Freund’s “St. Louis Reds,” Heredia’s “Ius in Bello,” and Martinez’s “Illegal Cycles,” as well as two pieces composed specifically for the tour, Bezerra’s “Cataretê” and Fitzpatrick’s “Ancient Echoes.” In addition, each concert on the tour will feature a work by a local composer associated with the host institution.

The Ensemble’s first stop will be from Monday, May 18 through Wednesday, May 20 at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where their concert will include a performance of Patricia Martínez’s “Expansion.”

Next, from Thursday, May 21 through Saturday, May 23, they’ll be at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Córdoba, Argentina, and performing “Luna más negra” by José Halac.

From there, it’s back to Buenos Aires on Monday, May 25 and Tuesday, May 26, where they will reprise Martinez’s work as part of their performance at the Conservatorio Superior de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

Then, on Thursday, May 28 and Friday, May 29, the Ensemble will be in residence at the Escuela Universitaria de Música in Montevideo, Uruguay, with Vladimir Guicheff Bogacz’s “Sin muerte” and Sofia Scheps’ “I come from afar” as part of their concert program.

Traveling on to Brazil, their next stop will be from Sunday, May 31 through Tuesday, June 2 at the Universidade Estadual do Ceará in Fortaleza, where they will perform “Y vos, por salvarte, también gritaste…” by German Gras, who was Luis Bezerra’s composition teacher for his undergraduate degree.

The final residency of the tour will be on Thursday, June 4 and Friday, June 5 at the Universidad Nacional de Música in Lima, Peru, with the Ensemble performing José Sosaya’s “Girasol mágico gran brote” during their concert there.

At each location, the Mizzou composers also will give presentations about their work, and the Ensemble will do reading sessions of pieces written by composition students at each university.

The seven-member Mizzou New Music Ensemble is made up of University of Missouri graduate students under the direction of Stefan Freund, a cellist, composer, conductor, professor of composition, and artistic director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative.

The Ensemble’s members for the 2019-20 season are Daniel Fitzpatrick, piano; Stephen Landy, percussion; Ann Mozina, flute; Jordan Nielsen, percussion; Pedro Ramiro, violin; Cameron Tubbs, cello; and Andrew Wiele, clarinet. Mizzou New Music Initiative post-doctoral fellow Yoshiaki Onishi serves as the Ensemble’s assistant conductor.