The Mizzou New Music Ensemble will present a preview of music from their upcoming tour of South America and more in a concert at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 9 at the Sinquefield Music Center on the University of Missouri campus in Columbia. The concert is free and open to the public.

For their first concert of 2020 and their first public performance at the new Sinquefield Music Center, the Ensemble (pictured) will play two new works written by Mizzou graduate composition students, “Cataretê” by Luis Hermano Bezerra and “Ancient Echoes” by Daniel Fitzpatrick. Both pieces were composed specifically for the Ensemble’s upcoming tour of South America in late May and early June.

In addition, the Ensemble will present three works by South American composers that they will play during the tour: “Luna más negra” by Jose Halac of Argentina; “Sin Muerte” by Vladimir Guicheff Bogacz of Uruguay; and “Y vos, Por Salvarte, También Gritaste,” by Brazil’s German Gras, who was Luis Hemano Bezerra’s undergraduate composition teacher at the Universidade Estadual do Ceará in Fortaleza.

The concert also will feature music from the two distinguished guest composers for this summer’s Mizzou International Composers Festival, as the Ensemble will play Chen Yi’s “Near Distance” and David T. Little’s “Descanso (waiting).”

Rounding out the program will be a second performance of “Construction,” composed by Mizzou graduate student Niko Schroeder for the grand opening of the Sinquefield Music Center in February.

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.