June 16, 2021

Mizzou New Music Ensemble featured on new recording

The Mizzou New Music Ensemble is featured on Black Pierrot, a new album by Mizzou’s University Singers that is being released this week on the Centaur Records label. The album (pictured) is described as “a program of great choral works, including one work from the 1500s, works from the 20th Century,” plus the title track, which is performed by the Singers and the Mizzou New Music Ensemble, directed by Stefan Freund. It’s the world premiere recording of this new work, which was commissioned from composer William Averitt by R. Paul Crabb, director of choral activities at…

March 8, 2017

University Singers, Mizzou New Music Ensemble to premiere new work by William Averitt in concert on Saturday, March 18

The University of Missouri’s University Singers and Mizzou New Music Ensemble will present the world premiere of “Black Pierrot,” a newly commissioned work from composer William Averitt, in a concert at 7:00 p.m. Saturday, March 18 at the First Baptist Church, 1112 East Broadway in Columbia. General admission to the concert is $5 for the public, free for Mizzou faculty, students and staff. “Black Pierrot” was commissioned by Mizzou director of choral activities Paul Crabb for the University Singers and the Mizzou New Music Ensemble with funding from the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation. Inspired by seven poems…

Oct. 23, 2015

University Singers to premiere new work by Chen Yi

This weekend, the Mizzou New Music Initiative and the University of Missouri School of Music will have the honor of welcoming Chen Yi for a brief residency on the MU campus and a world premiere. Chen (pictured) currently is a distinguished professor of composition at the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. A finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition “Si Ji” (“Four Seasons”), she was born and raised in Guangzhou, China and is known as a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural…

July 16, 2014

Composers Festival Spotlight: Prometheus

Prometheus: An American Vocal Consort will be the guest performers for the 2014 MICF’s “Mizzou New Music” concert on Friday, July 25 at the Missouri Theatre. The 12-member ensemble “aims to inspire, enlighten, heal, and share through intimate performances of blazingly communicative a cappella music from the renaissance to the brightest examples of music from today’s leading composers.” Prometheus is conducted by artistic director R. Paul Crabb, who in his “day job” serves as the University of Missouri’s Director of Choral Activities. Now six years old, the group was founded by Kyle Stegall,…

April 8, 2014

New oratorio by Mizzou’s Stefan Freund reveals
Missouri’s Civil War history through music

Though the Civil War ended nearly 150 years ago, it remains a continuing subject of fascination for historians and in pop culture, inspiring poems, songs, novels, films and more. Now the war’s divisive effects on the state of Missouri are the subject of a new oratorio by Stefan Freund, an associate professor of composition and music theory at the University of Missouri and co-artistic director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative. The world premiere of “The War Amongst Families and Neighbors: The Civil War in Missouri” will be presented by the University of Missouri School of…