Boston Conservatory's New Music Festival Puts Contemporary Composers in the Spotlight Professor Marti Epstein and composer in residence Lei Liang will premiere new works during this year's event, taking place January 31 to February 7.
By
Sarah Godcher Murphy
January 24, 2025
Composer Lei Liang speaks with members of contraBAND, Boston Conservatorys contemporary classical music ensemble.
Michelle Parkos
Boston Conservatory at Berklee's annual New Music Festival explores the breadth of contemporary classical music-spanning 20th-century modernism to the present day-and embraces the boundary-pushing spirit of the art form. With each iteration, the festival also showcases works by Boston Conservatory composers, from aspiring undergraduates to accomplished faculty like Marti Epstein and Eun Young Lee, whose compositions have earned them Guggenheim Fellowships.
This year's festival, running from January 31 to February 7, will feature world premieres by Epstein and Boston Conservatory composer in residence Lei Liang, himself a Guggenheim fellow and finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Festival highlights also include a portrait concert of works by Liang and two performances by visiting artists andPlay duo, presenting works written by composition students and by faculty member Victoria Cheah.
Boston Conservatory's contemporary music ensemble contraBAND will kick off the 2025 New Music Festival on January 31 with the Lei Liang Portrait Concert, featuring the world premiere of Liang's Inaudible Ocean alongside earlier works including Inkscape for percussion quartet and piano (2014) and Memories of Xiaoxiang for alto saxophone and tape (2003).
The latter recounts a story dating to the Chinese Cultural Revolution which has intrigued Liang for decades (and which he revisited in his Pulitzer Prize-nominated concerto, Xiaoxiang), concerning the murder of a villager by a local official. With no legal avenue to seek justice, the victim's widow takes her revenge by wailing like a ghost, night after night, in the forest behind the official's home, until they both were driven mad.
In Inkscape, Liang converts traditional Asian landscape painting into music, with a piano serving as the brush and a percussion quartet, the ink. And with Inaudible Ocean, the composer employs another eloquent metaphor, describing the piece as a sonic flashlight' to illuminate the hidden wonders of the ocean for listeners. The work draws inspiration from Liang's ongoing collaboration with marine scientists at the University of San Diego's Qualcomm Institute, merging technology and art to recreate sounds from the depths of the ocean, outside the realm of human hearing.
Professor Marti Epstein's new work For Jack was written for pianist and Boston Conservatory alum Jack Yarbrough (MM 21, contemporary classical music), who will perform the solo, recital-length piece on February 2. Yarbrough's performance career to date has focused on solo piano works as a means of temporal and perceptual expansion. He also has performed with Ensemble intercontemporain, Yarn/Wire, and Ensemble X, and is currently completing a Doctor of Musical Arts in performance practice at Cornell University.
Jack has performed several pieces of mine, and has demonstrated a real and deep understanding of my music. So when he asked me for a piece, I was happy to say yes, Epstein says. He exhibits a great deal of thought and patience in his playing. My piece has a lot of space in it, requiring Jack to be very patient at times, and to just listen to the resulting resonance.
Visiting artists andPlay-featuring Maya Bennardo, violin, and Hannah Levinson, viola-made their concert debut in 2012, committed to working with living composers and expanding repertoire for violin/viola duos; and since then, they have commissioned more than 45 new works. andPlay's cassette release of Assistant Professor Victoria Cheah's a butterfly on your shoulder into years and years to come (2022, Dinzu Artefacts) made Bandcamp's list of Best Experimental Music in March 2022. On February 6, they will perform Cheah's composition along with works by Bennardo and cellist/composer Mariel Roberts. And on February 7, andPlay will present a concert of new works composed by Boston Conservatory students.
View the complete schedule of New Music Festival events and watch the YouTube videos below, for a sampling of compositions by Lei Liang, Marti Epstein, and Victoria Cheah.
1. Inkscape by composer in residence Lei Liang, performed by Third Coast Percussion with pianist Daniel Schlossberg, 2015
2. In Praise of Broken Clocks by Professor Marti Epstein, performed by Sound Icon, 2024
3. A butterfly on your shoulder into years and years to come by Assistant Professor Victoria Cheah, performed by andPlay, 2021
Most Popular
Rihanna sings during the Concert for Valor in Washington, DC, November 11, 2014.
Image by EJ Hersom / CC-BY-2.0
This Rihanna Song Has Secret' '80s Easter Eggs The SOS songwriter revealed a nostalgic twist to the lyrics, and it's going viral on TikTok.
Latest
Dr. Rhoda Bernard, Managing Director of the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Earns Fulbright Specialist Award to Dublin City University The leader of Berklee's Institute for Accessible Arts Education, Dr. Bernard will engage with university students, faculty, and administrators on accessible music education.
Miles Sam
Image courtesy of Capture Thee Moments Photography, LLC
Two Summers, Two Continents: How One Teen Found His Sound at Berklee In back-to-back programs in Boston and Valencia, Spain, guitarist Miles Sam sharpened his craft, expanded his community, and set the stage for the next phase of his artistic life.
Composer Lei Liang
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Boston Conservatory's New Music Festival Puts Contemporary Composers in the Spotlight Professor Marti Epstein and composer in residence Lei Liang will premiere new works during this year's event, taking place January 31 to February 7.
