Nostos: 'Conversations with the Dead'

Join us for a varied evening of music for electric guitar, viola, and piano by San Diego composer Adam Greene, including three premieres. Featuring performances by UCCS faculty Colin McAllister and Martha Muelheisen with special guest artist Shannon Wettstein, piano.

Adam Greene (b. 1970) is a composer and writer whose creative work references interests in literature, linguistics, and cognitive science in music that explores multiplicity, fragility, and instability, often through intensive examination of instrumental practice. He has received grants and awards from The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard, ASCAP, NACUSA, The Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI), The American Music Center, and The American Composers Forum. His music has been played by the San Diego Symphony, SONOR, NOISE Ensemble, the Formalist Quartet, Speculum Musicae, and Ensemble Resonanz, and counts his work with several soloists as particularly critical in developing his approach to instrumental writing. He has participated in several festivals and residency programs that have featured his works, such as UCROSS, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the soundON Festival of Modern Music, the International Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Darmstadt), the Composers Conference at Wellesley, the Summer Institute for Contemporary Piano Performance (at the New England Conservatory of Music), and the Long Beach Summer Arts program. His compositions appear on recordings from Aucourant Records and Chen Li Music. adamgreene.net.

Guest artist bio: Pianist Shannon Wettstein invites audiences to hear connections between daring new music and historical masterworks.  About why she makes music, “For me, it’s about taking risks—I I love taking audiences along with me into unknown territory.” With over 400 premieres, Shannon has performed at Lincoln Center, at Boston’s Gardner Museum, at the Ft. Worth Modern Art Museum, and Qualcomm’s headquarters in San Diego. Steve Smith of the New York Times wrote that her performance at The Stone was “full of subtleties no recording could catch…a reminder of why we attend concerts.” Shannon is a professor of piano at St. Cloud State University and host of Dr. Avant-Garde, a podcast about moving the art of music forward in the 21st century. Find information about Shannon’s recordings of works by Xenakis, Anthony Davis, Chopin, and others. shannonwettstein.com.