Visiting Artist Concert: Memoria Nova

“The Space Traversed ,” a program featuring works by Debussy, Messiaen, and other contemporary composers, explores ideas of music as a means of reaching across great expanses of time to confront forbidden issues of a particular present moment, while also paying homage to and expanding upon the work of others, new and ancient.

Memoria Nova means new memory, or new history. By programming less frequently performed works from across the spectrum of musical history, the listener is encouraged to form a new memory of musical history – one that does not center on a structured narrative that leads from one masterpiece in the canon to the next, but rather on an exploration of musical styles which continuously cycles between bursts of newness and a return to a more familiar state.

Memoria Nova is comprised of two of Chicago’s most celebrated chamber musicians: Shanna Gutierrez on flute and Andrew Rosenblum on keyboards.