This story originally appeared in Fanfare Fall 2024.
Photo (above): Ben Bolter, left, and Alan Pierson are codirectors of the Contemporary Music Ensemble.
Each year, the Contemporary Music Ensemble plays side by side with renowned guest artists and collaborates with student and faculty composers from the Northwestern community and beyond. CME trains students to take on challenging contemporary repertoire while thriving in a large chamber-ensemble setting.
Faculty members Ben Bolter and Alan Pierson recently celebrated their 10th anniversary as CME codirectors and, in honor of the occasion, shared their 10 favorite performances from the past 10 years.
Harrison Birtwistle’s Cortège, February 2015
“Players from the legendary International Contemporary Ensemble coached our students and played in a combined group on Birtwistle’s Cortège. This was our first side-by-side with a major new music ensemble. It was fascinating to see the ICE players make their mark on CME and work together toward a meaningful result of an even higher caliber.” - Bolter
Photo by Lauren Bally
John Luther Adams’s Sila, September 2015
“This project was an ambitious collaboration across nearly all performing areas of Bienen. Musicians spread far apart while overlooking the vast Lake Michigan. It was a huge, hour-long sound installation built upon notes lasting as long as a breath. A beautiful and fitting ceremony to unveil this amazing building of ours.” - Bolter
Photo by Todd Rosenberg
Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, February 2017
“Working with Steve Reich on Music for 18 Musicians was the most powerful and formative experience of my own student years, so it was so deeply meaningful to pass on to these fortunate Bienen students the chance to perform this music for the composer—with Steve himself at the mixing board!” - Pierson
Photo by Todd Rosenberg
Works by Zappa and Varèse, May 2017
“Frank Zappa's obsession with the ever-modern work of Edgard Varèse is one of the great musical stories of all time. Zappa himself emceed this special show using archival audio materials that mashed up these two giants of 20th century music for a wildly enthusiastic downtown crowd at Millennium Park.” - Pierson
Photo by Todd Rosenberg
David T. Little’s Dog Days, November 2019
(This marked the first collaboration between CME and the opera program.) “David's poly-stylistic, post-apocalyptic opera is one of the great works of our time. The students dug into the fiercely challenging vocal and instrumental roles with total commitment and passion and nailed the wide-ranging styles.” - Pierson
Photo by Noah Frick-Alofs
Jennifer Walshe’s Hygiene, April 2021
“Figuring out how to make Jennifer's interactive theater piece work live over Zoom was one of our great pandemic puzzles. There was a scene in which two performers—each in their own apartments—had to appear to wrestle one another over a table. With careful choreography and mannequins, it came off pretty damn well!” - Pierson
Fernanda Aoki Navarro’s Glottogony, March 2022
“Fernanda brought her own collection of colorful roi-rois, a handheld Brazilian percussion instrument that everyone in the ensemble is instructed to twirl around—including folks standing in the audience. I’ll never forget when the first sounds of this instrument emerged and the audience felt the collective whirring of all these small devices filling up Galvin.” - Bolter
Photo by Melanie Ahn
Julius Eastman’s Stay On It, May 2022
“Because Eastman left behind no written music for the piece, tackling Stay On It calls on performers to be musicologists and improvisers too. And because it's not conducted, Ben and I just had to sit back and watch things unfold. Nothing in any of the rehearsals prepared us for the complete mayhem that the students unleashed in that performance.” - Pierson
Tania León’s Toque, October 2023
“Tania is a force of nature and when she spoke to the ensemble, the air around everything would be still. She had a truly captivating essence about her. She even gave me thoughts in rehearsal on how to conduct certain parts, which was effective and amazing. How often do I get a mini conducting lesson these days?” - Bolter
Photo by Todd Rosenberg
Steven Takasugi’s Sideshow, May 2024
“Programming Sideshow required a major leap of faith. The production and technical demands are myriad and exacting, and it asks that the performers think of themselves less as musicians and more as physical performers. There's no way we would have tackled this without the decade of Bienen experiences that showed us what the folks here are capable of.” - Pierson
Photo by Andi Griñé