Music flows through our lives, across spaces and places, channeled by creators, players and listeners.
New Works Calgary’s 35th season celebrates the organization’s role as a meeting place for new music practice and performance, as a node in a national and international network that promote a confluence of creative energies of composers, musicians and adventurous listeners.
Our 35th Anniversary concert season embodies music moving through us: three programs of more than two dozen newly created Canadian compositions being swept across the land by three Canadian ensembles – Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, Quasar Saxophone Quartet, Ensemble Made in Canada, a program that crisscrosses music from north to sound bringing together the Ultraviolet Ensemble from Edmonton and Ensemble Resonance from Calgary, the admixture of sound and movement with an intimate performance by Vertical City, and voyages between the inside and outside, between the concert hall and the sounding world around us in a series of Soundwalks and educational school presentations.
New Works Calgary’s mission is to present Canadian music, and to create a cultural environment in which an appreciation of 20th and 21st century Canadian music can be developed. Our mandate also includes the presentation of landmark 20th Century compositions.
New Works Calgary came about because the artist John Snow had commissioned a trio by Allan Rae and discovered there were no performance opportunities for the piece. Surprised by this, John and his wife Kathleen sponsored a concert of new music by Calgary composers and musicians, in association with the Canadian Music Centre, celebrating the 25th anniversary of its foundation in April 1984. The success of this concert encouraged John and co-founder Quenten Doolittle to continue with a concert series that would feature new works. As a result, the “New Works of Art Calgary Society” was established in 1984 and has maintained a continuous series of three to seven programs each season ever since.
“New paintings are easily seen by everyone, even if it is only by looking in the window of an art gallery. Written works are almost as easy being available from libraries, magazines, books, and many radio programs. More difficult are works for the theatre and most difficult of all is to have the opportunity to hear new music.”
Besides being the first President of the society, John designed the programs and posters, which became collector’s items. John and Kathleen Snow again helped to fund the next program, which was held in the Pleiades Theatre, in April, 1985.
As co-founder Quenten Doolittle has said, “Our general goal has been not only to present contemporary Canadian music in all its diversity but also to explore the rich collaborative possibilities between Canadian composers and poets, writers, video and performance artists, visual artists, dancers, actors, and musicians.
Not only has New Works Calgary presented a rich diversity of music, we’ve also played host to collaborations between Canadian composers, poets, visual artists, dancers and more. Striving to be thought-provoking has always been in our makeup.
Artists interested in performing or having New Works Calgary present their work are invited to contact the New Works General Manager.
Premieres by Calgary Composers
neworks 2019-2020 Artists & Composers
François Houle
I am a Canadian clarinetist who embraces pretty much any music where the clarinet is present, or has a bit of profile or history. Although I am classically trained, I have not followed the traditional career path associated with the kind of classical training I came...
Proteus Saxophone Quartet
Known for his radiant orchestrations, his dramatic structures and his innovative guitar work, Canadian Tim Brady is a composer and guitarist who has created music in a wide range of genres ranging from chamber and orchestral music to electroacoustic works, chamber opera, contemporary dance scores, jazz and free improvisation.
Sunita LeGallou
Sunita LeGallou is a self-taught abstract artist, using intuitive mark-making to chart her emotional response to music. She's performed live onstage alongside musicians and orchestras, most often along with contemporary classical. She also keeps sketchbooks and...
Mark Ikeda
Mark Kunji Ikeda creates original performances that combine narrative and dance. Through training in dance and theatre he has developed a unique methodology combining story, imagination, and choreography that has lead to being named the 2015 Emerging Artist by Calgary Arts Development Authority.
Keith Turnbull
Keith Turnbull is a director, dramaturge and producer committed to contemporary and new work in both theatre and opera. He was artistic director of the Manitoba Theatre Centre; of Second Stage, Neptune Theatre; and founding artistic director of the NDWT Co. with which...
Linda Bouchard
Born in Québec, Canada, Linda Bouchard has been an active composer, orchestrator, conductor, and producer for over thirty-five years. Winner of both Composer of the Year from the Conseil Québecois de la Culture and the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize from the Canada Council...
Juliet Palmer
New Zealand-Canadian composer Juliet Palmer is known as a “post-modernist with a conscience” (The Listener) whose work “crosses so many genres as to be in a category of its own”.
Jennifer Butler
Jennifer Butler is a composer and flutist living in Vancouver, BC.
Her music, described as “beautifully remote”, “intimate” and “disquieting” has been commissioned, performed, and broadcast across Canada, in the United States, Australia, and Europe. She loves working with quiet and fragile sounds, but will often juxtapose these with loud, forceful outbursts of sound.
Jeremy Brown Collective
Known for his radiant orchestrations, his dramatic structures and his innovative guitar work, Canadian Tim Brady is a composer and guitarist who has created music in a wide range of genres ranging from chamber and orchestral music to electroacoustic works, chamber opera, contemporary dance scores, jazz and free improvisation.
airborne extended
Known for his radiant orchestrations, his dramatic structures and his innovative guitar work, Canadian Tim Brady is a composer and guitarist who has created music in a wide range of genres ranging from chamber and orchestral music to electroacoustic works, chamber opera, contemporary dance scores, jazz and free improvisation.
Tim Brady
Known for his radiant orchestrations, his dramatic structures and his innovative guitar work, Canadian Tim Brady is a composer and guitarist who has created music in a wide range of genres ranging from chamber and orchestral music to electroacoustic works, chamber opera, contemporary dance scores, jazz and free improvisation.
Parisa Sabet
Parisa Sabet is an Iranian composer based in Toronto. Her work covers a broad variety of acoustic and electro-acoustic music.
Kiya Tabassian
Kiya Tabassian was born in 1976, in Tehran (Iran) and immigrated to Montreal in 1990. He has been trained in Persian music under Reza Ghasemi and Kayhan Kalhor. In 1998, he co-founded Constantinople, a Montreal based ensemble which has earned an international reputation for its unique juxtaposition of early musical sources and the living traditions of the Middle East.
Helen Pridmore
Helen Pridmore enjoys a career focused on contemporary scored music, experimental music and improvisation. She has performed as soloist and chamber musician across Canada and the US, and in Japan, the UK and Germany. With a special focus on new Canadian music, Helen has premiered many vocal works by Canadians; her two CDs Janet and …between the shore and the ships champion Canadian composers. Helen is also a teacher, a clinician and a writer.
Laurie Radford
Laurie Radford is a Canadian composer, sound artist, music technologist, educator and researcher who creates music for diverse combinations of instruments and voices, electroacoustic media, and performers in interaction with computer-controlled signal...
Timepoint Ensemble
Timepoint is a new music ensemble in Calgary, dedicated to performing works by living composers.