Our Mission: A Concise Overview

Nova Linea Musica serves as a catalyst for the creation and promotion of new music through commissions, live performances, and exceptional audio and video recordings featuring dynamic emerging and established artists.

In-Depth: Who We Are

‍Nova Linea Musica (NLM) is the latest addition to Chicago’s new-music scene, a music creation engine already busy generating new string music as its moniker affirms. Its ambition, though, is far more crucial to classical music’s ability to thrive in the years to come: to etch new connections between performers, composers, and listeners while closing the distances between them.

For music to captivate and then sustain public attention of any consequence today, it must necessarily reflect the immediacy of being alive at this very moment in time. Galvanized by that truth, Nova Linea Musica commissions the exceptional sonic sculptors of our era from around the world, pairs them with dynamic virtuosi poised to elucidate and champion their work, and then invites curious listeners to experience the birth of new work in a space so intimate and generative that there can be no spectators...only allies and co-conspirators.

"Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.” - Charles Eames

CLOSING THE DISTANCE.......

...between composers and performers  

‍The fortunes of performers and composers are entrancingly and inescapably entwined. Ascending composers reach career inflection points when their music is brought onto stage by venerable ensembles and emerging concert artists carve out unclaimed vistas for advancement when they are first to champion a notable new work by an esteemed composer.

Nova Linea Musica catapults both performers and composers past the two most frequent saboteurs in the creation of new art - the commission fee and the production of the world premiere performance - bypassing the lengthy and unpredictable grant-writing process and negotiations with presenters. Importantly, stewardship for the longevity and ultimate impact of each project after the premiere is ensured through the professional capture of high-definition video for use in securing future performance opportunities and in raising the visibility for both composers and performers, the value of which cannot be overstated.

...between performers and listeners‍

With nearly all of the city’s finest chamber music halls cloistered within university campuses, experiencing chamber music in Chicago typically involves a coin toss between first-class acoustics or a unique and welcoming space.

With each of its 70 seats boasting VIP-level views within a superlative acoustic environment, Guarneri Hall erases any need for compromise. Situated in the very heart of the Loop just steps away from public transportation and abundant parking options, Nova Linea Musica infuses Guarneri Hall’s own, already enviable chamber music offerings with one-of-a-kind world premiere-driven concert experiences.

Proximity to the musicians, though captivating, is not relegated to the hall alone. Spirited post-concert encounters with performers and composers provide concertgoers the opportunity to connect on an even more meaningful level - not to mention finding themselves unexpectedly chatting with Pulitzer Prize-and Grammy Award-winners that frequent Guarneri Hall.‍

...between listeners and the music‍

Today, “new-music” encompasses a more expansive spectrum of style, motivations, and influences than any other period in history. Nova Linea Musica invites the artistically adventurous and the sonically curious to slip into orbit with the music in direct contact with the jeopardies and felicities of life in this second decade of the 21st century, sharing a program with some of the most imaginative scores penned since the middle of the 20th.

Stimulating the synapses and illuminating the cultural context circling a concert program and its creators, each Nova Linea Musica concert embarks with a convening of The Society of the Disobedient Listeners: an interactive anti-lecture connecting concertgoers to all new-music experience levels with the often inspiring, at times irreverent, and unfailingly present day implications of the evening’s program.

...between Chicago and the world‍

Acknowledged internationally as an exemplar of do-it-yourself industriousness, Chicago is home to a prodigious roster of world-class performers, ensembles, and composers that, generation after generation, cultivate and evolve one of new-music’s most dynamic and collaborative communities. This is accomplished in spite of limited institutional support and paucity of presented concert series, resulting in a majority of the most consequential new-music performances left to be both promoted and presented by the artists themselves.

Nova Linea Musica aims to move the needle in reclaiming time and resources for musicians and music-creators to make and perform music—and to make Chicago and increasingly attractive tour destination for talents ready to creatively irradiate the city’s already luminous soundscape.

NLM Values

• We believe that new music is an essential element of a thriving world.
• We believe that great music flourishes in an environment of ongoing reinvention.
• We believe that emerging performers are ideal ambassadors for new music.
• We believe that new music deserves exceptional performances documented on audio and video to the highest possible standards.