Nova Linea Musica continues its third season on Wednesday, November 18 with Poiesis Quartet: In the Listening, featuring the world premiere of “Roy’s Address: Proclamation for String Quartet” by Iván Enrique Rodríguez. The work was commissioned by Nova Linea Musica.
At the heart of the piece is a question Rodríguez poses directly: “what does it mean to belong at an existential level?” Rooted in queer experience and history, including the loss of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, “Roy’s Address” unfolds in three movements over about 18 minutes. A single voice, “Roy,” speaks and is answered again and again with dissonance. He grieves, then grows angry, and finally arrives at the major harmony the music has been reaching for since its opening bars. A rising motive hidden in the inner voices at the start comes to the foreground at the climax, no longer concealed. The score carries a line from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”: “I exist as I am, that is enough.” As for who Roy is, Rodríguez saves that for the end.
Rodríguez, a Puerto Rican composer, is an ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Award recipient and a doctoral graduate of The Juilliard School. He will be in Chicago for the premiere and will join the post-concert conversation. Poiesis Quartet, Grand Prize winners of the 2025 Banff International String Quartet Competition and recipients of the 2026 Cleveland Quartet Award, gives the first performance.
The premiere sits within an all-contemporary program:
“Roy’s Address” is one of ten world premieres Nova Linea Musica presents this season, bringing its total to 28 commissioned works in three years. The concert was also named one of the Chicago Tribune’s fall classical picks, and in the same preview the Tribune called Nova Linea Musica a “first-call chamber music presenter in the city.”
The evening offers the complete Nova Linea Musica experience of three points of connection: an intimate chamber concert, a conversation with the artists, and a chef curated reception where the dialogue continues.
Wednesday, November 18 | 6:30 PM concert, 8:00 PM reception
11 E Adams, Chicago
Tickets: $50, all inclusive
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