Composer Spotlight
Grammy-nominated composer Clarice Assad on her new NLM commission "The Raven," the bird that watches the threshold between one self and the next, and what it means to close a season of ten world premieres.
Publish Date:
May 22, 2026
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On June 3, Nova Linea Musica closes its second season with the world premiere of The Raven by Clarice Assad, commissioned by Nova Linea Musica and performed by Artistic Director Desirée Ruhstrat, cellist Wendy Sutter, and guitarist Mak Grgić at Guarneri Hall.
The Raven is the tenth world premiere Nova Linea Musica has brought to our Chicago stage this season, joining new works by Jennifer Higdon, Michelle Ross, David Hanlon, Derrick Skye, Andrea Casarrubios, Chris Mercer, Gabriella Smith, JaRon Brown, and Composer-in-Residence Stacy Garrop. Ten composers, ten world premieres, one season: a programming commitment few organizations in the country can match.
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Clarice Assad is one of the most distinctive artistic voices of her generation. A Grammy-nominated composer, celebrated pianist, inventive vocalist, and educator, she has built a catalogue of more than ninety works across classical, world music, pop, and jazz, with commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the LA Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfônica de São Paulo, ROCO, and the Grand Teton Music Festival, among others.
Her music has been recorded by Yo-Yo Ma, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and Liang Wang, and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Tokyo Symphony, and the Queensland Symphony. Her 2022 album Archetypes, recorded with her father Sérgio Assad and Chicago's own Third Coast Percussion, earned two Grammy nominations, for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Best Contemporary Classical Composition.
She currently serves as Composer-Educator in Residence with the Allentown Symphony Orchestra and the Albany Symphony, and is the creator of VOXploration, an award-winning interactive music education program presented around the world.
Clarice describes The Raven as a meditation on transition, the moments most of us experience too quickly to examine.
"There is a moment, sometimes, between one thing and another. Between sleep and waking. Between knowing and not knowing. Between who you used to be and whoever you are about to become. A time that usually passes too fast to be examined."
"Across nearly every culture that has imagined it, the raven is the creature who watches that moment, and seems to understand it. The Norse, the Celts, the alchemists of medieval Europe, all have versions in which ravens were consulted as oracles. Not because the birds were wise in a human way, but because they seemed to see through the categories that ordinary minds use to keep the world in place."
The work begins in stillness, passes through what Clarice calls a kind of collapse of reality, and arrives at a moment where the instruments fall silent and only breath remains. It ends in suspension, inside the instant before whatever happens next.
It is the kind of music that asks something of a listener, and rewards what is given.
Clarice's relationship to Chicago is long and substantial. Her Archetypes collaboration with Third Coast Percussion brought her into one of the city's most adventurous new music ecosystems, and her music has been championed by musicians who make their home here. The premiere of The Raven extends that connection into a new chamber configuration: violin, cello, and classical guitar, an unusual trio that Nova Linea Musica's programming has built around the artistry of Desirée Ruhstrat, Wendy Sutter, and Mak Grgić.
Clarice holds a Bachelor of Music from Roosevelt University here in Chicago, and a Master of Music from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Michael Daugherty, Susan Botti, and Evan Chambers. Her honors include the Aaron Copland Award, multiple ASCAP composition awards, the Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Van Lier Fellowship, and a McKnight Visiting Composer Award.
The Raven sits at the heart of Blooming Under Blue Skies, a program that travels from Leon Firšt's arrangements of Slovenian folk songs through Hakki Cengiz Eren's Turkish-modal Three Portals, David Ludwig's lyrical April Variations, and four movements drawn from Astor Piazzolla's tango repertoire.
The premiere will be performed by:
Blooming Under Blue SkiesJune 3, 2026 at 6:30 PMGuarneri Hall, 11 E Adams Street, Chicago
Learn more about Clarice Assad at clariceassad.com.
