Retrospective
A look back at Nova Linea Musica's second season in Chicago: eight concerts and ten world premiere commissions, from Conrad Tao's opening night to the finale under blue skies.
Publish Date:
May 6, 2026
A season is not just the music. It is the people who write it and the people who play it, meeting an audience in a room for the first time. Across eight concerts our second year carried ten world premieres into the world, each one a Nova Linea Musica commission, none of them existing before the artists on our stage brought them to life. Here is the year, concert by concert.
We opened in September with pianist Conrad Tao and a program where technology, memory, and sound converged. At its heart was the world premiere of Chris Mercer's Impromptu: Fluorescing, with the composer in the room. Tao set the terms for the year to come: living composers, music written for this moment, a performer willing to take the first step into a brand new score.
In October the Owls Quartet, violinist Alexi Kenney, violist Ayane Kozasa, and cellists Gabriel Cabezas and Paul Wiancko, wandered across centuries and continents before arriving at Gabriella Smith's Aegolius. The commission listens closely to the natural world and tips its hat to Haydn's "The Bird," and it sent the room out into the night still hearing it.
December gave us two premieres in a single night. The Catalyst Quartet, violinists Karla Donehew Perez and Abi Fayette, violist Paul Laraia, and cellist Karlos Rodriguez, built a program around resilience, identity, and hope, and premiered Andrea Casarrubios's Unsaying and Derrick Skye's Flare and Answer side by side. Casarrubios was with us in person, and Skye joined by satellite for the first hearing of his work.
In January our resident NLM Piano Trio, violinist Rabia Brooke, cellist Haddon Kay, and pianist Tamila Salimdjanova, brought Threads of Melodic Silence to Guarneri Hall. The evening centered on the world premiere of Stacy Garrop's Under the Shimmering Aspens, written especially for the ensemble, with cellist Alexander Hersh joining for a set of solo works. As our Composer-in-Residence, Garrop has been a steady presence on our stage all year.
February belonged to Third Coast Percussion, David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and Sean Conners, whose sold-out The Drum Also Sings turned rhythm into melody. The night premiered JaRon Brown's and this too, shall pass, with the composer in the hall.
March traced the artistic process from first spark to finished work. Violinist Rabia Brooke and pianist Nathanael Canfield gave the world premiere of Jennifer Higdon's Art Measures, and violist Sam Rosenthal, with pianist Tamila Salimdjanova, premiered Michelle Ross's as if you were turning pages. Higdon traveled to Chicago to hear her music for the first time, a composer whose works are performed hundreds of times a year worldwide choosing to be in our room for the premiere.
In May, L'dor v'dor moved from generation to generation through an evening of vocal works. Mezzo-soprano Heather Johnson and pianist Jason Wirth, joined by soprano Michelle Areyzaga, closed the program with the world premiere of David Hanlon's Ki Ger Anokhi Imakh. Hanlon connected by satellite to be part of the first performance.
And to finish, our season finale gathered guitarist Mak Grgić, violinists Desirée Ruhstrat and Rabia Brooke, and cellist Wendy Sutter for a night of bold premieres and cross-cultural resonance. It was anchored by the world premiere of Clarice Assad's The Raven, with the composer present. The bird that watches the threshold between one self and the next. A fitting image for a season ending and another about to begin.
Beyond the main stage, two of our talent development programs ran their first full cycle, and both delivered.
The Nova Linea Musica Score Call named three winners for 2025: Freight by Graham Meyer, This Moment by Joel Y. Hoo, and God is in the Details by Jason Zhang. The NLM Piano Trio gave all three their world premieres at The CheckOut, under the mentorship of Grammy-nominated composer Clarice Assad. Three composers, three new works, one program built to find them and put them in front of an audience.
The inaugural Young Artist Chamber Music Competition crowned its first winners, with the Valinor Trio taking first prize and the Synchrony Quartet second. They played for an esteemed jury of composer Augusta Read Thomas, pianist Claire Huangci, and flutist Jennie Oh Brown: the next generation of chamber musicians at the very start of careers we hope to keep following.
Composer, performer, listener. That is the circle we exist to close, and you completed it. None of these premieres happens without an audience willing to hear something with no recording, no reputation, no safety net. You came anyway. You leaned in. Thank you for trusting us with your evenings. And the music will outlast the night: the premieres from our first two main stage seasons are becoming Nova Linea Musica's debut album, so what you heard for the first time can be heard again.
The third season is now on sale: eight concerts and nine world premieres, opening September 30 with the JACK Quartet in Sonare and Celare. The full lineup is live, with new commissions from Juri Seo, Ivan Enrique Rodriguez, Clarice Assad, Curtis Stewart, Zhou Tian, Chen Yi, Stacy Garrop, Mehmet Ali Sanlikol, and one composer still to be announced.
Ten works exist now that did not exist a year ago. Nine more are coming. We cannot wait to make them.
