JACK Quartet, our generation's "leading new-music foursome" (The New York Times), opens Nova Linea Musica's Season 3 with a program inviting close listening and transformative discovery: experimental quartets by Cenk Ergün, Keir GoGwilt, and Austin Wulliman, plus the world premiere of an NLM commission by Guggenheim Fellow Juri Seo, who will be in attendance to celebrate the premiere.

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Nova Linea Musica opens its CheckOut season with violinist Rabia Brooke, cellist Haddon Kay, and colleagues in a program that moves between the familiar and the newly imagined. Drawing from the chamber music tradition while making space for music of today, the evening introduces the spirit of the series: exceptional young artists approaching every piece with curiosity, immediacy, and the sense that the music is being discovered in the room.

A celebration of Philip Glass at 90, this landmark evening honors one of the most influential composers of the last century, brought to life by flutist Demarre McGill, violinists Desirée Ruhstrat and Rabia Brooke, and cellist Wendy Sutter in an intimate program of his most beloved chamber works. Nova Linea Musica marks the milestone with a concert worthy of the moment.

Poiesis Quartet, First Prize winners of the 2025 Banff International String Quartet Competition and recipients of the 2026 Cleveland Quartet Award, performs works by Calvin Ray Shawler, Max Lang, Maya Irizarry Lambright, and Jeff Scott, anchored by the world premiere of an NLM commission by Puerto Rican composer Ivan Enrique Rodriguez, ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Award recipient and Juilliard doctoral candidate. Rodriguez will be in attendance.

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An evening of conversation between voices, "In Dialogue" brings together five works that explore how music speaks across difference, distance, and tradition, culminating in the world premiere of an NLM commission by Grammy-nominated composer Clarice Assad, who joins Nois Saxophone Quartet on stage to celebrate a program featuring works by Caroline Shaw, Jessie Montgomery, Shawn Okpebholo, and Nico Muhly.

Midwinter in Chicago, and the music turns inward. Rabia Brooke and Chelsea Wang bring works that ask quiet, essential questions—about time, about memory, and about what it means to listen carefully in a world that rarely slows down. The chamber music tradition finds its deepest expression in rooms like The CheckOut: close, warm, unhurried, and alive to details that larger halls can swallow whole. These are pieces that reward exactly that kind of intimacy, drawn from across the repertoire and performed by artists who know how to use the room they are in.

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Seven-time GRAMMY-nominated violinist and composer Curtis Stewart brings his singular vision to an evening that dissolves boundaries between classical, jazz, and American vernacular traditions. A 2025 Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient and Juilliard faculty member, Stewart arrives at Nova Linea Musica with a program unmistakably his own, anchored by the world premiere of a Nova Linea Musica commission.

"What the Piano Holds" invites audiences into an intimate evening of solo piano with internationally acclaimed pianist Claire Huangci, whose technical brilliance and stylistic certainty illuminate works by John Corigliano, Minako Tokuyama, and George Rochberg alongside two pieces by Grammy-nominated composer Zhou Tian, including the world premiere of an NLM commission. A Curtis Institute alumna and first-prize winner at the 2018 Concours Geza Anda, Huangci transforms the solo recital into an event, and Tian will be in attendance to celebrate this milestone premiere.

Inheritance is what we carry forward—and what we make new. At the center of this evening is the world premiere of Chen Yi’s My Childhood Memories, a new solo violin work commissioned by Nova Linea Musica for violinist Rabia Brooke. The evening moves between musical generations, pairing works that have endured with music heard for the first time. It begins with a short documentary filmed by Bitter Jester Studios crafted as the new work took shape, and Chen Yi will be at The CheckOut to experience her music reaching an audience for the very first time.

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The NLM Piano Trio presents an evening anchored by the world premiere of a new piano trio by NLM Composer-in-Residence Stacy Garrop, written during her residency in the Rocky Mountains. Garrop will be in attendance to celebrate the premiere alongside founding Artist-in-Residence Rabia Brooke and her trio partners in an intimate evening of chamber music conversation and discovery.

A world premiere of "And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow...." by composer Elizabeth Younan anchors an evening exploring how today’s music grows out of—and pushes beyond—the traditions that came before it. Rabia Brooke pairs Younan’s new work with pieces that have shaped her own musical life, creating a program about influence, discovery, and the continual expansion of the violin repertoire. Intricate and luminous, Younan’s music rewards the kind of close listening that The CheckOut makes possible.

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The legendary Borromeo String Quartet closes Nova Linea Musica's Season 3 with the world premiere of a Nova Linea Musica commission by Grammy-nominated composer Mehmet Ali Sanlikol, whose pluralist, multicultural voice has been praised by the Boston Globe as colorful, fanciful, and full of rhythmic life. Hailed as "simply the best" and performing for 35 years at the world's great stages, the Borromeo arrives in Chicago's Guarneri Hall for a season finale, Where We Converge.

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A season filled with new music ends with three world premieres. The winners of Nova Linea Musica’s national Score Call, directed by composer Clarice Assad, hear their works brought to life by the Nova Linea Musica Piano Trio: Rabia Brooke, violin; Ashly Ryoo, cello; and Tamila Salimdjanova, piano. Every piece on the program is being performed for the first time. No recordings, no reference points, no received wisdom about how any of it should sound. Just three composers, three brand-new pieces, and a room full of people hearing something no one has heard before.

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