The University of Chicago New Music Ensemble – a collective of professional musicians dedicated to performing 20th and 21st-century works – joins the five-month celebration, Envisioning China: A Festival of Arts and Culture at UChicago, in concert on Saturday, February 15 at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts Performance Hall at 8:00 PM.

The culturally inspired program includes Wang Lu’s Cross Around for 15 players, written in 2010 on commission from Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne in Canada to accompany a pre-constructed video by award-winning filmmaker and videomaker Leighton Pierce. Wang’s evocative musical essay, in perfect balance with the video, contemplates life’s treasured moments of interaction across, around, and between stars, people, events, thoughts, and sounds. Both the musical work and the original video will be presented on this New Music Ensemble program.

The “dramatic and expressively nuanced” (Chicago Classical Review) ensemble Third Coast Percussion, praised by The Guardian for the “special fluency and zest that sets them apart,” presents Lei Liang’s Lakescape II and Alexandre Lunsqui’s Shi on this concert, as part of their winter quarter residency at the University of Chicago.

Yuan-Chen Li’s Reminiscence is also featured, and Artist-in-Residence Amy Briggs with duo-piano partner Daniel Schlosberg perform Ligeti’s Three Pieces for Two Pianos and a selection of Gyorgy Kurtag’s Games on the second half of the program.

Newly-appointed Professor of Music, Anthony Cheung, leads the pre-concert discussion at 7:00 PM.

Envisioning China: A Festival of Arts and Culture (February – June 2014) is an upcoming five-month festival featuring over 40 events and exhibitions related to Chinese cultural history at the University of Chicago. The majority of the diverse selection of art, film, music, and performance events will be free and open to the public, supporting the festival’s mission of creating a dialogue around Chinese art and heritage. Learn more at envisioningchina.uchicago.edu

Free admission, no reservations required

Reception to follow