What if you were hosting a music festival and a film festival broke out?
That's sort of what happened to the 2021 incarnation of the Twin Cities New Music Festival. Produced since 2018 by a consortium of composers known as the 113 Collective, the festival usually consists of concerts with a dash of the visual. But this year there will be almost as much onscreen as onstage.
"Prior to the pandemic, we had initially planned that everything would be live," said Joey Crane, the collective's co-artistic director. "This particular festival was initially scheduled for 2020. This year, it seemed likely that we wouldn't be able to do the entire festival live, so we started working on videos. Fortunately, we're able to have a larger number of live performances than at least I was thinking possible just a few months ago."
The festival opens Thursday and continues through Saturday at two venues at either end of downtown St. Paul. Park Square Theatre's Andy Boss Thrust Stage will feature concerts of contemporary music from a plethora of adventurous musicians from around the United States and Europe. Meanwhile, Studio Z in the Lowertown neighborhood will be home to three evenings full of film built around recent compositions.
"The idea evolved from a project we worked on where we decided to create three hours of short films that would loop in a 12-hour livestream during Election Day, giving people a break from election stress and the chance to come and go whenever they wanted to," said 113's other co-artistic director, Tiffany Skidmore. "We really enjoyed making and editing the films, and realized that we could create really beautiful and thoughtful films for some of the pieces that can't be presented live during the festival."
One composer being spotlighted is New York-based Bethany Younge, who has had programs of her works presented at ultrahip venues like Brooklyn's National Sawdust. Her music won't be performed live, instead providing the soundtrack to films inspired by her pieces.
"As much as I'm excited to hear music live with people in the room, I'm actually super stoked for Bethany Younge's show, which will consist entirely of prerecorded video pieces," Crane said. "She is an amazing composer, and the videos are not simply documentation videos. They really are artistic pieces themselves."
Steven Kazuo Takasugi, a much-decorated composer who teaches at Harvard University and is known for innovative electro-acoustic creations, also will have several works performed at the festival. In addition to a film on that loop at Studio Z, he'll close the festival with two Saturday night concerts full of his works at Park Square, one featuring a chamber orchestra, the other an octet.
"I can't wait to hear Steven Takasugi's sinfonietta piece, 'Diary of a Lung,' " Skidmore said. "And I think the chamber orchestra version of Joe Horton's film 'Vessel' will be incredibly moving after going so long without opportunities to hear live music. Anthony Green's new piece, 'Connections,' is a poignant commentary on disconnection and reconnection and will feature his live narrations via Instagram Live, so I'm also really looking forward to that."
And the festival isn't just music and film: There's a visual art component, as well, with Benjamin JM Klein's sound art installation, "Dementia NOS," in the downstairs lobby at Park Square.
Rob Hubbard is a freelance classical music critic. • wordhub@yahoo.com
Twin Cities New Music Festival
Live concerts: 7 & 9 p.m. Thu.-Sat. at Park Square Theatre, 408 St. Peter St., St. Paul.
Screenings: Bethany Younge's "Portrait Concert," 8 p.m. Thu.-Fri. and 4 p.m. Sat. at Studio Z, 275 E. 4th St., St. Paul. Other film screenings at Studio Z: 6:30 p.m. Thu.-Fri., 4 p.m. Sat.
Tickets: $10-$5 (children free); festival pass $50; 113collective.com.
