The Park City Institute
PRESENTS
Program
James Díaz, Lines of acid dreams (2022)
Sage Shurman, shatter me (2023)
Julius Eastman, Joy Boy (1974)
featuring BalletNEXT
—-intermission—-
Dai Wei, How the Stars Vanish… (2021)
Michael Ippolito, Capriccio (2019)
I. Lonely Journey
II. Pénombres du Soir (Evening Twilight)
III. Bacchanale-Phantasmagoria
Theater
The Eccles Center is the largest theater in Park City, Utah with 1,269 seats. It is home to Park City Institute's Main Stage Season from October through April each year, presenting a broad range of world-class performing arts from international dance companies to Broadway icons to beloved author/humorists to virtuosos in a host of musical styles from Chamber Music to rock'n'roll.
Health and Safety
The Park City Institute and the Park City School District have taken measures to assure the health and safety of our patrons, staff, and performers. We are constantly adjusting our COVID protocols based on the recommendations of the CDC, and directives of local and state health departments. Permanent changes include, updated HVAC, touch-less restroom faucets, electronic ticketing, electronic programs, enhanced cleaning, and all volunteers and staff to be fully vaccinated.
We recognize that being fully vaccinated and wearing a mask are the best ways to prevent the spread of the virus. If you don’t feel well or have a cough or a fever we ask that you remain home.
About Hub New Music
Called “contemporary chamber trailblazers” by the Boston Globe, Hub New Music is a Grammy-nominated “nimble quartet of winds and strings” (NPR) forging new paths in 21st-century repertoire. The ensemble’s ambitious commissioning projects and “appealing programs” (New Yorker) celebrate the rich diversity of today’s classical music landscape.
Founded in 2013, Hub New Music has grown into a formidable touring ensemble driven by an unwavering dedication to building community through new art. Across its career, Hub has commissioned dozens of new works and continues to usher in a fresh and culturally relevant body of work for its distinct combination of flute, clarinet, violin, and cello. Hub is proud to collaborate with today’s most celebrated emerging and established composers, and is equally proud to count many of them as friends.
Highlights in 2022-23 include concerts throughout the U.S. with presenters such as Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center, Soka Performing Arts Center, Celebrity Series of Boston, and Brigham Young University. The group also has upcoming residencies at the University of Michigan, University of Southern California, and Brown University.
Beginning in spring 2023, Hub celebrates its tenth anniversary with its largest commission project to date featuring new works from Andrew Norman, Tyshawn Sorey, Angélica Negrón, Marcos Balter, Donnacha Dennehy, Nico Muhly, and Jessica Meyer. As part of the project, the ensemble launches a fellowship in collaboration with the Luna Lab, awarded to recent alumna Sage Shurman. Other upcoming commission projects include a new concerto, The Bird While, for Hub and Symphonic Winds by Gala Flagello with the University of Michigan Symphony Band, and new quartets by James Diaz and Daniel Thomas Davis.
Hub performed the world premiere of Carlos Simon’s Requiem for the Enslaved at Boston’s historic Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in October 2022. The 2022 album on Decca Classics is nominated for a 2023 Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. The work honors the lives of 272 slaves sold by Georgetown in 1838, and also features trumpeter MK Zulu and spoken word artist Marco Pavé. Hub’s debut album, Soul House (New Amsterdam Records), was called “ingenious and unequivocally gorgeous” by the Boston Globe. The group looks forward to upcoming recording projects with Silkroad’s Kojiro Umezaki and the Asia America New Music Institute.
Hub New Music is a group of passionate educators whose approach to teaching melds the artistic and entrepreneurial facets of modern musicianship. The ensemble was recently in residence with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Nancy and Barry Sanders Composer Fellowship program, working with 10 outstanding high school aged composers. Other residency activities include those at New England Conservatory, Princeton, Harvard, University of Michigan, University of Texas-Austin, UC Irvine, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2020, Hub launched its K-12 program HubLab, using storytelling and improvisation to create original pieces with students of any musical level.
Hub New Music is Michael Avitabile (flutes), Gleb Kanasevich (clarinets), Meg Rohrer (violin/viola), and Jesse Christeson (cello). The ensemble’s name is inspired by its founding city of Boston’s reputation as a hub of innovation. Hub New Music is exclusively represented by Unfinished Side.
Hub New Music is
Michael Avitabile
Praised for playing that is "warm and vocal" (Boston Musical Intelligencer), Michael Avitabile is a flutist, entrepreneur, and educator dedicated to the music of our time. He is the Founder and Executive Director of Hub New Music, a Boston-based mixed quartet that has quickly become a prominent force among younger contemporary music organizations.
Under his leadership, HNM has commissioned quartets and collaborative projects from a diverse cohort of innovative musical minds including Hannah Lash, Robert Honstein, Kati Agocs, Takumah Itoh, Angel Lam, and the composer-collective Oracle Hysterical. He has also spearheaded collaborations with Boston’s Urbanity Dance, the Silk Road Ensemble’s Kojiro Umezaki, and the Asia-America New Music Institute. The ensemble maintains an active touring schedule and has been featured in the Boston Globe, WQXR (NYC), WFMT (Chicago), New York Times, WBUR (Boston), and the Oregon Artswatch among several others.
As an educator, Avitabile focuses on empowering students with skills to build the arts organizations of tomorrow. His lectures translate the day-to-day experiences of running an artist-led organization into a series of workshops covering topics such as self-management, non-profit development, and commissioning new work. He has been a guest lecturer on Arts Entrepreneurship and Contemporary Music at institutions such as Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the University of Colorado Boulder, New England Conservatory, the University of Texas at Austin, and others.
Outside of his work with HNM, Avitabile has worked with prominent composers including Harrison Birtwhistle, John Zorn, Brett Dean, and Christian Wolfe. As an orchestral musician, he has received fellowships to play with the National Repertory Orchestra, Banff Festival Orchestra, and has also performed with the New World Symphony.
He holds degrees from the University of Michigan (BM) and New England Conservatory (MM), graduating with top honors from both schools. At Michigan, he was a Shipman Scholar, one of the highest awards given to an incoming student university-wide. While at NEC, he received the John Cage Award for Outstanding Contribution to Contemporary Music. In his free time, Avitabile enjoys developing recipes, practicing yoga, and exploring Boston’s many coffee shops. Avitabile is a Powell Flutes Artist.
Jesse Christeson
Versatile cellist Jesse Christeson wears a number of musical hats around the country. Usually, in the creative workshop with Boston-based Hub New Music, he also travels to serve as Principal Cellist of the Huntsville (AL) Symphony. He held the same position in the Mississippi Symphony for several years prior. Jesse is a founding member of the Inaugural Piano Trio in Jackson, MS, and also returns to collaborate with New JXN. In Boston, he can often be heard performing with start-ups Phoenix and Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra.
For several years Jesse was very active as a multi-faceted performer and teacher in Houston, TX. In addition to working as a freelance cellist, he performed as a vocalist in the Houston Grand Opera and Bach Society of Houston choruses. He taught a cello studio at the Rice Preparatory Program and local public schools.
Mr. Christeson has frequently spent summers performing at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he featured in the New Fromm Players and orchestra festival. His other summer engagements have included the festivals of Aspen, Brevard, and the National Orchestral Institute. Jesse received his MM from Rice University (studio of Norman Fischer), and his BM from Stetson University in DeLand, FL, where he studied cello (studio of David Bjella), voice, and philosophy.
Gleb Kanasevich
Gleb Kanasevich is a clarinetist, composer, and noise/drone musician. He currently works primarily with feedback and modified instruments, while exploring expressive possibilities in very simple electronic processing. He works often as a soloist and collaborates with composers, chamber music groups, improvisers, noise musicians, death metal bands, and many more types of artists. His blackened noise album Asleep (Unknown Tapes) and the immersive 45-minute Subtraction (Flag Day Recordings) came out to critical acclaim in 2019.
Most recently, he was commissioned by Ensemble Intercontemporain, Callithumpian Consort, and No Exit New Music Ensemble. In 2020, he released a new improvisation project for a modified recorder and guitar amplifiers Capacity. It came out as a very limited edition of 20 lathe-cut vinyl records with unique hand-drawn sleeves in July, 2020. Capacity has been survived by fully composed follow-up works for cello (written for Peter Kibbe, commissioned by NakedEye Ensemble) and bass clarinet (scheduled for a 2021 premiere by Ashley Smith, commissioned through the Cultural Council of Australia).
Since 2013, he has been a core member of Ensemble Cantata Profana – a group based in New York City. In August 2018, he has taken on the duties of the ensemble's Associate Artistic Director after moving to New York City. From 2016 until Spring, 2019, Kanasevich also worked as a curator/video maker for the online new music database and audio/video/score resource ScoreFollower/Incipitsify. In March 2021, he transformed Unknown Tapes from a self-release platform into a recording artist community dedicated to showcasing work by artists with unique approaches to spontaneous music-making and improvisation techniques, regardless of genre. As of July 2022, he is the new permanent member of Hub New Music.
Meg Rohrer
Meg (they/them/she/her) centers much of their work around chamber music. Meg is the violinist of Hub New Music, a touring quartet dedicated to commissioning and performing new chamber music repertoire. Meg is also the violinist and violist in Virago, a Southeast Michigan-based quartet that melds contemporary chamber music with free improvisation. They are a member of the Kalkaska String Quartet, with whom they frequently perform in the metro Detroit area in a variety of settings. For two years, Meg was a member of the award-winning Converge String Quartet, a group dedicated to premiering new works by University of Michigan composers. Rohrer has recently performed with New Music Detroit and has been featured in the Riot Ensemble Festival in London, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, the University Musical Society’s Parable Path A2Ypsi Series, the Third Place Concert Series, the Midwest Composer Symposium, and Fever’s Detroit Candlelight Concert Series.
As an orchestral musician, Meg has performed with the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, the Mendocino Music Festival Orchestra, and the Ann Arbor Symphony. Meg has made concertmaster appearances with the Michigan Philharmonic and the Campus Philharmonic Orchestra at the University of Michigan. As a soloist, Meg performed a double concerto with violin and erhu with the National Chinese Orchestra Taiwan in 2019 and a violin concerto with the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra in 2012.
As an educator, Meg has trained in the Suzuki method and is influenced by the pedagogies of Mimi Zweig, Mark Mutter, Marilyn O’Boyle, Blair Milton, Danielle Belen, and Ed Sarath. Meg has a private violin studio and has taught through the Sphinx Organization, Crescendo Detroit, the Crowden Music Center in Berkeley, CA, the Ann Arbor Public Schools camp at Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Àkójọpò Music Festival, The People’s Music School in Chicago, and the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra summer workshop. Meg’s pedagogical philosophy focuses on teaching physicality, balance, and expression, challenging students to listen more deeply to each sound they produce and exploring creative processes in conjunction with building technique.
Meg earned their masters degree at the University of Michigan studying with Danielle Belen and Caroline Coade and holds a bachelors degree from Northwestern University where they studied with Blair Milton. They have had the privilege to work closely with composers Tyshawn Sorey, Nina C. Young, Augusta Read Thomas, Shulamit Ran, and world-class ensembles such as yMusic, the Aizuri Quartet, the Dover Quartet, the Viano String Quartet, and members of the International Contemporary Ensemble.
Meg is a New Mexican who grew up in California and is now embracing life as a Michigander. In their free time, Meg enjoys baking sourdough bread, the ever-expanding Star Wars universe, coffee, sunshine, and spending time with their eight younger siblings.
BalletNEXT
Principal Dancer and Artistic Director
MICHELE WILES left home at age 10 to train at the prestigious Kirov Academy in Washington, D.C. At 16, she won Gold Medal at the 18th International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria. In 1998, Michele joined American Ballet Theatre and rose to the very top, dancing principal roles in Swan Lake. Sylvia. The Nutcracker, and more. Michele has always enjoyed fusing styles, which led her to create BalletNEXT in 2011. Michele made Park City BalletNEXT's permanent home in 2019
MATTHEW HELMS formally began his training in Colorado on full scholarship at the International Ballet School. In 2008. he received a full scholarship to Ballet West Academy. Matt was promoted to the Ballet West Pre-Professional Trainee Program and at the same time was a guest artist with the Utah Ballet Company & Utah Regional Ballet. Matt joined Boulder Ballet in 2010.
BalletNEXT is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Our educational and performance projects are made possible by contributions from generous individuals who support the arts, and love what we do.
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