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Chris Craychee, Katherine Palumbo and Ashlee Mack.
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New Music Festival March 6-7 at WIU

February 28, 2023

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MACOMB, IL – The 36th annual Western Illinois University School of Music New Music Festival will be held Monday-Tuesday, March 6-7. The festival's featured artists are the Khasma Piano Duo and visual artist Chris Craychee.

The duo has commissioned six new works to be premiered in its program, along with music by Meredith Monk. The featured composers are Chris Catone, Kyong Mee Choi, Jeff Herriott, Amelia Kaplan, and WIU faculty composers Hong-Da Chin and James Romig. Each new composition will be accompanied by video art created by Chris Craychee. The project is called "Trekking."

"Trekking is a project inspired by people and nature moving through space and time," said Ashlee Mack, Khasma Piano Duo co-founder and director of Piano Studies at Knox College. "In celebration of Khasma's 10th anniversary, and 20 years of friendship, we decided to invite some of our favorite composers and artists to collaborate with us. They have all contributed to our lives in a meaningful way, and are people we have grown to love, respect and admire over the years."

Event co-director WIU Professor James Romig said this is the first time in the history of the festival one of its featured guest artists is not a composer or musical performer.

"I suspect that having Chris here for a couple of days will provide an opportunity for all of us to consider the concert experience from a different angle, and with broader perspective," Romig added. "WIU student composers, who will have their music performed on Tuesday afternoon, are each integrating video into their own compositions, so there will be a lot for them to talk about during sessions on Monday and Tuesday."

Craychee is a visual artist and freelance project manager/producer living and working in Pittsburgh, PA. His art has embraced painting, drawing, printmaking, writing, sculpture, photography, video, animation, and performance, and has utilized such non-traditional media as synthetic carpet, gunpowder, ice cubes, googly eyes, aluminum foil, plastic toys and Chuck-A-Luck wheels. He received a BFA in Art from Carnegie Mellon University, and has worked for Concept Art Gallery, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Clear Story and Deeplocal.

The Khasma Piano Duo was formed in 2012, by Mack and Katherine Palumbo. They have been playing together since meeting at Bucknell University in 2000. Because of their shared enthusiasm for contemporary music, the duo has dedicated themselves to the performance and recording of works from the 20th and 21st centuries.

The duo's concert tours have taken them all over the United States, with performances at universities, new-music festivals and conferences. Their albums, Switchback and Time Seems To Pass, are available at Amazon, iTunes and Bandcamp. Additional recordings can be heard on Innova and Navona Records.

Assistant Professor Hong-Da Chin, the festival co-director, said festival organizers are happy to have the Khasma Piano Duo on campus for this year's event.

"It will be a rare and valuable opportunity for our students, and broader musical community, to hear brand-new compositions from six very different composers," he said. "Ashlee and Katie are remarkable performers who will present these new works accurately and beautifully, and I think it's going to be especially interesting to see how a single video artist responds to the incredible variety of the music he's interacting with."

The 2023 New Music Festival will feature three concerts over the two-day event, including:

• Concert one - Monday, March 6, 7:30 p.m. - Khasma Piano Duo with video art by Craychee

• Concert two - Tuesday, March 7, 2 p.m. - Music by WIU student composers

• Concert three - Tuesday, March 7, 7:30 p.m. - Khasma Piano Duo with video art by Craychee

In addition to concerts, the festival will feature lectures, panel discussions, masterclasses, workshops and other interactions between students, faculty and invited guests, connecting the community to the world of contemporary music.

For more information about the WIU School of Music, visit wiu.edu/music.

Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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