Scratch That: Glance Back, Look Ahead

Scratch That: Glance Back, Look Ahead

Chicago-area music makers review the year that was and preview what’s ahead.

Written By

Ellen McSweeney

Hans Thomalla
Hans Thomalla, composer and co-director of Northwestern’s Institute for New Music
Favorite 2012 musical moment:
I have to make a mini-list: Dal Niente’s wonderful performance of my piece The Brightest Form of Absence at the Unruly Music Festival in March in Milwaukee, the unbound musicality of Hugo Wolff’s Serenade in the performance by the Spektral Quartet at the Empty Bottle in September, Winston Choi’s performance of Lemma Icon Epigram at the Mayne Stage in December, all were some wonderful musical experiences with some of Chicago’s great new music performers. I would like to add the last performance of my opera Fremd in Stuttgart, Germany, and the first concert of our Institute for New Music at Northwestern University, with Steve Drury giving a Cage performance that showed how precise and careful Cage should be interpreted.
New Year’s Resolution:
I don’t really believe in resolutions, since they only point to the wide gap between plan and action…
Looking forward to in 2013:
There will be a residency by one of the leading European ensembles at our Institute for New Music in November (about which I cannot say more at this point, unfortunately). I look very much forward to Dal Niente performing Haas’s In Vain in February. I am grateful to be able to work again with the great musicians of Ensemble Alternance from Paris, and last but not least I always look forward to reading and listening through a lot of great new sketches my students will bring to class.