About

Hailed by the Boston Globe as “elegant and exacting,” Hub New Music is a mixed quartet specializing in music of the 21st century. With a unique instrumentation of two winds and two strings, Hub explores a richly diverse palate of contemporary repertoire. Often employing a roster of local guest artists, the ensemble celebrates a musical era fueled by the spirit of collaboration and desire to shatter artistic limitations. The quartet's name is inspired by its hometown of Boston and the notion that a Hub is a center of creativity and innovation.

Founded while studying at New England Conservatory, Hub has had the privilege of working with the nation's most innovative musical minds including Kati Agócs, Daniel Wohl, Missy Mazzoli, Robert Honstein, and Spencer Topel. Seeking to expand the audience reach for contemporary art music, Hub fosters several interdisciplinary collaborations and community building educational programs. Recent interdisciplinary collaborations include an exploration of composer Andrew Norman's ties to the world of architecture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. On the educational front Hub launched Composium in 2014/15, a performance project that showcased the life cycle of a new piece through conversation between composer, performer, and listener.

Upcoming projects include Pushing Boundaries, a genre bending recital program that blurs the line between pop, indie-rock, folk, EDM, and composed concert music. The program features works by Mason Bates, Judd Greenstein, and a newly arranged work by Daniel Wohl commissioned by Hub New Music. Other projects include a portrait concert of long time friend and collaborator Kati Agócs in NEC's Jordan Hall and a multi-media collaboration with the dance-film collective The Wilder Project entitled Blue.

As educators, the ensemble has cultivated an approach to teaching from residencies at institutions such as Dartmouth College and Northeastern University that places contemporary music within the context of a centuries old yet rapidly evolving musical ecosystem. Working with student performers and composers alike, Hub's approach to teaching draws on musical traditions of the past and focuses them through the lens of new music. Beyond performance and composition, Hub places strong emphasis on the importance of arts entrepreneurship as a vital component of a 21st century musical education and offers workshops focused on the art of being a self-starting musician.

Hub New Music owes thanks to its supporters including the New England Conservatory Office of Entrepreneurial Musicianship through which the ensemble was founded. Hub New Music is fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas.

“Next time [Hub New Music] offers a concert, go, listen, and be changed.” - the Boston Globe (Zoe Madonna)

Music

Hub's Concert Programs!

PUSHING BOUNDARIES

Pushing Boundaries is a genre bending concert experience that explores idioms of pop, indie, EDM, and folk music through the lens of composed concert works. It brings audiences inside a world of repertoire that knows no bounds and challenges the notion of a standard chamber music performance.

On the program, audiences will hear works by pioneers of the post-genre movement including Judd Greenstein, Mason Bates, and Daniel Wohl. In these works Hub showcases the beat driven music of Greenstein, explores Mason Bates' background as part composer/part DJ, and celebrates Wohl's ability to seamlessly bridge electronic and acoustic sound worlds. Interspersed between these three large works are Nico Muhly's contemplative and lush work I Know Where Everything Is and Derek Bermel's South American detour Silvioudades inspired by Brazilian choro. Pushing Boundaries gives listeners a truly global experience in uninhibited 21st century sound.

Works on Pushing Boundaries

Daniel Wohl, Microfluctuations in Plainchant
Nico Muhly, I Know Where Everything Is
Judd Greenstein, At the End of a Really Great Day
Derek Bermel, Silvioudades
Mason Bates, The Life of Birds

BLUE

Hub New Music’s multimedia program Blue contrasts transcendent states of meditation with the geopolitical issues of our reality through collaboration between music and film. It is inspired by Evan Ziporyn's other-worldly quartet Thread and Laura Kaminsky’s environmentally charged work The Full Range of Blue. Of the piece, Kaminsky writes its inspiration comes from“9/11 and its aftermath; also references the manifestation of blue in nature.” Paired with the Full Range of Blue is a newly commissioned film by the Wilder Project, a groundbreaking New York based dance-film collective whose work captures raw humanity through movement and lens. The collective has won recent critical acclaim at the Philadelphia Screendance Festival.

Occupying the first half of program is Thread by Evan Ziporyn, an artist who explores eastern and western musical traditions as both a composer and performer. Written in 2005, Thread places the listener into a euphoric trance who is then thrust back into reality by Kaminsky. Through Ziporyn's hypnosis, Kaminsky's musical activism, and the Wilder Project's visceral depiction of humanity, Blue creates a multidimensional experience exploring an enormous range of human expression.

Works on Blue

Evan Ziporyn, Thread
Laura Kaminsky, The Full Range of Blue

ADDITIONAL REPERTOIRE

Robert Honstein, Juno
Kati Agocs, Immutable Dreams
Spencer Topel, Details on the Strasbourg Rosace (with video accompaniment)

Additional programs are available upon request. We'd love to customize a program for you!

Videos

Audio

Past groupmuses (1)