MusicTHEN?

With new hands on the controls, MusicNOW, the city’s premier new-music concert series, could undergo a stylistic shift next season. Augusta Read Thomas, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s composer-in-residence whose job it was to oversee MusicNOW, is stepping down after this season and ten years on the job to focus on her composition career. The MusicNOW concert Monday 8 is her curatorial swan song.

So what’s going to happen next year, without Thomas’s involvement? Could there be a big shift in the series’ priorities? The season won’t be officially announced until May 16, but if the circulating rumors turn out to be true, there won’t be any watering down or pandering to the easy-listening wing of contemporary music. (It does exist.)

Thomas has held the country’s only full-time composer-in-residence post for ten years and has been involved with MusicNOW since its inception six years ago. Starting next year, the position will be split and given to Osvaldo Golijov and Mark-Anthony Turnage, who were selected by CSO president Deborah Card and artistic administrators Martha Gilmer and Matías Tarnopolsky. (Tarnopolsky, also involved in planning MusicNOW, departed for the New York Philharmonic last January.)

Golijov and Turnage have curated the forthcoming year’s programs with Cliff Colnot, MusicNOW’s principal conductor and the unsung hero of the series. Colnot conducts one series concert per year, and prepares the musicians prior to the other concerts that are led by a different conductor. This challenging music couldn’t be performed at such a high level without his involvement.

These new faces could spell a different direction for the series. Unlike Thomas, who works in a fizzily abstract vein, both Turnage and Golijov use popular forms in their works. The Boston-based Golijov—an Argentinean with Eastern-European Jewish parents—throws flamenco, klezmer, Sephardic melodies and anything South American he can think of to make his points. Turnage, an English composer, brings in the energy and muscle of jazz for his often-bruising music.

Even though neither of the new leaders lives in Chicago, MusicNOW’s health won’t be affected. Turnage’s affinity for orchestral maneuvers—“I like the running of [orchestras],” he says. They’re often less political than opera houses”—will likely keep him in the loop, and Colnot is adamant that the long-distance arrangement won’t be an issue. “I know there won’t be any problems [with MusicNOW] since they aren’t here 365 days a year,” Colnot says, adding that both Turnage and Golijov will speak from the stage at concerts and attend rehearsals. “That’s part of their arrangement,” he says.

Turnage especially seems excited about the prospect of working more closely with CSO musicians than he had been able to previously. (Golijov didn’t respond to the message we left on his answering machine.) Turnage’s No Let Up was premiered at a MusicNOW concert in 2004 and he’s ready to renew the relationship. “There’s nothing worse than working with an orchestra and then not seeing them for another two or three years,” he says.

Monday 8’s concert features the premiere of Shulamit Ran’s Fault Line, which will be led by Colnot. The premiere is a nice nod to the past as the series moves into the future: Ran was the CSO’s composer-in-residence before Thomas. Her substantial work was written for 15 players and soprano with a text drawn from the final act of Othello. Soprano Tony Arnold, who’s underrated in the new-music world, will sing.

All that’s been officially announced for the four programs of the 2006–2007 season are Golijov’s Ayre and a reprise of Turnage’s No Let Up. A head-spinning setting of Hebrew, Arabic and Sephardic texts, which are sung by a soprano with an ensemble augmented by a laptop, Ayre could turn out to be a season highlight.

Collectively, Thomas and Colnot have curated concerts covering almost every contemporary style. There will be some surprises next season, but that’s a routine occurrence with MusicNOW.

MusicNOW hits Monday 8.