The Goethe-Institut Boston continues its ongoing exploration of contemporary music from Germany with this music festival in collaboration with musicians, composers and musicologists from Germany and the US. Four programs, each curated and performed by guest artists, showcase composers and musicians from Germany’s contemporary music scene and relate stories from history, personal relationships and transatlantic cooperation. You will hear works rarely heard in Boston by Germany-based composers like Helmut Lachenmann, Walter Zimmermann, Isabel Mundry, and Rebecca Saunders alongside the US premiere of a work by Harvard PhD student Isaac Blumfield. Join us for one or all four concerts which feature performances for percussion, cello, violin, piano and voice. Post-concert receptions provide an opportunity to connect with the musicians, composers and other audience members over a glass of wine.
Schedule of Events
March 6, 2025
8:00 PM
BOSTON / BERLIN
Concert Film Screening | New Works by composers Julia Werntz and John Aylward on film featuring performances by Nina Guo and Biliana Voutchkova
An evening of cinematic productions of contemporary music. A sneak-peak of John Aylward’s new opera film Oblivion (Laine Rettmer, director; Stratis Minakakis, musical director) and the premiere of Julia Werntz’s Wreaths for solo violin (directed by Monica Cohen/The BOOM House). This evening highlights long-standing collaborations between these Massachusetts-based composers and Berlin-based performers, soprano Nina Guo (Oblivion) and violinist Biliana Voutchkova (Wreaths).
John Aylward’s music comprises solo works, chamber music, orchestral work and music for film and multimedia. He is a child of an immigrant mother from Germany (herself a World War II refugee) and grew up in the Sonoran Desert in circumstances of tremendous diversity and economic instability. His music processes the impacts of that earlier life, filled with a deep sense of community, rich expressions of converging cultural histories, and the otherworldly landscapes of the desert.
The music of composer Julia Werntz is rooted in a clear melodic sensibility with a highly nuanced and elastic approach to pitch and time. Her intricate microtonal and rhythmic language often communicates the irregular contours of human physicality—bodily motions, speech, and the cadences of thought—and frequently reacts to sensations from the natural world.
Date: March 2 - 9, 2025
