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CONTEMPORANEOUS 2024
2024 is almost here, and we cannot wait to share so many wild dreams of artists with you!
This past year has seen Contemporaneous bring to life a parade of extraordinary new work — from the premieres of two new operas on either side of the US to concertos for bubble wrap and “hardanger d’amore” fiddle as well as a jaw-dropping collaboration with Gambian griot and kora legend Jali Bakary Konteh this Fall!
As we look out at 2024, we see a world overflowing with artists who are looking to share their own incredible dreams — music and art that is beyond our wildest imagination.
Contemporaneous provides a unique space in our ecosystem, working to allow artists to have the chance to live a life that is truly guided by their dreams — a life that follows the wild calling of the imagination, wherever it may lead. By developing, commissioning, producing, and performing the dreamworks of artists — in whatever form and scale they have imagined them, without the sort of limitations of scope so often imposed at the outset on new work and younger artists — Contemporaneous offers artists the vital opportunity to truly follow the most meaningful work they can offer to the world. And this in turn extends to all of us a new vision of what is possible.
The dreams that Contemporaneous is bringing into the world in 2024 — from musical creators such as Lila Meretzky, Grey Grant and Karl Ronneburg, Zachary Ritter, and so many more — are extraordinary. They are by turns beautiful, massive, bold, strange, joyful, intimate, and every single one is something that might not exist without the dedication of this community.
We need your help to bring these dreams into the world, to share these incredible new musical works with a community for whom we know they can provide such meaning, and to show to artists that for anyone who dreams of something extraordinary, there is a path waiting for them to share it with others and that it is possible to live a life guided first and foremost by the imagination.
Everything Contemporaneous does is made possible by the support of this community. Every dollar we raise goes directly to artists, towards the viability of this artistic life for all through commissions for composers, fees for the unbelievable musicians of Contemporaneous who carry these dreams into the world, and the production of transforming the impossible into the necessary.
Will you join us as we head into 2024 by contributing towards our goal of raising $75,000 to bring these dreams to life?
WHAT WE MADE POSSIBLE THIS YEAR
In 2023, we brought an extraordinary number of these dreamworks to life, many of which were the fruits of years — even decades! — of imagination and extraordinary devotion to this pursuit of what is most beautiful.
In March…
Contemporaneous brought Swan Songs to life, a deconstructed opera by composer Ethan Braun and librettist Vikram Devasthali, which absorbed and then transfigured the historical tradition of melodramatic endings in opera.
In May…
Contemporaneous premiered Stranger Love, a six-hour opera about love and joy, which the SF Chronicle called “a historic triumph of aspiration,” complete with Contemporaneous, 3 microtonal pianos, 7 singers, 6 dancers, and a full production and taco trucks at Disney Hall in LA, presented by the LA Phil and directed by Lileana Blain Cruz. With music by our co-artistic director Dylan Mattingly, the 11-year journey to share this piece has been a guiding light for us in many ways over the past decade, showing us the intricacies of the challenge and the profound meaning possible in working to bring outsize dreams to life.
In June…
Contemporaneous brought Tonia Ko’s concerto for bubble wrap and ensemble to blazing, popping life, drawing on an extraordinary creative practice she has been developing for years. We gave the U.S. premiere of Donnacha Dennehy’s new piano concerto Limina, featuring star pianist Eliza McCarthy, and premiered — and recorded (stay tuned!) — Midden Find, an amazing new work by Dan Trueman and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, which draws on Irish traditional music and features the gorgeous 10-string “hardanger d’amore” fiddle, an instrument played by only a handful of people in the world!
In October…
Jali Bakary Konteh, an absolutely masterful kora player — the grandson of Alhaji Bai Konte and a bearer of his family’s legacy, passing music and historical tradition from generation to generation of Mandinka culture in Gambia — joined Contemporaneous in New York to perform entirely new arrangements of his and his grandfather’s music in an unforgettable evening.
And along the way…
We presented the U.S. premiere of a new piano concerto by Donnacha Dennehy, we played a show at Mass MoCA with 60 string players and a 60-channel immersive electronic installation, we played a show at the Green-Wood Cemetery with cellist Joshua Roman (and more tacos!), and we launched a new multi-year residency with Colgate University, working with student composers to allow them the chance to pursue their own wild imaginations.
DEDICATION
In order to open up new possibilities in the world, it takes an extraordinary amount of dedication. Dedication from Contemporaneous’s extraordinary staff, working tirelessly to help bring these dreams into being at every stage; dedication from Contemporaneous’s unbelievable musicians, who pour so much love, care, and astounding ability to translate imagination into something we can hear, something we can feel; and the awe-inspiring dedication of this community — Contemporaneous, and all these dreams, are community-funded. Everything we do is made possible by you, by the collaborative passion and generosity of this entire community, to create the resources necessary to make it possible for artists to dream.
Last year, we raised $75,000 together — seventy-five thousand dollars which brought all these dreams into our world, which made it possible for Jali Bakary Konteh to travel thousands of miles and share his music with us, for Tonia Ko to dream about the infinite possibilities of the sounds of bubble wrap, for the musicians of Contemporaneous to share the ecstatic endless dance of Stranger Love with thousands of people.
This is what we can do together, and it’s just the start.
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Next year, we have so many more dreams that are pushing their way into this world — crazy, wonderful dreams of artists like Lila Meretzky (and her work on an utterly beautiful hour-long collection of songs drawing on the poetry of Anna Margolin); Grey Grant and Karl Ronneburg, who have created a new “dreamopera,” an abstract show of music, light, and theater sourced from their own diaries and their own lives, one of the most extraordinarily personal works I’ve ever encountered — transformed into something that says something to all of us about what it means to live an idiosyncratic life in this world; Zachary Ritter, who has transformed a favorite song by Imogen Heap into a massive never-ending experience for chorus and orchestra; and so much more!
Let’s make this life possible for these extraordinary artists and let’s give them the chance to live a life guided by what is most meaningful and most beautiful, by the limits of their imagination and not the limits of what is expected by our world.
With every impossible dream that we make possible, we open a window into the armor of the world. There is so much unimaginable beauty waiting on the other side.
Will you open a window with us?
Do It Online…
Or by check!
Checks may be made payable to Contemporaneous and mailed to:
Contemporaneous
P.O. Box 275
New York, NY 10023
MANY THANKS TO OUR DONORS!
Samuel Adams
Silvia Alexim Nunes
René Allain
Michele Araujo
Gloria Avner
Katherine Balch
Amy Bartscherer
Karen Bartscherer & David Israel
Thomas Bartscherer
Eve Beglarian
Albert Behar
Nicole Belmont
Jen Biener
Betsy and William Bird
David Bloom
Kathie and Martin Bloom
Ethan Braun
Owen Brown
Ben Brubaker
Dashon Burton
Christopher Caines
Lydia Chapin
Yi-ching Chen
Jody Cormack
Jamie and Celie Cowin
Conrad Cummings
Aaron Davidman
Ann Davidman
Hannah Davidman
Colin Davin
Daniel Thomas Davis
Beth Dawson
Vivian de Rivero Barreto
Gayatri Devi
Stephen Dreyfuss
Laura Duchnicki
Kim and Bob Evans
Beatrice Farber
Jim Farber
Barbara and Rob Fisher
Sarah Fisher
Freda Flax
Robert Flynt
Andrew Frank
Joshua Frankel
Russel Frehling
John Gertz
Ann and Jordan Gervin
Christopher Gibbs
Keith Gleason
Marsha Grey
Stephanie Griffin
Marcie Gunnell
Marka Gustavsson & John Halle
Janet Miller Haines
Karen and Bill Haines
Baxter Harris
Michael Head
Molly Herron
Jeremy Hirsch
Jan Hollander
Matthew Hughes
Russ Irwin
Christopher Jennings
Aaron Jay Kernis
Homai Khan
Eric Klein
Daniel Kochersberger
Robert Kochersberger
Lydia Kontos
Lawrence Kramer
Cornelia LaRussa
Jane Lenoir
Daniel Linden
Adlyn Loewenthal
Dylan Mattingly
Lucy and George Mattingly
Joe Mattingly
Jinty McTavish
Tina Mitchell
Theodore Moore
Donald Nally & Stephen Hyder
Alan G. Neumann
New Music USA
Kevin Newbury
Silvia Nunes
Deborah O’Grady
Lawrence Osgood
LaDene Otsuki
Barbara Kochersberger Pagels
Vasudevan Panicker
Nancy Patten
Nico Pemantle
Vince Peterson
Brian Petuch
Alan Pierson
Lillian Pliner
Michael Pratt
Andrea Profili
Elkhanah Pulitzer
Phillip Rashkin
Eleanor Ray
Tricia Reed
Nicholas Reilingh
Marianne Rendón
Beth Martin Riley
Melissa Jane Riley
Peter Robles
Jamie Romm
James Rosenfield
Susan Scheid
Margaret and Neal Schmale
Michael Schmale
Eric Schmale
Jeremy Schonfeld
Finnegan Shanahan
Janet Stetson and Danny Shanahan
Aaron Siegel
Josephine Simon
William Smith
Will Sweeney
Sabrina Tabby
Johnny Thakkar
Phillippa Thompson
George Tsontakis
Jennifer Undercofler
Dawn Upshaw
Ross Vedder
Paul Vershbow
Alex Weiser
James Wengler
Eli Wirtschafter
Fanny Wyrick-Flax
Additional support for Contemporaneous is provided by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, and the New Music USA NYC New Music Impact Fund. Support through New Music USA’s NYC New Music Impact Fund is made possible with funding from The Scherman Foundation's Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund.
