There are icons and there are icons, and Great Noise Ensemble presents both the established roster and potential candidates in a season designed to celebrate the recognized stars and the up-and-coming masters of new music.

On September 19, 2008, Great Noise Ensemble opens its fourth season with Darkness In No Man’s Land, a program exploring the many darknesses of the human condition through the works of Ryan Brown, JacobTV, James Leatherbarrow and Frederic Rzewski, including a new arrangement of Rzewski’s epic works Coming Together! and Attica by GNE founder Armando Bayolo.

On October 24, GNE presents Autumnal Songs, which alternately soothes the listener with music in circles and cycles by Alexandra Gardner, Jeremy Gill and Andrea Reinkemeyer, then excites the senses with rising star, composer and GNE member Kevin McKee’s exciting work Vuelta del Fuego for brass quintet and Armando Bayolo’s boisterous clarinet quintet St. Luke’s Summer.

December grooves with Tacit Dances, a program with verve which features two of the most famous works in the new music canon, John Cage’s 4:33 and Frank Zappa’s The Black Page, in tightly staged tandem conceived by GNE bassist Joel Ciaccio. Paired with these works is Jonathan Russell’s pyrotechnic Duo Bass Clarinet Concerto and Poul Ruder’s virtuosic Four Dances In One Movement.

In February, GNE celebrates the season of love on February 13 with Machines, Love, and Evolution, looking at various facets of the intersection and interplay between humanity and technology in practice and theory with works by Don Freund, Derek Bermel and Blair Goins. Composer D.J. Sparr’s Carnal Node relates repeated refrain of our times, a tale of the passion and frustration of internet dating, while Marc Mellits’s Five Machines uses the performers themselves as a grand machine together.

March brings Tiffany Windows, a program inspired by and portraying the bones and spirit of church windows and revival tents with music of David Dzubay, Libby Larsen, Jacob Cooper and Arlene Sierra.

Icons Old and New closes out with Revolutions, a collaboration with the Congressional Chorus which marks Great Noise Ensemble’s debut at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as well as the premiere of a joint commission by composer Daniel Felsenfeld, Revolutions of Ruin.

As always, Great Noise Ensemble hopes you’ll join us for a season filled with music which has both served as the building blocks for our passion and which will continue to inspire us for generations.