With nineteen world premieres and counting, Great Noise Ensemble is a working embodiment of its mission to fight for the performance of new works and to promote emerging talent in contemporary music.

Great Noise Ensemble was born in 2005 through a listing placed on Craigslist.org by composer and conductor Armando Bayolo. Seven area musicians united by their passion for new music answered, and from this core group the ensemble has grown into the twenty instrumentalists and two singers which now comprise its core membership.

Since its first concert in January 2006, Great Noise Ensemble has become one of the most important en-sembles in the District of Columbia’s bourgeoning new music scene, winning The Washington Area Music Association’s 2007 “WAMMIE” Award for Best Chamber Ensemble. In its short four-year history, Great Noise Ensemble has performed the premieres of nineteen new works and presented concerts in venues ranging from intimate community concert spaces like the Patricia M. Sitar Center to prestigious locales such as the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Gallery and Sculpture Garden and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

In 2008 Great Noise Ensemble began fulfilling its educational mission through its residence at The Catholic University of America’s Benjamin T. Rome School of Music by bringing four of its regular season programs to the university’s Ward Hall as well as providing student composers with professional quality readings of their works and working with student performers through coaching rehearsals of new works by student composers.

During the 2009-2010 season, Great Noise Ensemble will continue its residency at The Catholic University of America and return to perform at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring and the National Gallery of Art. This season also brings seven world premieres of works by Armando Bayolo, Carlos Carrillo, Blair Goins, Geoffrey Gordon, Robert Paterson and D.J. Sparr and collaborations with Beth Ileana Schneider and Matt Gould of Duo 46 in December and the National Gallery of Art’s Vocal Arts Ensemble in January.