Inspiration comes in many forms and from many places, and Great Noise Ensemble’s fifth concert season, Illuminations of Inspiration features works inspired by everything from location to light.

This season GNE will return to The Catholic University of America, continuing an excellent partnership and presenting five concerts in CUA’s historic Ward Recital Hall. Also on the concert roster is a return to one of our audience’s favorite venues, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring as well as a blockbuster program at the National Gallery of Art.

The season opens with Urban Saloon, a program highlighting works inspired by scenes from evocative locales such as the Deep South and the historic American West, as well as music from the Balkans, India, jazz and John Cage from composers Bruce Broughton, Ned McGowan, Joel Puckett, Samuel Vriezen and Andrea Clearfield. The Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring hosts GNE for Twilight Music, with works by David Smooke, John Harbison, Roberto Sierra, Masatoshi Mitsumoto and Blair Goins inspired by light, poetry and musical intervals. The third concert of the season , Duos Concertantes, features guest artists Duo 46, Beth Ileana Schneider and Matt Gould, in works commissioned and written for them by composers Armando Bayolo and Geoffrey Gordon, and including the world premiere of a brand new work by Catholic University professor Andrew Simpson.

In January, Great Noise Ensemble returns to the National Gallery of Art for Colorfield Passions, a program of world premiere works inspired by the paintings of Mark Rothko (Armando Bayolo’s Kaddish:Passio:Rothko) and the music of Claudio Monteverdi (Carlos Carrillo’s Motets from Vespro della Beata Virgine (2010)). With the program Apparitions from the Woods, GNE features new music from Finnish composers Magnus Lindberg, Kaija Saariaho, and Aulis Sallinen. GNE finishes out its season with Loonies, which features works by Ian Hartsough and Robert Patterson, as well as the world premiere of a new percussion concerto by D.J. Sparr, performed by guest artist Christopher Froh.

Tickets will be available beginning September 14, 2009.

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.