HEAR NOW is in the TRADITION, the 200-year-old Western tradition of innovation, wherein artists create work that expresses what it feels like to be alive in the here and now of socio-historical reality.
Ryan McWilliams‘ Trio Contraptions
As the challenges of the past several years accumulated and needed to be accounted for in expression, in 2024 the HEAR NOW Music Festival made a stunning and daring leap forward, inviting 16 musicians from the International Contemporary Ensemble (“the new gold standard for new music” – The New Yorker) to come out from New York City to perform two concerts of music by Los Angeles composers in the April festival.
ICE, whose Artistic Director, George Lewis, the New Yorker’s Alex Ross calls “one of the most formidable figures in modern music”, sold out the two concerts with enthralling performances.
Our composers are innovators, affirming in the face of tempestuous historical currents the concrete reality of the Human Spirit. The HEAR NOW Music Festival is one of the forces behind Josh Barone’s NY Times article in November 2023:
How California Became America’s Contemporary Music Capital
Kion Heidari’s In Waves
Part of the mission of HEAR NOW is to call national and international attention to the work of composers living and working in Los Angeles. In 13 Festivals including Spring 2024, HEAR NOW has presented 297 works by 176 different Los Angeles composers, with 40 world premieres, 25 West Coast premieres, 16 US premieres, and 21 LA premieres!
HEAR NOW is drawing the lines which will outline the future of classical music. And ours is a huge task, a task which will help define the aesthetics and values of our society.
We NEED your support!!
Here are some of the artists you supported in our 2024 festival:
You have sustained us for 13 years. You have allowed us to have LA composers celebrated not only in LA, but in a HEAR NOW/ Paris Festival in 2016, by the Laurent Cuniot’s TM+ Ensemble in 2019 and by George Lewis’ International Contemporary Ensemble in NYC in 2024.
HEAR NOW 2025 — “Voices Raised” — is setting up to be the best yet. We know you recognize how important it is for our community to have a vital, out-of-the-box festival of outrageously improbable and explosive music.
Please go to:
hearnowmusicfestival.com/donate
Or you may send a check to:
4209 Via Arbolada, Suite 231, Los Angeles, CA 90042
Donate whatever you can, and HEAR NOW will move forward with the talent and passion of LA Composers and players!!!
Warmest wishes to all,
Hugh Levick, Artistic Director
On behalf of the entire Hear Now Family
