Bold Experiment

  • Curtis 100, Curtis New Music Ensemble
  • Feb 15, 2025 @ 7:00 P.M.

This performance is currently sold out. Join the waitlist to be notified when additional tickets become available. 

This exciting concert features musical and academic explorations of the 20th century, including works by Curtis alumni, inspired by the “Bold Experiment” initiated by Mary Louise Curtis Bok in 1924 when she opened a conservatory in Philadelphia. The program will feature late Pulitzer Prize-winning modern classical and avant-garde composer George Crumb’s foreboding “voyage of the soul,” Black Angels, for electric string quartet. Subtitled “Thirteen Images from the Dark Land,” this gripping piece, written during the Vietnam War, captures the horrors, anguish, and upheaval of the era and was conceived as a parable for a troubled contemporary world, as poignant then as it is now.

Program

VILLA-LOBOS Choros No. 2
CRAWFORD SEEGER Suite for wind quintet
MEREDITH MONK Obsolete Objects, Totentanz, and Folkdance
EASTMAN Buddha
DU YUN The Ocean Within
CRUMB Black Angels

2024–25 Season

Great to Groundbreaking

Step into the heart of our centennial celebration as Curtis Institute of Music unveils a season brimming with passion, energy, and greatness. You’ll experience music-making at its highest level—and the energy and excitement of extraordinary young talent. It will be an unforgettable season, where the young artists of Curtis ignite the stage alongside esteemed alums like Yuja Wang, Ray Chen, Teddy Abrams, Time For Three, and many more. 

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Special Thanks

Curtis’ Centennial Season is made possible through the support of Derek and Sissela Bok, the Mary Louise Curtis Bok Foundation, Deborah M. Fretz, Charles C. Freyer and Judith Durkin Freyer, Lisa and Gie Liem, Mark and Robin Rubenstein, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 

Curtis Institute of Music received funding from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Generous support for Curtis New Music Ensemble is provided by the Daniel W. Dietrich II Foundation.

    • Date Feb 15, 2025
    • Time 7:00 P.M.
    • Location Curtis Institute of Music, Gould Rehearsal Hall
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