About the NIU New Music Ensemble and Festival

Gregory Beyer, DMA

Created in 2008 by its director, Dr. Gregory Beyer, the Northern Illinois University New Music Ensemble is a performance group dedicated to historically groundbreaking music of the 20th Century and the emerging musical voices of the 21st Century.

Each November, the ensemble presents a multi-concert Festival featuring prominent guest composers, performers, and thematically connected compositions to expose students and the NIU community to excellence and diversity in contemporary classical music making.

With its flexible instrumentation allowing it to present diverse repertoire, the NIU NME has to date presented concerts of music by Luciano Berio, Olivier Messiaen, Steve Reich, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Augusta Read Thomas, Chinary Ung, Regina Harris Baiocchi, Alex Mincek, Eric Wubbels, Kate Soper, Shulamit Ran, Elainie Lillios, Alexis C. Lamb, Judith Shatin, Jessie Montgomery, David M. Gordon, Joseph Klein, George Crumb, Igor Stravinsky, John Cage, Erik Griswold, Anthony Pateras, Gerard Grisey, Fred Sturm, Matt Ulery, Christopher Adler, David Lang, Dawn of MIDI, and many others.

At its festivals, student members of the NME have interacted directly with many of these composers and have performed alongside luminous guest artists such as the Wet Ink Ensemble (NYC), Yarn/Wire (NYC), Clocked Out Duo (Australia), Matt Ulery (Chicago), Dane Richeson and Marco Albonetti, the nief-norf Project (Tennessee), the Flannau Duo, Amy Wurtz, Elainie Lillios (BGSU), Joseph Klein (UNT), Calliope Duo (Texas), Beyond This Point (Chicago), and many others.

14th New Music Festival features Pulitzer Prize winning composer Melinda Wagner and flutist Emma Hospelhorn

The NIU New Music Festival celebrates its fourteenth edition with two evenings of music October 26-27, 2026. The festival events will take place in the School of Music’s Boutell Memorial Concert Hall. The evening programs begin at 7PM and tickets are available through the NIU CVPA Digital Box Office. This year’s festival will feature:

• Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Melinda Wagner (The Juilliard School)
• Guest solo flutist Emma Hospelhorn (Ensemble Dal Niente)
• Music by nine composers
• A world premiere: Gregory Beyer performs Melinda Wagner’s “The Witness Tree” for solo marimba
• Six more premieres by NIU student composers, performed by the NIU New Music Ensemble

On Monday, October 26, the festival will feature the the NIU Chamber Choir performing a new work by Saunder Choi, as well as the world premieres of six works NIU student composers, featuring the NIU New Music Ensemble under the direction of Zach Good.  The ensemble will also perform Melinda Wagner’s chamber sextet, “Unsung Chordata.”

On Tuesday October 27 at 11 a.m., our festival’s featured guests, Melinda Wagner and Emma Hospelhorn, will offer an All-School Convocation for the School of Music community, performing and discussing their lifelong involvement in contemporary music making.

That evening on October 27 at 7 p.m. in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall, the NIU School of Music community will offer a composer portrait of our special guest, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Melinda Wagner. Her music will receive performances by the NIU Wind Ensemble under the direction of Thomas Bough, the Avalon String Quartet, Festival Director Gregory Beyer, and guest flautist Emma Hospelhorn as concerto soloist in Wagner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition, “Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion” performed by the NIU Philharmonic under the direction of Maria Kurochkina.

After Tuesday night’s concert, there will be a post-festival reception at Tapa La Luna in Downtown DeKalb. We encourage the NIU and the DeKalb community at large to come out and help us celebrate another successful festival!

Questions or comments can be directed to Festival Artistic Director Dr. Gregory Beyer via email, gbeyer@niu.edu.