The New Music Series highlights musicians who are actively creating and crafting what it means when you say “21st-century music.”

This series has featured notable artists like Alarm will Sound, Yarn/Wire, Roomful of Teeth, and Bang on a Can All-Stars.

2025-2026 New Music Series

A black and white group photo of members from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).

Lawrence University New Music Ensemble

Saturday, November 1, 2025 • 2 p.m. • Harper Hall
Free admission

This fall, the Lawrence University New Music Ensemble (LuNuMu) honors the 60th anniversary of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a groundbreaking collective that has reshaped the landscape of experimental music since its founding in Chicago in 1965.

From its earliest days, the AACM has been dedicated to nurturing innovation, artistic freedom, and community. Its members—visionary composers and performers such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, and many others—have pushed the boundaries of jazz, classical, and improvised music, creating a legacy that continues to influence artists around the world. The AACM has championed African American creativity, built platforms for underrepresented voices, and redefined what it means to make new music in the spirit of collaboration and exploration.

LuNuMu will celebrate this remarkable legacy with performances of works by AACM composers, highlighting the creativity, imagination, and fearless spirit that has sustained the organization for six decades. Join us for an evening of bold sound, discovery, and tribute to one of the most influential forces in contemporary music.

Headshots of guest violist Hank Dutt on left and guest pianist Kate Campbell on right.

Hank Dutt, viola and Kate Campbell, piano

Monday, November 10, 2025 • 8 p.m. • Harper Hall
Free admission

Recital of contemporary viola and piano music featuring longtime Kronos Quartet violist Hank Dutt. Featuring works by Mary Kouyoumdjian, Meredith Monk, Arvo Pärt, and Toru Takemitsu.

Lawrence University New Music Ensemble in performance in Harper Hall.

Spectral Canvas: Music of Donnacha Dennehy and Andy Akiho

Saturday, February 7, 2026 • 7 p.m. • Harper Hall
Free admission

The Lawrence Conservatory’s New Music Series presents Spectral Canvas, an evening of bold, boundary-crossing music by Donnacha Dennehy and Andy Akiho.

The program features Dennehy’s Limina, a riveting piano concerto performed by Lawrence faculty pianist Michael Mizrahi. In Limina, Dennehy explores thresholds between registers, textures, and energies, creating music that is at once luminous, visceral, and deeply expressive.

Paired with Dennehy’s work is Akiho’s Copper Canvas, a dazzling composition alive with intricate grooves, metallic shimmer, and the kinetic drive that has made Akiho one of today’s most in-demand composers.

Hailed by critics worldwide, Dennehy and Akiho represent two of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music. Together, their works invite listeners to step into soundscapes that shimmer, pulse, and radiate with color and intensity.

Headshot of composer Steve Reich.

Steve Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians, 50th Anniversary Celebration

Wednesday, April 15, 2026 • 8 p.m. • Lawrence Memorial Chapel
Free admission

The Lawrence New Music Ensemble performs Steve Reich’s groundbreaking and mesmerizing work 50 years after its premiere in April 1976. Scored for four pianos and a battery of percussionists, vocalists, strings, and winds, the work is rarely performed, last heard at Lawrence in 2016.

Andy Akiho and Imani Winds

Andy Akiho & Imani Winds

Friday, April 17, 2026 • 7:30 p.m. • Lawrence Memorial Chapel

Andy Akiho is a GRAMMY® nominated and Pulitzer Prize finalist composer whose bold works unravel intricate and unexpected patterns while surpassing preconceived boundaries of classical music. He is an in-demand composer who has earned international acclaim for his large-scale works that emphasize the natural theatricality of live performance.

GRAMMY® award winning Imani Winds is celebrating a quarter century of music making. The group has led a revolution and evolution of the wind quintet through their dynamic playing, adventurous programming, imaginative collaborations and outreach endeavors that have inspired audiences of all ages and backgrounds.

Following their album release in June 2024, BeLonging, Andy Akiho and Imani Winds will tour together for the first time during the 25/26 season. This unique collaboration will bring audiences a program that will include Akiho’s BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging*, as the centerpiece – a powerful piece commissioned by Imani Winds, inspired by the sounds and protests of immigrants held at a Brooklyn detention center, and workshopped by Akiho and incarcerated young men at Rikers Island.

* Commissioned by Imani Winds with support from the Concert Artists Guild Richard Weinert Award, the Imani Winds Foundation and the Kaufman Music Center. Premiered October 26, 2022 in New York City.

This event is part of the Performing Arts Series.

Explore Past Performances

Alarm Will Sound and Roomful of Teeth are just a few of the amazing New Music Series guests who have shared their music with the Lawrence community.