in Discord explores the impact of human activities and climate change on the natural world, including specifically oil and
gas exploration/extraction and urban development. The work is focused on avian populations and the resulting adaptations on song
characteristics, habitat choices, and migratory patterns of species that include the White-Crowned Sparrow, Mourning Dove, and
Black-Chinned Hummingbird. Noise pollution has forced these species to adapt by altering migration patterns, changing the frequency
ranges at which they sing, and has affected feeding opportunities and survival rates. Awareness and advocacy for this issue can lead to the
adoption of newer technologies that help mitigate the worst of these effects. Recordings used in this project were generously provided by
the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as well as collected by the composer during a residency at the Hambidge Center for
the Creative Arts and Sciences.

Stephen Montalvo (b.1984) is an active composer and performer of acoustic and electronic music, as well as audiovisual installation artist based in New Orleans, LA where he lives with his wife and their two dogs, Snoop and Rose. He works to make new music accessible to wider audiences, creates playful and interactive installations, and occasionally jumps on stage with a punk rock percussion ensemble. Through his music, he explores concepts related to resonance and rhythmic interplay, works to promote equity in artistic experiences by creating agency for performers and audiences, and draws inspiration from social, ecological, and political concerns.

Grady Stewart is a lifelong New Orleanian, creative, and appreciator of all the arts. He throws and catches things and rides a unicycle with YellowBoxCircus. He enjoys words, nature, ice cream, fostering animals, volunteering, kindness, and finding adventure—not necessarily in that order. In the future, he is excited to embark on a legendary adventure to mystical distant lands, or at least daydream about it. 

The Louisiana Master Naturalists of Greater New Orleans is a community of citizens who engage with the natural environment through education & stewardship. Their certification program educates individuals from all walks of life about the natural environment of Southeastern Louisiana and the issues facing it. Continuing education and volunteer programs across our area keep the membership involved and allow them to continue to make an impact after the training program is over. Follow the link for details.

Described as “sleek, new” and “hyper-fluent” by the New York Times, Pascal Le Boeuf is a GRAMMY-award winning composer, jazz pianist, and electronic artist whose works range from modern improvised music to hybridizing notation-based chamber music with production-based technology.

Recent compositions include “Imprints” for Alarm Will Sound; “Playground” commissioned by Orchestra of St. Lukes; “Triple Concerto” for violin, percussion duo and orchestra featuring Barbora Kolářová and Arx Duo; “I Am Not A Number” commissioned by New World Symphony; and “Out of the Gate” commissioned and premiered by Nu Deco Ensemble.Pascal’s most recent awards include 2025 GRAMMY for “Best Instrumental Composition”, a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2020 Copland House Residency Award, and various Independent Music Awards in “Jazz”, “Eclectic”, “Electronica” and “Music Video” categories. Pascal has received commissions and grants from NEA, New World Symphony, Nu Deco Ensemble, the Lake George Music Festival, Lincoln Center Stage, Chamber Music America, New Music USA, and ASCAP. He composed music for the 2008 Emmy Award-winning movie King Lines, and won first place in the 2008 International Songwriting Competition.

Pascal is currently an Assistant Professor of the Practice of Music and Technology at the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music, and a Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellow and Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition at Princeton University.

Tiralineas refers to a Chalk Line Reel. Once visiting the SCAD,
Savannah College of Art Design, in Savannah, Georgia, my family and
I came across a hallway containing art works under the theme of
urban spaces. One in particular called my attention. On a long table,
a long roll of paper laid under the action of a chalk line reel. This
artifact, many times used by my uncles in their construction
business, had drawn a myriad of lines departing from multiple points
of origins dividing the canvas in capricious sections. It was a very
appealing sight. At the time, I had been working with graphic scores
for a few years in my performances as well as through my teaching.
Naturally, I looked at this piece as a musical score.
“Tiralineas” is a collection of gestures and textures for the musician to
freely interpret. Here they find individual freedom of sonic choices.
However, the score is divided into sections where some actions need
to be precisely synchronized in time. My intention is to appeal to the
inner communication of the ensemble while interpreting this work
and craft a performance that is both at their highest imaginative and
creative caliber as well as a tool to elevate their inner common
artistry.

Member of the Quijote Duo, Music of the Americas Project and the Louisiana Philharmonic, Sixto is a music and performing arts enthusiast. A versatile performer, teacher and composer, Sixto has concertized in Europe, United States, Mexico and Uruguay. Sixto Franco is passionate about chamber music and has had the honor to perform with Eighth Black Bird, International Chamber Artists, Symbiosis Ensemble in L.A., the Kaia String Quartet, Chicago Chamber Orchestra, and the Gesher Music Festival in St. Louis, MO. Recently, Sixto has made an appearance in “Broadcast from home”, a highly collaborative project created and developed by composer and community-maker Lisa Bielawa.

​The creative side of Sixto Franco has pushed him to venture into composition. He has written music for different mediums such as chamber music, theater and dance. He made his debut on February 2011 premiering his work “Blanco y Negro” in a Cancer Benefit Concert promoted by the Spanish Consulate in Los Angeles. The “malArte Association” of Valencia, Spain, commissioned and premiered his piece Five “O’clock Tabu” as the soundtrack for the interdisciplinary work with the same title. His last collaboration included the Chicago’s Tiffany Lawsome Dance Company resulting on the creation of “Calm Panic” for solo viola and dancer. Quijote Duo regularly includes his works in their repertoire.

Workers Union was originally written for the orchestra De Volharding (Perseverance), in which I myself figured as a pianist at that time.

This piece is a combination of individual freedom and severe discipline: its rhythm is exactly fixed; the pitch, on the other hand, is indicated only approximately, on a single-lined stave.

It is difficult to play in an ensemble and to remain in step, sort of thing like organising and carrying on political action. – Louis Andriessen

Louis Andriessen (1939-2021) is widely regarded as the leading Dutch composer of his generation who played a pivotal role in the international new music scene. From a background of jazz and avant-garde composition, Andriessen evolved a style employing elemental harmonic, melodic and rhythmic materials, heard in totally distinctive instrumentation. His range of inspiration was wide, from the music of Charles Ives in Anachronie I, the art of Mondriaan in De Stijl, and medieval poetic visions in Hadewijch, to writings on shipbuilding and atomic theory in De Materie Part I.

Andriessen’s compositions attracted many leading exponents of contemporary music, including the two Dutch groups named after his works De Volharding and Hoketus. Other eminent ensembles who commissioned or performed his works include Asko|Schoenberg, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, London Sinfonietta, and the Bang on a Can All Stars.

Collaborative cross-discipline works included the theatre piece De Materie, created with Robert Wilson for the Netherlands Opera; three works created with Peter Greenaway (the film M is for Man, Music, Mozart, and the stage works ROSA Death of a Composer and Writing to Vermeer); and collaborations with filmmaker Hal Hartley, including The New Math(s) and La Commedia, an operatic setting of Dante.

Commissions in the last decade before Andriessen’s death in 2021 included Mysteriën, premiered by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Mariss Jansons; Agamemnon for the New York Philharmonic, premiered in 2018; and The only one for Los Angeles Philharmonic, premiered in 2019. His final opera, Theatre of the World, about the 17th-century polymath Athanasius Kircher, received first performances in Los Angeles and Amsterdam in 2016, and was released on disc by Nonesuch in 2017. His last work was May, for choir and orchestra, a tribute to Frans Brüggen which set texts from the classic Dutch impressionist poem by Herman Gorter and was premiered in the NTR ZaterdagMatinee series at the Concertgebouw in 2020.

Louis Andriessen held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall, and was awarded Composer of the Year Award by Musical America in 2010. He won the 2011 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his opera La Commedia and in 2016 was awarded the Kravis Prize for New Music including the commission of his orchestral work Agamemnon.

Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes