About Us

Founded in 2015, the Arcana New Music Ensemble is a group of Philadelphia-based musicians dedicated to presenting interesting, beautiful, and unconventional music in interesting, beautiful, and unconventional places.

The Arcana New Music Ensemble is a Philadelphia-based chamber ensemble dedicated to contemporary classical music. Its mission is to perform works by living composers and to reexamine music from the past, often focusing on composers whose work has been overlooked. A hallmark of Arcana’s programming is its frequent use of portrait concerts, which allow the ensemble to explore a composer’s work in depth. These programs balance music by widely recognized composers with works by those who are less well known or historically underrepresented.

Founded in 2015 by musicologist Thomas Patterson, harpist Elizabeth Huston, and curator Dustin Hurt, Arcana was created to provide a platform for Philadelphia’s many skilled performers interested in exploring both new works and important compositions from the past hundred years. Since 2020, the ensemble has been co-directed by Andy Thierauf and Dustin Hurt.

In 2016, Arcana partnered with Pig Iron Theatre Company to present Samuel Beckett, Words and Music by Morton Feldman and began a multi-year project devoted to the music of Moondog (Louis Hardin). The following year included a portrait concert of Galina Ustvolskaya, collaborations with Variant 6 and Prometheus Chamber Orchestra, and performances of works by Julius Eastman, including Stay On It, Femenine, and Thruway.

In 2018, Arcana presented rare works by Pauline Oliveros and portrait concerts of Tom Johnson, James Tenney, and Ben Patterson, along with a second Moondog program. In 2019, the ensemble presented concerts focused on Claude Vivier and Johanna Beyer and participated in a program of George Crumb’s chamber works. From 2020 onward, the ensemble’s programming has included a retrospective of David First, collaborations with the Wildflowers Composer Festival, and concerts highlighting Iranian and Iranian-American composers. Recent seasons have featured portrait concerts of Sarah Hennies, Raven Chacon, and George Walker, the launch of the annual Postal Pieces project, and performances of Pauline Oliveros’s The Well and the Gentle and Lucia Dlugoszewski’s Black Lake. 

Staff

Dustin Hurt, co-director

Andy Thierauf, co-director


 

Contact

All Inquires

Dustin Hurt
dustin@arcananewmusic.org

Andy Thierauf
andy@arcananewmusic.org