Most modern concert-goers have heard a condemnation of classical music as a dusty, navel-gazing genre.  Even while attending an orchestral or instrumental concert, it is dismayingly common to hear fellow audience members quip, "Classical music is a dying art form". 

For the many of us with vivid, embodied experiences with classical music, this statement feels unobservant and out of touch. However, reframed slightly, this audience member may have a point. Compared to other genres, classical music is unusually in touch with its roots. We perform centuries old-music with period instruments and painstakingly emulate performance practices for instruments modern performers have evolved past. 

And yet, the bleeding edge of modern classical music can also strand uninitiated audiences. Unfamiliar dissonances, incorporation of technology and avant-garde elements leave some listeners disconcerted -- that is, not sure whether what they've just experienced aligns with their definition of classical music. 

Perhaps modern performance of classical music, new and old, is best understood as a form of time travel. Not just passive listening to music from "years ago", but a transmission of living, ongoing experiences from musicians who may or may not be with us today. With this in mind, Futures Past seeks to bring a sense of futurism from years past to LAB-A's audiences, through the works of composers spanning some 500 years.

We invite you to consider all music on this program as 'contemporary', or existing in the same time period that you, our audience does; such that you are looking forward as the composer would have at the time of writing. 

Deified

Jonathan Bingham (b. 1989)

Duodecimi Toni

Gabrieli (1557-1612)

Liturgical Symphony

Fisher Tull (1934-1994)

Power

John Stevens (b. 1951)

Mutations on Bach

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)

Triplex

Patrick O'Malley (b. 1989)