Columbia New Music is a group of composers, performers, and music appreciators that aims to foster creativity and experimentation through a variety of musical forms and languages. In the past, our concerts have featured contemporary classical music, avant-garde and free jazz, and electronic music that is exclusively written and performed by Columbia students. Our main goals are to give student composers opportunities to have their music performed, give performers a chance to explore music that is often out of their “comfort zones,” and represent some highly exciting genres of music that are often ignored in musical settings.
We hold three concerts per semester, have weekly meetings, and hold group improvisation sessions. As said before, our concerts exclusively feature the work of student composers. Organizing pieces for performance is generally the responsibility of the composer, but the group aims to make this process easier by connecting composers to the performers they might need. Our meetings are used for planning concerts, discussions of students’ music, and musical demonstrations. We have also invited graduate composers at Columbia to come to meetings and present their music. This year we began holding sessions in which members of the club and other musicians can explore new musical sounds and techniques through collaborative improvisation.