MusicIC, Iowa City’s premiere chamber music festival exploring the connections between music and literature, presents THE BLACK ANGEL: Music, Myth, and Memory, a three-day festival examining how composers across centuries have engaged with themes of mortality, symbolism, and the unseen, while also drawing inspiration from Iowa City’s own Black Angel legend. Now entering its 16th season, MusicIC continues its long-standing mission of innovative, text-driven programming rooted in Iowa City’s identity as a UNESCO City of Literature.
At the heart of this year’s festival is George Crumb’s Black Angels, “Thirteen Images from the Dark Land,” (1971), a landmark work for amplified string quartet, marking the 55th anniversary of its publication in 2026. Crumb has called his seminal work “a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world.” The piece incorporates poetic epigraphs, symbolic numerology, and images of darkness and transformation. Crumb’s score also directly quotes Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, forging a powerful musical and philosophical link between Romantic-era meditations on death and a 20th-century response shaped by war and rupture.
The festival further connects this repertoire to Iowa City’s Black Angel statue in Oakland Cemetery, a landmark that has inspired generations of local storytelling and provides a powerful, place-based lens for this exploration of music, literature, and memory.
Festival Events
Thursday, April 30, 2026 – 7:30 p.m.
Preview Event
Selections and lecture exploring Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden and George Crumb’s Black Angels, with literary and historical context
Location: TBD
Friday, May 1, 2026 – 7:30 p.m.
Masonic Building, Iowa City
Concert Program will include:
- Franz Schubert: String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, Death and the Maiden
- George Crumb: Black Angels for amplified string quartet
Saturday, May 2, 2026 – 10:30 AM
Family Concert
Iowa City Public Library
A 40-minute family concert introducing young audiences to chamber music as storytelling through sound, symbol, and place.
Performances will be free and open to the public. The festival is made possible by support from sponsors including the University of Iowa.
Performers include MusicIC Founding Artistic Director Tricia Park, violin and Kenny Lee, cello, (University of Iowa School of Music, Director of Orchestral Studies) alongside guest artists and University of Iowa faculty.
