Music IC Festival
April 30-May 2, 2026
2026 Festival
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.
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MUSICIC:
Music and literature festival, MusicIC, was created out of a deep love for Iowa City, further inspired by Iowa City’s 2008 City of Literature designation, the first in the United States. Run by Founding Artistic Director Tricia Park and Managing Director Meagan Brus, MusicIC reflects the creative interests of the community through inventive musical concerts, in-depth lectures and discussions, and free community events, open to the public. Further strengthening the festival’s musical and literary ties to the community, MusicIC has enjoyed a fruitful relationship with Amy Margolis and Iowa Summer Writing Festival, often collaborating with contemporary writers and artists. A secondary mission of the festival, since its beginnings in 2010, is to bring “Iowa grown” and Midwestern musicians and artists back to Iowa City. www.musicic.org
The Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature organization:
The UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) was created in 2004 to promote cooperation with and among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development. The 408 cities that comprise this network work together towards a common objective: placing creativity and cultural industries at the heart of their development plans at the local level and cooperating actively at the international level. Designated in 2008, The Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature promotes and encourages the love of literature by providing opportunities for the enjoyment of every genre to inspire and enrich the minds and souls of readers and writers of all ages and from all parts of our community. https://www.iowacityofliterature.org
About the Participants
TRICIA PARK
Violinist | Writer | Educator
Praised by critics for her “astounding virtuosic gifts” (Boston Herald), “achingly pure sound” (The Toronto Star), and “impressive technical and interpretive control” (The New York Times), Tricia Park enjoys a diverse and eclectic career as a violinist, educator, writer, curator, and podcaster.
Tricia is the producer and host of the podcast, “Is it Recess Yet? Confessions of a Former Child Prodigy.” She is the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, a Fulbright grant, and was selected as one of “Korea’s World Leaders of Tomorrow” by the Korean Daily Central newspaper. Since appearing in her first orchestral engagement at age 13 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, she has performed with the English Chamber Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra of South Africa; the Montreal, Dallas, Cincinnati, Seattle, Honolulu, Nevada, and Lincoln Symphonies; and the Calgary, Buffalo, and Westchester and Naples Philharmonics. Tricia has given recitals throughout the United States and abroad, including a highly acclaimed performance at the Ravinia Rising Stars series. She also performs as half of the violin-fiddle duo, Tricia & Taylor, with fiddler-violinist, Taylor Morris.
Other career highlights include Tricia’s recital debut at the Kennedy Center, appearances at the Lincoln Center Festival, her Korean debut with the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) Orchestra and collaborations with composer Tan Dun. As First Violinist of the Maia Quartet from 2005-2011, she performed at Lincoln Center and the 92nd Street Y in New York and Beijing’s Forbidden City Hall and was on faculty at the University of Iowa.
Tricia is the founder of the Solera Quartet, winner of the Pro Musicis International Award and the first American chamber ensemble chosen for this distinction. The Soleras’ debut album, Every Moment Present, was hailed by The New York Times as “intoxicating….The quartet’s playing on the recording is sensitive and finely articulated throughout and the sound bright and vivid.”
Tricia received her Bachelor and Master of Music from the Juilliard School where she was a recipient of the Starling-DeLay Teaching Fellowship. She has performed chamber music with Pinchas Zukerman, Cho-Liang Lin, Michael Tree, Gary Hoffman, Paul Neubauer, Robert McDonald, and members of the American, Guarneri, Juilliard, Orion String Quartets and Eighth Blackbird. Former teachers include Dorothy DeLay, Felix Galimir, Cho-Liang Lin, Donald Weilerstein, Hyo Kang, and Piotr Milewski.
Passionate about arts education and community development, Tricia is the co-founder and artistic director of MusicIC. Tricia received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was awarded the New Artist Society Scholarship and a Writing Fellow Prize. She has taught writing for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa and she is the co-lead of the Chicago chapter of Women Who Submit, an organization that seeks to empower women and non binary writers.
Currently, Tricia works for Graywolf Press, is Associate Director of Cleaver Magazine Workshops where she is also a Creative Non Fiction editor and faculty instructor, and maintains a private studio of violin/viola students and writing clients.
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