Music IC Festival
Penelope
by composer Sarah Kirkland Snider featuring vocalist Shara Nova
April 26, 2025 at The James Theater
Tickets will be available for purchase beginning March 15, 2025
ONE PERFORMANCE ONLY: Music and literature festival will feature Grammy-nominated artist Shara Nova in the contemporary multimedia song cycle, Penelope, written by Sarah Kirkland Snider and Ellen McLaughlin
Entering our 15th season, and our first since moving from June to April, MusicIC is delighted to present Sarah Kirkland Snider’s, Penelope, a song cycle for mezzo-soprano, string quintet, percussion, and electronics. As Iowa City’s premiere classical chamber music festival, MusicIC, presented by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature, continues its mission of innovative programming, exploring the intersection of music and literature.
Inspired by Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey, Snider’s website describes Penelope: “The song cycle, written in 2009 for Shara Nova and Ensemble Signal, is based on a music-theater monodrama written by Snider and playwright Ellen McLaughlin for the J. Paul Getty Center in 2008. In the work, a woman’s husband appears at her door after an absence of 20 years, suffering from brain damage. A veteran of an unnamed war, he doesn’t know who he is and she doesn’t know who he’s become. While they wait together for his return to himself, she reads to him from the Odyssey, and in the journey of that book, she finds a way into her former husband’s memory and the terror and trauma of war. is a meditation on memory, identity, and what it means to come home. Suspended somewhere between art song, indie rock, and chamber folk, the music of Penelope moves organically from moments of elegiac strings-and-harp reflection to dusky post-rock textures with drums, guitars and electronics, all directed by a strong sense of melody and a craftsman’s approach to songwriting.”
Snider writes music of direct expression and vivid narrative that has been hailed as “rapturous” (The New York Times), “groundbreaking” (The Boston Globe), and “ravishingly beautiful” (NPR). Recently named one of the “Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music” by The Washington Post, Snider’s works have been commissioned and/or performed by the New York Philharmonic; Boston Symphony Orchestra; Cleveland Orchestra; San Francisco Symphony; National Symphony Orchestra; Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Shara Nova is a Grammy-nominated composer, vocalist, and producer, and has released six albums under the moniker My Brightest Diamond. Nova starred in the Tony Award Winning musical “Illinoise” on Broadway, directed by Justin Peck, co-written by Jackie Sibblies Drury with music by Sufjan Stevens, with a live album released on Nonesuch Records. Many artists have sought out Nova’s unique vocal work, including David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, The Decemberists, Steve Mackey, and David Lang.
She will be joined in the Iowa City performance by other ensemble performers include MusicIC’s Founding Artistic Director, violinist Tricia Park, and a cast of University of Iowa faculty members and students, led by Conductor Kenny Lee, Director of Orchestral Studies at the University of Iowa.
One performance will be held on April 26, 2025, at 7:30 p.m., at The James Theatre at 213 N. Gilbert St. in Iowa City. Tickets are $35 for the general public and $20 for students. They will be available for purchase on the MusicIC website (iowacityofliterature.org/musicic/www.musicic.org) on March 15, 2025.
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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 350 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
Shara Nova
Shara Nova is a composer, vocalist, and producer currently creating from Detroit, Michigan. Shara has released six albums under the moniker My Brightest Diamond and has composed works for The Crossing, Conspirare, iSing Silicon Valley, yMusic, Brooklyn Rider, Nadia Sirota, Cantus Domus, Nordic Voices, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Roomful of Teeth, Aarhus Symfoni, Oregon Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the Detroit Opera Educational touring company, among others. In 2024 she starred in the Tony Award Winning musical “Illinoise” on Broadway, directed by Justin Peck, co-written by Jackie Sibblies Drury with music by Sufjan Stevens, with a live album released on Nonesuch Records.
Her baroque chamber p’opera “You Us We All” premiered in the US in October 2015 at BAM Next Wave Festival. In 2019, she composed for over 600 musicians along with the Cincinnati Symphony, a piece entitled “Look Around,” with director Mark DeChiazza. With co-composer and performer Helga Davis, Nova created a four screen film entitled “Ocean Body,” along with director Mark DeChiazza, which premiered at The Momentary in August 2021, shortly followed by the premiere of “Infinite Movement,” her baroque cantata for a 100 musicians, set to text by artist Matthew Ritchie, which premiered at The University of North Texas in November 2021. She created a choral arrangement for the 2023 Oscars performance of Son Lux’s song “This Is A Life” from the movie “Everything Everywhere All At Once.”
Many artists have sought out Nova’s unique vocal work, including David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Suzanne Bocanegra, The Decemberists, Steve Mackey, David Lang, So Percussion, Justin Vernon, Sufjan Stevens, and Tunde Olaniran, as well as Matthew Barney with Jonathan Bepler. Her singing and compositions are featured on “The Blue Hour” via Nonesuch Records with the string orchestra A Far Cry and co-composers Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Sarah Kirkland Snider and Caroline Shaw.
Nova has been a guest teacher in composition and performance at Princeton, University of Michigan, Columbus State University Schwob School of Music, NYU, University of North Carolina, University of North Texas and University of Texas in Austin among others. Nova is a 2023 Opera America Discovery Grant awardee, Kresge Arts fellow, a Carolina Performing Arts Creative Futures fellow, a Knights Grant recipient, a United States Artists fellow, and a New Music USA recipient. Three of her projects were nominated for Grammy Awards in 2023.
For more information about Shara Nova’s pop music work visit www.mybrightestdiamond.com
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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