Cornell’s Department of Music is collaborating with performers from Ithaca College and the Ithaca community to offer “Ithaca Sounding 2020,” a multiday, multi-venue event, Jan. 30-Feb. 2.

Events, all free and open to the public, will take place at Cornell, Ithaca College and downtown at Buffalo Street Books. Visit the music department website for a complete listing.

The festival and symposium will feature concerts, workshops, talks, presentations and readings focused on modernist and experimental concert music by Ithacans past and present, including keyboard composers Julius Eastman, Sarah Hennies, Robert Palmer, Ann Silsbee and David Borden.

“Initially I knew I really wanted to present the music of Julius Eastman in some important way: He was born in Ithaca and grew up here, and his music and legacy is undergoing quite a remarkable renaissance,” said festival coordinator and pianist Richard Valitutto, a Sage Fellow in Cornell’s keyboard studies DMA program, who discovered other Ithaca composers through friends and colleagues.

The events will connect and mediate the themes of music in the academy, marginalized art, improvisational performance practice and queer experimentalism.

Featured presenters include musicologists Sara Haefeli of Ithaca College; Ellie Hisama, Columbia University; and Matthew Mendez, Yale University. Featured performers include Valitutto; New York City pianists Joseph Kubera, Adam Tendler and Cornell alumnus David Friend; and Ithaca composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies.

– Kathy Hovis