DISCOVERY

22 April, 2025 | DePaul University | Brennan Recital Hall

What is Discovery?

~Nois' DISCOVERY is a recap of the awesome music and people we’ve discovered this past season. This year's DISCOVERY will feature some of our favorite repertoire from this year including works by Viet Cuong and Arturo Márquez alongside a world premiere of our very own arrangement of "entr’acte" by Caroline Shaw. 

DISCOVERY will also feature the winners of our 2025 Young Creators Fellowship. ~Nois’s Young Creators Fellowship is an opportunity for talented and creative high-school aged students to create a new collaborative work with ~Nois. This year, we are THRILLED to be premiering new works by Malik Muhammad and John Mangum.

 

Concert Program

Entr’acte (2011)

by Caroline Shaw (arr. ~Nois)

Entr’acte was written in 2011 after hearing the Brentano Quartet play Haydn’s Op. 77 No. 2 — with their spare and soulful shift to the D-flat major trio in the minuet. It is structured like a minuet and trio, riffing on that classical form but taking it a little further.

I love the way some music (like the minuets of Op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.

–CAROLINE SHAW

Perihelion (2020)

by Elijah Daniel Smith

A perihelion is defined as “the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is closest to the sun.” This piece focuses exclusively on the notion of orbits and cycles, both small and large, and some of the many in ways in which those ideas can be used to make sound.

-ELIJAH DANIEL SMITH

Trials (2025)

by Malik Muhammad

Commissioned as part of ~Nois’ 2025 Young Creators Fellowship.

Invariance (2025)

by John Mangum

Commissioned as part of ~Nois’ 2025 Young Creators Fellowship.

Prized Possessions (2015)

by Viet Cuong

With its two contrasting movements, Prized Possessions attempts to address the human phenomenon of taking things for granted by sending musical material through various repetitions and expressive treatments. The piece focuses on balancing fleeting, quickly vanishing ideas with other material that’s allowed to obsessively linger until almost no longer welcome.

- VIET CUONG

Danzon No. 5 (1997)

by Arturo Marquez

The piece evokes the image of a slow sunrise beaming over the grand colonnades of a Mexican cathedral.

As the musician paint the picture of an early morning promenade, Márquez shows you a fleeting image of a salon in Veracruz as the saxophones faintly introduce the famous motifs found in Danzón No. 2. Yet, the motif soon disappears, replaced by a freely drifting melody line that carries an unmistakable major tone.

In the final section, the homage to his previous work becomes unmistakable as the piece accelerates and knocks away the image of the early morning reverie.

–KEVIN LIN

The Performers

 
 

~Nois

Take your preconceived notions of ‘noise’ and toss them out the window. Equal parts “fiendishly good and fiendishly goofy” (Chicago Tribune), ~Nois is a Chicago-based saxophone quartet dedicated to connecting with diverse audiences through the creation of new work. Since its founding in 2016, “~Nois continues to legitimize the saxophone quartet as a premier ensemble formation for classical music” (Brutal New Music) through commissioning today's most inspiring compositional voices.

Hailed as “technically superb and musically brilliant” (Cleveland Classical) ~Nois has been awarded top prizes at prestigious chamber music competitions including the M-Prize International Arts Competition, the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

 
 

The 2024 ~NOis Creative Fellows

 
 

John Mangum

John Mangum is a musician, composer, arranger, and orchestrator specializing in the electro-acoustic, synth-wave, and classical genres. John studied composition at the Boston University Tanglewood institute with Justin Casinghino and at AFA Texas with Mark Buller. He began playing cello at the age of eight and has studied and performed solo and chamber repertoire through the Hammond Preparatory School at the Rice University Shepherd School of Music, Interlochen Music Academy, and the Pfaelzer Conservatory at the Merit School of Music, where he serves as principal cellist in the Philharmonic Orchestra.

An avid chamber musician, John is a member of the Spizella Quartet, a competitive chamber ensemble, and has participated in masterclasses with members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and of the cello faculty at the University of Houston, among others.

He has studied cello with Brinton Averil Smith, principal cellist of the Houston Symphony, Patrick Moore of the University of St. Thomas, and with his current teacher, Karen Basrak of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. John’s synth-wave compositions can be found on SoundCloud.

Malik Muhammad

Malik Muhammad (age 17) is a composer and violist attending the Muhammad University of Islam on the South Shore of Chicago. Shortly after beginning violin lessons at age 10, Malik first began his performing career by enrolling in the Hyde Park Youth Symphony. Now having switched to viola, he currently plays with the Youth Symphony’s String Orchestra and performs in the chamber music program’s string quartet. Additionally, Malik is also a fellow for the Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative, where he is currently completing his third year as part of the program.

Malik wrote his first composition “Softly Blue, Suddenly Grey” as part of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago’s music composition program. Originally written for violin and percussion, Civic fellows Joe Bricker and Hannah Christiansen premiered the work as part of an online video series entitled “Chicago from Scratch!” in March of 2022. Shortly after writing this first work, Malik was accepted into the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Young Composers Initiative, where he began taking composition lessons with former Mead Composer-in-Residence, Jessie Montgomery. His first work written as part of the program, “Recoverless”, was featured in an upcoming documentary entitled “What’s Left Behind”. Led by University of Illinois Professor Ruby Mendenhall, this documentary explores the tragic stories of mothers who have lost their children to gun violence in Chicago.

Maik has received numerous awards and scholarships for his work as a violist and composer, including the Lift Music Fund Award, the Dorothy B. and Mel Kurzen Camp Scholarship, The Calderon Summer Music Camp Scholarship, the Merit Award from Interlochen Academy of Arts, and most recently, the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award through From The Top. In 2025, he was also selected as one of the winners for ~Nois’s Young Creators Fellowship program, where he composed a new work for saxophone quartet entitled “Trials”.

 

What is the Young Creators Fellowship?

~Nois’ Young Creators Fellowship is an opportunity for talented and creative high-school aged students to create a new collaborative work with ~Nois. The two selected Fellows get private creative lessons with our mentor Joey Meland and participate in two in-person collaborative workshops with ~Nois. Winners each receive a $500 cash prize and a professional video recording of their piece.

Who helped make this all possible?

~Nois’ Chicago Season: the CURIOSITY & DISCOVERY Series is made possible by the supporters of the ~Nois General Support Fund.

~Nois’s 2025 Young Creators Fellowship was made possible by the support from Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Reizner Family Fund and the ~Nois Young Creators Fund.

 
 

Next Chicago

Season Show

SAVE THE DATE:

Sunday, 2 November, 2025 at Constellation Chicago….

~Nois’ 2025/26 Season Kicks off with CURIOSITY VIII

Music by Chicago composer Marc Mellits & World Premieres by Alex Temple, Jeff Scott, and Evan Williams.