Rice to host festival exploring classical, contemporary and cross-cultural music

Amy McCaig
713-348-6777
amym@rice.edu

Rice to host festival exploring classical, contemporary and cross-cultural music 

HOUSTON – (March 9, 2015) – Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music will host Common Practice 21C: Classical, Contemporary and Cross-Cultural Music, a three-day music festival exploring the intersections between these three types of music. The festival will take place March 13-15.

The festival will feature concerts, lectures and a reading session by student composers. Performers, composers and lecturers include international guest artists as well as Shepherd School faculty and students. A full schedule of events and details on performers is available at http://music.rice.edu/21C/.

WHAT: Common Practice 21C: Classical, Contemporary and Cross-Cultural Music.

WHEN: March 13-15.

WHERE: Rice University, located at 6100 Main St. in Houston, with finale event at the Asia Society of Texas, located at 1370 Southmore Blvd. in Houston. More details are available at http://music.rice.edu/21C/.

“In Western music, the Common Practice era — roughly 1600 to 1900 — was defined by its adherence to customary harmonic and melodic practices,” said Shih-Hui Chen, associate professor of composition and theory at the Shepherd School. “Similarly, older Chinese music remained grounded in its own traditional perspective and performance practice. Common Practice 21C will present an international selection of traditional and new music by composers and musicians from Taiwan, China, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Japan as well as the United States.”

The festival events on the Rice campus are free and open to the public and will be held in Alice Pratt Brown Hall, 6100 Main St. The festival’s finale will take place March 15 at the Asia Society of Texas, 1370 Southmore Blvd.; tickets for that event are $10 for the general public and $5 for Asia Society members.

Members of the media interested in attending may RSVP to Amy McCaig, senior media relations specialist at Rice, at 713-348-6777 or amym@rice.edu.

For more information on the festival, visit http://music.rice.edu/21C/.

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Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,920 undergraduates and 2,567 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just over 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is highly ranked for best quality of life by the Princeton Review and for best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go here.