Shenandoah Conservatory presents the Ear Candy New Music Festival on Friday, Feb. 20, and Saturday, Feb. 21, a two-day celebration of the bold, boundary-pushing voices shaping contemporary music today. This year’s festival welcomes Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Julia Wolfe as composer-in-residence.
Through performances, workshops and creative conversations, Wolfe joins Shenandoah Conservatory faculty and students for an immersive exploration of new music through her singular artistic lens. Known for music that is visceral, urgent and deeply human, Wolfe offers fresh insight into the sounds, ideas and innovations driving the music of our time, while engaging directly with students in the rehearsal room and classroom.
“The Ear Candy New Music Festival is a vital opportunity for our students to engage deeply with the music being created in the world right now,” said Director of Composition, Coordinator of New Music and Associate Professor of Composition Jonathan Newman, M.M. “These intensive productions challenge them to explore new ways of rehearsing and performing while working directly with a living composer at the highest level. I’m especially excited that so many of our ensembles and musicians come together to present world-class new music to our broader community, and to welcome Julia Wolfe — an extraordinary, generous artist whose bold, compelling works invite both performers and audiences into meaningful, shared musical experiences.”
The festival opens on Friday, Feb. 20, at 7:30 p.m. with a performance by the EDGE Ensemble in collaboration with the Conservatory Choir in Armstrong Concert Hall. The program presents a rich exploration of contemporary chamber and vocal music, including Wolfe’s masterful works “Guard My Tongue,” “Dark Full Ride” and “You Breathe,” alongside pieces by emerging composers Robert Honstein (“Endless Landscape”) and Shelley Washington (“Eternal Present”). This concert highlights the vibrant energy of new music and the festival’s commitment to presenting fresh, boundary-pushing artistic voices alongside Wolfe’s established catalog.
The festival continues on Saturday, Feb. 21, at 7:30 p.m. with a powerful large-scale program in Armstrong Concert Hall featuring the Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble. Conducted by Director of Orchestral Studies and Associate Professor of Conducting Emanuele Andrizzi, D.M.A., and Director of Bands and Associate Professor of Conducting Timothy J. Robblee, Ph.D., the program bridges Romantic imagination and contemporary innovation, opening with Hector Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique, H. 48” — a revolutionary masterpiece renowned for its vivid orchestration and dramatic storytelling — before turning to the bold imagination and sonic brilliance of Wolfe. The Wind Ensemble performs Wolfe’s high-energy, rhythmically charged “Zigzag,” a consortium-commissioned work that pulses with drive and daring, and the evening culminates in her electrifying “Flower Power,” a genre-defying celebration of rhythmic vitality featuring the combined forces of the Symphony Orchestra and special guest soloists Anna Lee van Buren Endowed Chair in Clarinet, Coordinator of Winds & Percussion and Professor of Clarinet Garrick Zoeter, M.M., (clarinet); Director of the Guitar Studio and Associate Professor of Guitar Colin Davin, M.M. (electric guitar); Assistant Professor of Percussion Karlyn Viña, D.M.A., (drums); Eoín Fleming ’20, ’22 (Bachelor of Music in Performance, Master of Music in Performance) (electric organ), Christian Hartman ’26 (Doctor of Musical Arts in Performance) (cello); and Coordinator of Strings and Professor of Bass Donovan Stokes, D.M. (double bass).
The Ear Candy New Music Festival reflects Shenandoah Conservatory’s commitment to experiential learning, creative risk-taking and direct engagement with today’s most influential composers. By placing students alongside faculty and visiting artists in the creation and performance of new work, the festival offers audiences an electrifying window into contemporary music as a living, evolving art form.
Festival Performances
EDGE Ensemble with Conservatory Choir
Friday, Feb. 20, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.
Armstrong Concert Hall
Symphony Orchestra with Wind Ensemble
Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.
Armstrong Concert Hall
Tickets are available for purchase online 24/7 at conservatoryperforms.org. Tickets are available for purchase in person at the Shenandoah Conservatory Box Office located in the Ohrstrom-Bryant Theatre lobby and over the phone at (540) 665-4569 during regular box office hours (Tuesday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m.).
About Julia Wolfe
Julia Wolfe’s music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She draws inspiration from folk, classical and rock genres, bringing a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them.
In the 2025/26 season, the Houston Symphony gives the world premiere of “Liberty Bell” for orchestra, wherein Wolfe wonders how a piece of music could embody and communicate the elusive reach for the most basic tenet of the founding of the United States. Co-commissioners Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Nashville, Carnegie Hall, Louisville and the Grant Park Orchestra give their premieres throughout this season and next. Wolfe’s “unEarth,” commissioned and premiered in June 2023, by the New York Philharmonic — a large-scale work for orchestra, men’s chorus and children’s chorus that addresses the climate crisis — received its U.K. premiere with the BBC Symphony in January. This month, the Belgian National Orchestra is giving the Belgian premiere of “Fire in my mouth” as the culmination of a season-long celebration of her music at Bozar in Brussels. Wolfe’s “Anthracite Fields,” in a new arrangement for orchestra and chorus, is given its world premiere in Manchester, U.K., by the BBC Philharmonic in March — another culmination of a separate season-long celebration of her music by the orchestra.
The 2019 world premiere of “Fire in my mouth” — a large-scale work for orchestra and women’s chorus — by the New York Philharmonic with The Crossing and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, addresses the plight of young immigrant women working in New York City’s garment industry at the turn of the century. The work received extensive acclaim — one reviewer called it “a monumental achievement in high musical drama, among the most commandingly imaginative and emotively potent works of any kind that I’ve ever experienced” (The Nation magazine). The work is the third in a series of compositions about the American worker: 2009’s “Steel Hammer” examines the folk-hero John Henry, and the 2015 Pulitzer prize-winning work, “Anthracite Fields,” a concert-length oratorio for chorus and instruments, draws on oral histories, interviews, speeches and more to honor the people who persevered and endured in the Pennsylvania Anthracite coal region. Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Anthracite Fields” “captures not only the sadness of hard lives lost . . . but also of the sweetness and passion of a way of daily life now also lost. The music compels without overstatement. This is a major, profound work.”
Wolfe has written a major body of work for strings, from quartets to full orchestra. Her quartets “combine the violent forward drive of rock music with an aura of minimalist serenity [using] the four instruments as a big guitar, whipping psychedelic states of mind into frenzied and ecstatic climaxes” (The New Yorker magazine). Wolfe’s “Cruel Sister” for string orchestra, inspired by a traditional English ballad, was commissioned by the Munich Chamber Orchestra and received its U.S. premiere at the Spoleto Festival. “Fuel” for string orchestra is a collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison, and “Spinning” is a multi-media work written for cellist Maya Beiser with visuals by Laurie Olinder.
In addition to receiving the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Wolfe was a 2016 MacArthur Fellow. She received the 2015 Herb Alpert Award in Music, and was named Musical America’s 2019 Composer of the Year. Julia Wolfe is co-founder/co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can, and she is artistic director of NYU Steinhardt Music Composition.
Wolfe’s music has been recorded on Decca Gold, Naxos, Cantaloupe Music, Teldec, Sony Classical and Universal. Her music is published by Red Poppy Music and G. Ricordi & Co., New York (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by the Universal Music Publishing Group. Visit juliawolfemusic.com to learn more.
