Wahnfried, Aspen, and New Orleans: Fall 2025 Updates
Dear friends, colleagues, and fellow music lovers,
I’ve decided to start a short quarterly newsletter — a way of keeping in touch, sharing news, and announcing upcoming concerts.
First, my new website has launched! There’s still some cleanup to be done, but you’ll already find much better information about my works, performances, and recordings:
Recent Highlights
This summer I was fortunate to attend some extraordinary performances of my music.
In June, my opera Wahnfried was staged in the UK for the first time at the Longborough Festival. It was a joy to return to the piece and to work again with Justin Brown, who commissioned and conducted the world premiere in 2017. Justin and I spent over a year preparing a new piano reduction and improving the performance materials for this production. The result was a powerful staging, directed by Polly Graham with a terrific cast. The reviews were fantastic, including coverage in The Times, The Guardian, and many other publications. On a personal note, I was very glad to share the week with my daughter in the English countryside.
Another highlight was the performance of my double violin concerto, A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance, at the Aspen Music Festival. It was wonderful to finally visit Aspen and to collaborate again with Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony. The conductor and ensemble were excellent, and the whole experience reminded me how special it is to reconnect with long-time collaborators and work with excellent young musicians.
Looking Ahead
This fall will bring the world premiere of New Orleans Mix, performed by Ensemble 4.1 at the Harvard Musical Association in Boston. I’ve had the privilege of working with this ensemble for years — they’ve performed Jerusalem Mix dozens of times — and the new work is a kind of sequel. Writing it meant diving into musical traditions I hadn’t explored much before, which made the process both challenging and inspiring.
Also coming up:
- Trio Colores will tour In Flux (triple percussion concerto) with the Jugendsinfonie Orchester Zürich performing it in four cities in Germany and Switzerland.
- Frozen in Time will be performed by Vivi Vassileva with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie , including concerts at the Konzerthaus in Vienna and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.
- Tanyaderas will be featured on two concerts at the Enescu Festival by the Berlin Academy of American Music conducted by Garrett Keast.
Thank you for reading, and for your continued support. I hope to see you at a performance soon.
Warmly,
Avner
www.avnerdormanmusic.com
If you’d prefer not to receive these quarterly updates, just reply with “unsubscribe.”
Recent Highlights
-
A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance
: Concerto for Two Violins and Strings
(2025)
· Details
- A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance — March 22, 2026 ; Kodak Hall (Rochester, NY) — Gil Shaham; Adele Anthony; Rochester Philharmonic conducted by Andreas Delfs · More info
+1 more in last 6 months - Wahnfried (2016) · Details
Spotlight Work
New Orleans Mix — Oboe, Clarinet in Bb, Bassoon, Horn in F, Piano
New Orleans Mix is an homage to the spirit, history, and sonic identity of the city. It is not an attempt to replicate or imitate the music of this extraordinary place, but rather a personal response—an act of admiration and reinterpretation from the perspective of an outsider deeply moved by its cultural and musical traditions. Written as a “sequel” to my 2007 work, Jerusalem Mix, which explored the layered spiritual and musical identity of that city, New Orleans Mix seeks a similar intersection of place and sound. The original Jerusalem Mix was structured in movements that reflected the diverse traditions coexisting there. In this new piece, I wanted to do the same with New Orleans: to explore the street processions, the rising energy of second-line parades, the violence and aftermath of storms, the depth of prayer and reflection, and the ecstatic release of gospel jubilation. It was a joy and a challenge to immerse myself in the recordings, the stories, and the sound worlds of this unique place. I was inspired by the music of Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, and so many others who helped shape the foundation of jazz in the 20th century. Their music, while deeply rooted in a specific time and place, has a timeless vitality that continues to resonate around the world. The piece was commissioned by the Harvard Musical Association for Ensemble 4.1, an extraordinary group of musicians with whom I previously collaborated on Jerusalem Mix. Over many performances and a recording of that work, our shared language deepened, and this new commission became an opportunity for us to embark on a new adventure—to and a second city to “mix.” New Orleans Mix is the result of that journey. New Orleans Mix is both a tribute and a personal response. It celebrates a musical heritage that has shaped so much of what we hear today, while offering a contemporary and deeply felt reinterpretation of those traditions.