Grammy-nominated Hub New Music brings an ensemble like no other to Gonzaga

For over a decade, the unique ensemble that is Hub New Music has been developing its own distinct performance sound.

Hub New Music initially began as a school project back in 2013. Michael Avitabile, who was earning his master’s degree at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, wanted to build upon his previous work with student composers and bringing a new piece to life.

At first, the group mostly consisted of Avitabile’s friends that played an assortment of instruments and wanted to perform less-than-common music off campus.

“We would find art galleries, churches, basically anywhere in Boston that would let a bunch of grad-students come and play a concert without having to rent the venue because we had no budget whatsoever,” Avitabile said. “We’re talking bringing chairs from our living room … capital DIY.”

While searching for pieces to perform alongside student compositions, Avitabile found music that a group called the Seattle Chamber Players had commissioned for flute, clarinet, violin and cello. Avitabile, a flute player himself, had never performed in an ensemble quite like this, and after the group began to perform this repertoire, it soon became the standard for Hub New Music.

“There isn’t a ton of chamber music written for the flute, and so any opportunity to find a collection of work for the same instrumentation was quite exciting,” Avitabile said. “Being nontraditional, it was actually a real gift that there was so much existing repertoire, and we didn’t have to commission everything we played from the get-go.”

Within just a few years, Hub New Music began to garner local and national attention, leading to their first “ambitious commission project” in 2016 – a 35-minute epic titled “Soul House” by Robert Honstein. Now, over a decade later, the group tours nationally and only performs music specifically written for them.

“It’s been a real journey and continues to be one that’s particularly rewarding,” Avitabile said. “No shortage of things to do, and people to meet, and places to go.”

With the flute, clarinet, violin and cello being a distinct ensemble, Hub New Music has spent the past 12 years developing their own style and mannerisms.

More common groups, such as a string quartet, have had hundreds of years to set standards for performance. Meanwhile, an ensemble like Hub New Music has not had many examples. Instead, they end up teaching themselves by means of intentional listening and objectively judging their own performance.

“It really takes a decade … there will be one marking that for a string player, they play it longer, and for a wind player our default is to do it shorter, and then it’s kind of like mediating those differences,” Avitabile said. “And at least in my experience, an immense amount of flexibility with pitch and dynamic and vibrato and color.”

This distinct sound helped lead their collaboration with composer Carl Simon, “Requiem for the Enslaved,” to be nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition at the 2023 Grammy Awards.

When the announcement was made, the group was on a flight and Avitabile wasn’t paying much attention to the potential for a nomination. Upon landing and taking his phone off airplane mode, Avitabile’s phone was packed with texts. He searched for the nominations and sure enough, there was Hub New Music.

“My colleagues were all asleep and I’m punching them and poking them and being like, ‘Guys, guys, I think we got sort of nominated for a Grammy!” Avitabile said. “Some stranger behind me taps me on the shoulder and he’s like, ‘Hey dude, did you just get upgraded to first class?’ And I looked at him and I was like, ‘Metaphorically, like kind of, I think?’ ”

Friday night, Hub New Music will take to the stage at Gonzaga’s Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center. They will be performing works from their usual touring repertoire alongside pieces written by Gonzaga students specifically for the ensemble, giving the young composers a chance to hear their own work go full circle, from pen to performance. Hub New Music will also perform a piece written by faculty member Michael Kropf, who they met at a festival years ago.

“A lot of great music is timeless, but there’s something about listening to something by someone else who is living in the same exact world and having the same experience of being alive right now,” Avitabile said. “There’s something that can’t be replicated.”