Northwest New-Music Workshop (NW2) is a workshop created by Simon Henneman and Dick Valentine in the winter of 2016, with the purpose of bringing together Puget Sound area composers and instrumentalists in an evolving, dynamic collaborative environment. NW2 is devoted to creating, refining, rehearsing and performing new music encompassing the greatest possible breadth of idioms and styles. The intention is to grow NW2 continuously over time, as a forum to bridge Seattle’s diverse creative music communities and provide opportunities for individual artists who don’t ordinarily work together to conspire, collaborate, explore, and celebrate.
The first-ever NW2 ensemble consists of five multi-instrumentalists, together capable of supporting compositions for french horn, trumpet, flugelhorn, saxophone, flute, guitar, string bass, percussion and drums. Each of these five artists has composed new works specifically for the workshop ensemble. Additionally, for this first of what we hope to be an on-going series of NW2 concert presentations, new works have been commissioned from two other area composers.
The NW2 July 2016 concert presentation features an all-premiere program of compositions by seven Seattle composers:
Samantha Boshnack
Greg Campbell
Simon Henneman
Sierra Klingele
Pete Leinonen
Dick Valentine
Daniel Webbon