DISTRICT5 AND EVIS SAMMOUTIS AWARDED CMA COMMISSIONING GRANT

We have some exciting news! District5 and composer, Evis Sammoutis, have been awarded a Classical Commissioning Grant from Chamber Music America. Evis Sammoutis will be adding yet another fantastic piece to the wind quintet repertoire. We could not be more thrilled to learn this new commission and share it with you all.

A little more about Evis Sammoutis: he is Cyprian-born and currently residing in the U.S. Not only a tremendous composer and guitarist, Evis is the Co-founder and Artistic Director of the Pharos Arts Foundation International Contemporary Music Festival, a one-of-a-kind festival in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Evis Sammoutis will join the faculty at Ithaca College in New York this Fall. Read more about his many interests and accomplishments on his website.

Alison first came across Evis’s music at the Lucerne Festival in 2008. She was blown away by his string chamber works and--like many of us in D5 when we hear stellar new music-- immediately looked Evis Sammoutis up online to see if he’d written any wind quintets! Fast forward to 2013, Metallaxis, an earlier quintet of Evis's, became one of the first pieces Alison encouraged our quintet to tackle. Once introduced to Evis’s writing, our enthusiasm to learn Metallaxis was unanimous. We initially programmed it as the final installation of our program “The Evolution of the Wind Quintet,” showcasing just how far Sammoutis can take the genre. Since our first recital, we’ve performed Metallaxis 10 additional times! We cannot wait to see Evis Sammoutis’s vision for a new wind quintet realized.

Follow our blog for further CMA commission developments and updates. For now, know that some good new music is coming your way!

Read the CMA press release here.