Urban hubs like Brooklyn, Chicago and San Francisco have long been seen as incubators of creative cross-pollination, but since 1971, the Society for New Music...

Urban hubs like Brooklyn, Chicago and San Francisco have long been seen as incubators of creative cross-pollination, but since 1971, the Society for New Music has been making the case that cultural and artistic collision and germination can happen away from the city lights. With the release of Music Here & Now - their fourth album on Innova Recordings - once again shows that new music is alive and well in the heart of New York state. Based in Syracuse and comprising of composers and creatives from New York, the Midwest, Peru, china, Mexico and beyond, the Society for New Music is the oldest new music organization in the state outside of Manhattan and commissions at least one new owrk each season from a regional composer. Music Here & Now pulls together works from Rob Deemer, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Gregory Wanamaker, Zhou Tian, Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann, "Doctuh" Mike Woods and Mark Olivier. Encompassing a wide range of styles and influences from Mexican to Peruvian folk music to jazz to classical to the natural world to social and political concerns, the music here stakes a claim to an aural world informed by but not bound to geography or genre. The award-winning Society for New Music, led by director Neva Pilgrim, is comprised of a core of dedicated professionals who live in the heart of New York State, but who are nationally and internationally renowned. Most have performed and recorded together for 15 to 20 years or more. They all bring their passion for new music to the enterprise. Their mission is to commission, permiere and record new works by regional composers; advocate for new music via Fresh Ink on WCNY-FM and its affiliates; provide regional musicians an opportunity to perform the music of their peers; encourage young composers and bring new music to as broad an audience as possible, plus composers-in-residence in the public schools.