The first steelpan player to ever win the 2024 Crain-Mailing Foundation Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Young Artists Concerto Competition will take the stage with the world-famous NIU Steelband at their annual spring concert, Sunday, April 21 at 3 p.m. in the NIU Music Building’s Boutell Memorial Concert Hall. Jaden Teague-Núñez, a sophomore at DeKalb High School and son of Board of Trustees Professor, Presidential Research, Scholarship and Artistry Professor and Head of Steelpan Studies Liam Teague, won the competition in February performing selections from “A Visit to Hell” composed by his fat ..read more

Russell Hartenberger The NIU Percussion Ensemble’s spring 2024 concert features the world premiere of Russell Hartenberger’s REQUIEM, a major new multi-movement work for nine percussionists and five vocalists, as well as Steve Reich’s 1971 minimalist masterwork, DRUMMING. The concert is Sunday, April 14 at 3 p.m. in NIU’s Boutell Memorial Concert Hall in the Music Building. Tickets are available through the online Box Office. Russell Hartenberger will be in residence at NIU from April 11-14. Professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, Hartenberger was a founding member of the NEXUS Perc ..read more

The Northern Illinois University Steelband program presents its spring 2024 concert on Sunday, April 21, at 3 p.m. (CST). The event will be held at Boutell Memorial Concert Hallin NIU’s Music Building and will feature the world renowned NIU Steelband (Liam Teague, director), All-University Steelband (Jalen Charles and K-Lee Blackwell, directors), Community School of the Arts (CSA) Steelband (Yuko Asada, director), and the NIU Steelpan Studio. The steelbands will collaborate a phenomenal group of guest artists. The fantastic duo of Reggie and Mardra Thomas (vocalist) will once again grace the s ..read more

The Northern Illinois University Concert Band Festival hosted by the Phantom Regiment  Friday, February 23 in the Music Building at NIU. A live stream of the event is available at niu.edu/music/performances. Performances begin at 9 a.m. Phantom Regiment has hosted a high school concert band festival in partnership with Northern Illinois University since 2011. Nearly a dozen area high schools are attending the festival which includes a guest performance by the NIU Wind Ensemble. A schedule of performances is available at the bottom of the page on the Phantom Regiment concert festival page ..read more

For the third year, the NIU School of Theatre and Dance is participating in the Ukrainian Play Reading Project. On Saturday, February 24 they will host a live reading of “Bad Roads” by Natal’ya Vorozhbit, in the O’Connell Theatre in NIU’s Stevens Building from noon to 2:30 p.m. There is no admission fee, though donations will be accepted to globalgiving.org to benefit Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund. A livestream of the event will be available at: http://tinyurl.com/5n6mvxbr According to Playwrights Canada Press: In the darkest recesses of Ukraine, a war is raging.A journalist takes a research tri ..read more

Christopher Scanlon, assistant professor of trumpet and brass area coordinator in the NIU School of Music is performing in Illinoise, a musical opening at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre January 28 and running through February 18. Music and lyrics for the show were created by Grammy and Academy Award nominee Sufjan Stevens and based on his groundbreaking 2005 album Illinois. The story was written by Tony Award winner Justin Peck and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibbies Drury and show is directed and choreographed by Peck. Scanlon is part of the company in the show as one of 1 ..read more

Randiss “Wonder” Hopkins, ’17, works for Nike’s Blue Ribbon Studios. Randiss “Wonder” Hopkins, ’17, experienced a dream in his youth that propelled him to do backflips—literally. The dream and the events immediately following have led Hopkins to live and work with the mindset, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Hopkins recounts the dream with clarity as he shared in this LinkedIn post. “As a little boy, growing up on the West Side of Chicago, I wanted to be a Power Ranger like almost every kid in the mid-late 90’s,” he wrote. “One of the older kids on my block, Lee (Po ..read more

For more than 40 years the world renowned duo of trombonist Christian Lindberg and pianist Roland Pöntinen have performed around the world and recorded more than 20 albums together. On Tuesday, January 16 they will perform in concert at Boutell Memorial Concert Hall in NIU’s Music Building. This will not be Lindberg’s first visit to NIU. The native of Sweden, who was voted in 2015 as the greatest brass performer in history, played at the university in 1992. Thirty years later he is back with Pöntinen, who also hails from Sweden, as part of a world tour where they are featuring the best of thei ..read more

The Northern Illinois University Foundation‘s annual holiday e-card featured four special guests this year. The NIU Jazztet, made up of jazz studies majors Ryan Bills, Isiah Jones Jr. Sid Smith IV and Nat Lin appeared in the video message playing “Let It Snow” on the iconic Altgeld Hall staircase. The post NIU Jazztet featured on this year’s NIU Foundation Holiday Card appeared first on NIU Arts Blog ..read more

Sid Smith IV, who earned his Master of Music in jazz studies from the NIU School of Music in December was featured with a video during the Graduate Commencement Ceremony. Congratulations to Sid and to all of the fall 2023 graduates from the NIU College of Visual and Performing Arts. The post Commencement profile: Sid Smith IV, School of Music appeared first on NIU Arts Blog ..read more