Exclusive: Major US festival dumps new music

The Spoleto Festival USA has cancelled it Music in Time series after more than three decades.

Between 1990 and 2023 the series presented work by 475 composers including US premieres of Michel van der Aa, Thomas Adès, Gavin Bryars, Britta Byström, Tansy Davies, Brett Dean, Kui Dong, Pascal Dusapin, Bernd Franke, Toshio Hosokawa, Giya Kancheli, Steve Martland, and Saariaho.

But executive director Mena Mark Hanna and his music director Timothy Myer just cancelled the strand.

Its founder John Kennedy writes:
When Spoleto Festival USA recently announced its 2024 festival, something was conspicuously absent: the Music in Time (MIT) series. Music in Time had served as a core element of the festival since 1990, and had a tangible impact on the evolution of the festival’s reputation for innovative opera and orchestral programming. Music in Time also developed a personality and relationship with many audience members over its 31 seasons, so its death would seem to call for an obituary and some honorific closure, at least noting the broad strokes of its life.

Read on here.