Composer Spotlight

Nova Linea Musica turns the camera on one of the most celebrated living composers in the world. On August 7, we film Chen Yi and violinist Rabia Brooke with Bitter Jester Studios for a new documentary on My Childhood Memories, a solo violin suite drawn from the games of Chen Yi's childhood in China. The film and the music premiere together next spring, with Chen Yi in attendance, and it all begins now.

On October 28, 2026, Nova Linea Musica honors one of the defining voices of the last half century, with a Chicago homecoming for flutist Anthony McGill and a world premiere from a composer who once sat at Philip Glass’s side.

Grammy-nominated composer Clarice Assad on her new NLM commission "The Raven," the bird that watches the threshold between one self and the next, and what it means to close a season of ten world premieres.

On March 11, 2026, Jennifer Higdon sat in a sixty-seat room in Chicago and heard her own music for the first time. A composer whose works average 300 performances a year worldwide chose to be in our room. Here is what happened.

Pianist and composer Conrad Tao opened Nova Linea Musica's 2025-26 season in Chicago with the world premiere of Chris Mercer's Impromptu: Fluorescing. In this interview, originally conducted by Brian Mackey for The 21st Show on Illinois Public Media, Tao talks about performing with live electronics, human intuition versus machine intelligence, and what it means to return to Chicago.