"An Outstanding Place to Make Art" - Egbert Hiller on New Music in New Mexico

In 2020, the 49th Annual John Donald Robb Composers' Symposium was scheduled early, and German journalist Egbert Hiller had an opportunity to write about the event and the New Music scene in New Mexico.

Egbert Hiller, German journalist and music publicist, visited New Mexico in February 2020 for an unusually early John Donald Robb Composers' Symposium. As if Co-Artistic Directors Karola Obermüller and Peter Gilbert had some inkling that a pandemic would shut down culture all over the world, from February 2-5, this festival of new music, usually held the end of March, featured composers and performers from Europe and the United States.
Not only did Hiller present a paper on "Utopian Dimensions: Luigi Nono (1924-1990): 'Fragmente – Stille, an Diotima' - (Fragments – Silence, to Diotima)" during his visit, but he also got to see some of New Mexico's striking landscape and sites, all while interviewing local composers, performers, and music icons.
Hiller edited one version of these interviews for a feature aired on Deutschlandfunk (German public radio) in the spring of 2020. And you can read the article Hiller wrote for Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Music Journal), a music magazine, co-founded in Leipzig in 1834 by Robert Schumann, here.