Ebb & Flow 
Friday, January 26, 2024 Doors 7:00pm / Music 7:30pm
$15-30 Suggested Sliding Donation
Advance Tickets at www.thephoenixvt.com

“Ebb & Flow” is an audio art performance by Katie Semro in which she intertwines the flow of energy in our daily lives and in nature. Using fragments of story, sound, music, movement, and audience participation, Semro manipulates the perpetual flow of the natural world alongside the currents of human emotion.

“27 Breaths” is a live music and movement piece created and performed by composer Mathew Evan Taylor and choreographer Laurel Jenkins. Taylor and Jenkins inhale/exhale, push/pull, never simply breathe. Starting as a duet, this evening-length work expands to include a large cast of dancers and musicians. It is the first interdisciplinary piece created using Matthew Evan Taylor’s compositional system AfroPneumaism: a system where time and action are determined by the breath. Ultimately, this performance invites the audience to breathe with us.

TURNmusic plays music by Kyle Saulnier, Iman Habibi, Nico Muhly, Liz Reid. These concerts are curated by Brooke Quiggins.

January 13 7:00 doors, 7:30 music
January 14 3:30 doors, 4:00 music
$15-30 Tickets at The Phoenix Gallery and Music Hall

TURNMusic’s January cycle dissolves the line separating performers and the audience. It’s a chance to see the musicians in our most human light – embracing our vulnerabilities and emotions. We invite you to join us as we play music that truly reflects who we are as individuals, defines what drives our artistic journeys, and sheds light on how we find our place as artists in the world.

We’re excited to have versatile composer Kyle Saulnier writing new music for us, again! Utilizing his unique writing style of composing for the musician as an individual rather than for the instrument they play, Kyle will weave together each artist’s core sound to create a piece that unites the collective sound of the TURNMusic ensemble.

Kyle Saulnier, Composer

Sunday, October 2, 2022 7pm Burlington City Arts 2nd Floor Gallery

$20 Suggested Donation at the door

This program is designed around the world premiere of a multi-media work by Vermont composer Danielle O’Hallisey. 

TURNmusic premieres music by Vermont composer Danielle O’Hallisey. Danielle has undertaken the collection of historic clips with an eye to creating new work for our ensemble, merging interviews, speeches and intercepted audio in a multimedia composition and recording.

The piece will be an homage both to individual pioneers and to women who have expanded humanity’s reach into space–an invitation for listeners to learn about, love and grieve these aviatrixes and scientists of the Twentieth Century.

“Women of Aeronautics” – Danielle O’Hallisey
“G-Force” – Paola Prestini
“the dappled light just beyond her skin…” – Jessica Meyer (U.S. Premiere)

New Music in Vermont

We have a dedication to Vermont musicians and living music writers. We have a dedication to presenting sound art that invites listeners to be curious and engaged in the experience. We have a dedication to reflecting all humans through our work and artistry. 

Music in the Alley 2022 – Waterbury Vermont. 6-9pm Free

Axel’s Gallery, TURNmusic, and The Blackback Pub team up to present free live music this summer. Enter through the gallery and into the alley to find hear great music. Food and drink will be available for purchase from The Blackback Pub.

Friday, June 17 6-9pm: KeruBo and her band playing a blend of African Traditional Music, with inflections of Brazilian Samba/Bossanova, Jazz, and Blues.

Friday, July 22 6-9pm: Gabe Jarrett Group

Friday, August 26: Lovecraft, ft. Tom Cleary

May 6, 2022 Matthew Evan Taylor curates and leads TURNmusic. FlynnSpace 8:00pm Burlington, Vermont

Matthew Evan Taylor takes the lead on artistic planning for this show. He is writing brand new music and has chosen to feature Julius Eastman’s “Stay On It”.

July 10, 2021
Premiere of ‘kingsbury branch’ by Otto Muller
Goddard College Gardens 4:00pm, free
Plainfield, Vermont

‘kingsbury branch’ is a set of pieces about rural space and the acoustic traces of colonial geography. Tracing the watershed from Pekin Brook to the Winooski river, this piece weaves together field recordings, local history, folk song archives, invasive species, and haunted rafters in a 35-minute composition for ensemble and electronics.

‘kingsbury branch’ was premiered in the Lower Gardens at Goddard College and was followed by a story sharing circle where members of the community were invited to speak of their own experiences of boundary lines, waterways, places, and ghosts.

June 6, 2021
Discover Jazz Festival, Church Street Stage 4:00pm
Burlington, Vermont
Featuring Daniel Bernard Roumain, composer – violinist – activist

  • Blue/s Form – Coleridge-Perkins Taylor
  • Dig It – Trevor Weston
  • Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes – Valerie Coleman
  • Fast BLACK Dance Machine – Daniel Bernard Roumain
  • Voodoo Violin Concerto No. 1 – Daniel Bernard Roumain

Friday, February 7, 2020 at Zenbarn, Waterbury, VT
Saturday, February 8, 2020 at FlynnSpace, Burlington, VT

In February, TURNmusic’s line up of composers are inspired by funk, collaboration, compassion, and revolution. Violinist-Composer-Activist Daniel Bernard Roumain performs with TURNmusic on his Voodoo Violin Concerto. DBR is the first Community Artist-in- Residence for the Flynn Center, Vermont Symphony, and University of Vermont’s Lane Series. We are thrilled that he makes a stop on our TURNmusic shows in Waterbury at ZenBarn and in Burlington at FlynnSpace. (Yes, thanks to our friends at ZenBarn for hosting us for our February 7 show!)

Don’t miss music by story-teller/composer Valerie Coleman. We play a selection from her American Blueprint series titled Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes.

Native American and African cultures join to honor the legacy of the Freedmen, former African slaves adopted into tribal membership through emancipation or marriage. They were later cast out of the government’s National Registry of those tribes that would have entitled them to land and other benefits. Still, they fight for their rights even today. The history of what the early US colonial Government labeled as the “Five Civilized Tribes” (the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, Seminole and Choctaw nations) and their relationship with the Freedmen resonates within me as it is a true merging of cultures, sometimes clashing with aggression, but more than often melding into a soulful exchange.

— Valerie Coleman, story-teller/composer

Also, funky chamber music?  Yes. TURNmusic plays Trevor Weston’s Dig It 

Growing up in Plainfield, New Jersey, I immediately thought of the most important dance music of my youth: funk music. The famous group, Parliament Funkadelic is from Plainfield, and I remember dancing to their music and Kool and the Gang, also from New Jersey and the Jimmy Castor Bunch. My piece, Dig It, is a contemporary concert piece created with the sensibilities of funk music.

— Trevor Weston, composer


Breaking News: TURNMusic introduces The Late Set, an aprés concert happening that reaches into Vermont’s rich creative community. Jaguar Stereo! (Toussaint St. Negritude and Gahlord Dewald) will be our first The Late Set event directly following the TURNmusic shows. We hope you’ll stay to hear the poetry and improvisations of Jaguar Stereo!.

Sunday, October 13, 2019, 3:00pm

  • Abundant Silence: uncaged
  • Mary Rowell plays Forces of Flight by Isaac Villaroya

Grange Cultural Center Montpelier

Sunday, September 22, 2019, Doors 6:30, Music 7:00

  • Reena Esmail Jhula Jhule
  • Megan DiGeorgio partial pressures
  • Justin Rito reaching | failing
  • Sean Tilburg Two Abstracts: So Flute, A Rabbit in Your Headlights
  • Sufjan Stevens
    • Enjoy your Rabbit (arr. Michael Atkinson)
    • Year of the Boar (arr. Atkinson)
    • Year of the Horse (arr. Rob Moose)
    • Year of the Rooster (arr. Gabriel Kahane)

FlynnSpace
153 Main St
Burlington, Vermont 05401

Waterbury-based TURNmusic presents chamber music of our time with innovative programming, excellent musicianship, and the evening’s featured composers often in the audience.

“Founder and director Anne Decker mixes her diverse musical taste and experience to create some of the most intriguing, thought provoking, and enjoyable music being played in the state.”

—Steve MacQueen, Artistic Director, The Flynn Center for the Performing Arts

The group is dedicated to creating inclusive concert experiences that bring our community together to celebrate the incredible work of local musicians and music creators. TURNmusic is also moved to support the work of GunSenseVT on this program.

The TURNquartet plays songs featuring the Chinese Zodiac (Rabbit, Boar, Horse, Rooster) from Sufjan Stevens’ experimental electronic LP Enjoy Your Rabbit. It has been recast into modern classic works by many of NYC’s hippest young composers.

We will also be performing Jhula Jhule by Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, who works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces.

When MuSE first commissioned a violin and piano piece from me, to be based upon Indian folksong, I cast a wide net for source material – I scoured the internet and my large collection of Indian music, listening to everything from Bengali Bauls, Rajasthani folk singing. I even tried to find songs from Goa and Gujarat, the places my parents are from in India, typing every conceivable search term into Google. However, the material I felt most connected to in the end didn’t come to me from a distant corner of India, but in the most common way folk music can be transmitted: through the generations of my own family.

—Reena Esmail, composer

In Hong Kong, composer Sean Tilburg played principal percussion with the Philharmonic Orchestra and met his wife. His Two Abstracts: So Flute and A Rabbit in Your Headlights is a duo for percussion and flute.

TURNmusic is pleased to share the music of Vermont composer Justin Rito. reaching|failing was inspired by the horrific loss of life in our country every year from gun violence. Rito’s family was affected by this struggle when his grandmother was killed in a mass shooting near Detroit in early 2000, which forever changed his view on the preciousness and fragility of life. TURNmusic supports Justin’s work and story through an in-kind sponsorship for GunSenseVT.

This concert also highlights the music of Megan DiGeorgio, winner of the 2019 TURNmusic Collegiate Music Prize! The TURNquartet players her partial pressures on this program. Megan is currently working towards her Masters of Fine Arts Degree at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.