Although Sarasota is home to several performing arts organizations, programming in the Southwest Florida city largely skews conservative. Not so for ensembleNEWSRQ, or “enSRQ” for short, a chamber group that focuses on contemporary music. It was founded in 2015 by violinist Samantha Bennett and percussionist George Nickson, former principals of the Sarasota Orchestra. The husband-and-wife team are co-artistic directors of enSRQ, for which they devise smart and forward-thinking programs that bring avant-garde variety to Sarasota’s classical music offerings. In May, the ensemble presented music by Unsuk Chin and Kaija Saariaho — a sample of two important 21st-century composers who are woefully missing in programs elsewhere in Florida.
In 2023, enSRQ hired its first general manager, and Bennett reported that its budget had grown to $150,000, having benefited from tourist tax grants earmarked for Sarasota County that year. But like many arts organizations in Florida, enSRQ is now feeling the impact from Governor DeSantis’ veto of $32 million in arts and culture funding for the state. Still, Bennett and Nickson are pressing on: enSRQ’s ninth season, which just got underway, consists of six performances showcasing many established composers — including Sofia Gubaidulina, Anna Clyne, Gabriela Lena Frank, Christopher Theofanidis, Nico Muhly, and Tan Dun — the Fort Myers-based composer Shawn Allison, and rising voices like Jonathan Cziner and Kitty Xiao. The season also includes a celebration of the 150th birthdays of Ives and Schoenberg and a performance of Jagden und Formen by the prolific composer Wolfgang Rihm, who died in July.
As a longtime Orlando resident, I was curious to learn how a relatively young and decidedly bold organization like enSRQ is weathering the blow to the arts in Florida. We also talked about the group’s history, impact, and future plans.
Let’s start with the big issue in Florida. I’m glad to see that enSRQ’s ninth season started in September. How are you navigating DeSantis’ arts funding cut?
It’s hard to believe we’re into our ninth season already! We owe our longevity to an incredible community of people who crave new experiences and value art that pushes limits. Unfortunately, DeSantis’ veto of all arts funding in the state was and continues to be devastating, not just to enSRQ, but to literally every other Florida institution of art and learning. The arts are a massive economic driver in Sarasota County and the principal reason that many people decide to move to our area. Decades of research studies indicate the profound and measurable importance of the arts on the economic health of our city.
While the veto is incredibly counterproductive to the work we do in Florida (and seemingly politically motivated, as the funds were already approved by the legislature before DeSantis’ veto), we are deeply grateful for the individuals and foundations that continue to value us. It’s been heartening to receive an outpouring of support from the community to make sure we and other organizations continue to thrive. We continue to advocate through grant channels and our representatives for a restoration of future funding. In the meantime, all we can do is double down on our mission, reinforce our community connection, and make an even stronger case for why it is critical that the arts be funded at the state level.
The careful selections for each enSRQ program give the impression that a lot of music might have been considered. Can you explain the criteria for how you select each piece that ultimately gets programmed?
Your assessment is correct! Fortunately (and unfortunately) we have a massive repertoire and programming document that we’ve been populating for years. The challenge every year is deciding what gets thrown into the mix. Work starts on this giant puzzle every January. In our ideal world, we try to make the season’s offerings a curated experience, like walking through a fantastic contemporary art museum.
Each season, we have one or two large-scale programs where we present bigger works that require more resources and musicians. The costliest to produce, they have their own category on our spreadsheet. This year, we’re finally playing a work that’s been on there since year one (Rihm’s Jagden und Formen). Next, we look at instrumentation, size of ensemble, thematic material, and character to craft programs with a narrative, hopefully one that works in context of the season’s offerings as a whole. We get valuable input from our enSRQ artists and guests, and we do our best to make programs that gel with the musicians that will be performing them.
Of course the biggest part of the puzzle is making sure we represent the incredibly creative and diverse field of composers writing music today. Most of the music we play was written post 2000, and almost entirely within the past 50 years. The doors have been blown wide open for composers writing today. They’re drawing on all styles and genres of music and sound for inspiration, crafting works that uniquely reflect our contemporary world and their diverse personal experiences. We often pair the most recent pieces with more established contemporary masters, programming landmark works once or twice a season. These pillars of the repertoire (often programmed to celebrate anniversaries or birth years for established composers) provide the foundation for more ambitious and experimental music.
George Nickson and Samantha Bennett — Photo by Matt Holler
Tell me about the history of the reception of the avant garde contemporary music that you present in Sarasota, a scene that is not particularly well known for that kind of music. Who is typically in your audience, and are there any challenges you’ve had to overcome?
From day one, this community has been incredibly supportive of enSRQ. The enthusiasm felt after some of our first chamber projects here (violin/percussion duo programs) is what galvanized us to create a formal organization. We sensed an opportunity to build something around new music, though we couldn’t have imagined then what it has become! In our first years, we were helped enormously by an incredible group at New College of Florida called New Music New College. (Sadly NMNC was another casualty of the DeSantis administration, and ceased to exist just before celebrating its 25th Anniversary Season.) In the years they had existed before us, NMNC did amazing work in creating and cultivating adventurous concert-goers who recognize the importance of music that doesn’t simply entertain, but provokes, inspires, challenges and reflects.
We’ve since worked hard to build that same kind of trust in our audiences. The difficulty for us is increasing our base – the biggest challenge we face is convincing someone to come in that door the first time. It’s tricky to label the kind of music we play for the layperson, and simply saying ‘just try it’ gets a handful of only the most intrepid folks to give us a shot. Like most new music organizations, we have to work against the biases people still have around what they think new music is, but we try to counteract it with educational support.
Concerts always include discourse from the stage, and we take care to write and compile detailed program notes, contemporary context, and composer bios, which can make a world of difference for audience appreciation. We give people the space to disagree and to dislike, as well. Honestly, we welcome that discourse! As much as we try to teach our audiences something about each program, we usually come away from concerts learning just as much about ourselves. Nine years in, the biggest thing we’ve learned is to give our audiences credit: they want to hear new sounds. Our supporters continually inspire us to keep going and carry on, even when the work feels hard. enSRQ concerts are often part of their personal journeys of discovery, we’re here to help shepherd them along that path.
Besides important composers from the 20th and 21st centuries, you’re programming music by younger composers, including a new commission from Kitty Xiao. Can you tell me about some of these composers who might be new to your audience and to our readers?
Definitely. It can be very difficult for great young artists to get their first commission. For us, it’s important to use our platform to give younger composers the opportunity for their works to be heard. It is rare for very large organizations to take the chance on someone’s early pieces, but our size and reputation can help give composers the platform to write work that is open and true to themselves — it’s critically important for us to give our composers complete freedom of expression. We want their voices to be heard with truth and honesty, so we try to stay completely out of the creative process until we have a score and parts, at which point we can take off and begin a wonderful collaboration to bring their ideas to life. Often, this becomes a stepping stone for moving on to really big commissions.
These young artists come to us in many ways, through encounters at festivals or programs (Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music is an important part of our lives each year, as is American Composers Orchestra’s EarShot), faculty colleagues at higher education institutions who have wonderful students, friends, family, you name it! Recent standouts and highlights of artists we’ve been able to feature and commission are Max Grafe, Tyson Gholston Davis, Kitty Xiao, Paul Mortilla, The Honourable Elizabeth A. Baker, Andreia Pinto-Correia, Scott Lee, Sebastian Currier, and David Dies. It’s our job to be advocates for this next generation — we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to help identify and support the next wave of composers who will stand the test of time.
You’ve ventured out from performances at your home venue (First Congregational Church) to the Historic Asolo Theater at the Ringling and the Sarasota Opera House. What’s next for enSRQ in terms of programming and development over the next several seasons?
We’re on the cusp of some really big and exciting projects to celebrate the 10th anniversary of enSRQ (10!). Without completely spilling the beans about what we have in store, this anniversary just so happens to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians AND the 250th birthday of the United States. We have a big thing in the works for all three of those occasions…
Additionally, with 16 commissions under our belts, it is high time for us to start producing studio recordings of these works for release, as well as exploring starting our own record label and video distribution platform for these amazing works of art. It’s rewarding to premiere these pieces, but we want them to become staples of the repertoire. High quality recordings are critical to ensuring future performances. A Grammy nod would be nice, too!
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