Illinois State University joins the Music Unwound consortium as the fourth and final host of a festival commemorating 150 years of renowned American composer Charles Ives’ life (1874-1954). One of the first composers from the United States to achieve recognition on a global scale, Ives created music that infused an enormous range of American sounds and traditions into European classical traditions. Funded through the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH), the Illinois State segment of the Charles Ives Sesquicentennial Festival will be held February 19-21, 2025, and will bring several free events to students and general audiences that underscore the multitude of connections between music and the humanities.

The festival stop illustrates that connection through a two-decade collaboration between Illinois State’s urban historian and Professor of History Alan Lessoff and New York-based impresario, cultural historian, and Music Unwound director Joseph Horowitz. Horowitz and Indiana University musicologist Peter Burkholder, his collaborator on the Ives Sesquicentennial, will lead discussion during Illinois State’s portion of the festival. Other guests include two renowned performers of Ives’s music: pianist Steven Mayer from the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music and baritone Sidney Outlaw from the Manhattan School of Music. Along with public performances, the guest musicians will hold master classes with Illinois State piano and voice students.

“Ives filled his music with endless references to the Gilded Age New England that shaped him in addition to American history, culture, politics, literature, and thought,” said Lessoff, “He’s a great character for making vivid to people nowadays music’s formative place in modern American creative and intellectual life. We’re hoping to draw people for the music and for the ideas it raises.”

The Illinois State festival stop is a joint project of the School of Music and the Department of History, with participation from the School of Theatre, Dance, and Film and support from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts. The breadth of Illinois State’s programs in music education and history education attracted Music Unwound to the University, as did the vigorous public engagement that characterizes Illinois State’s arts programs. Another partner in the festival’s Illinois segment is the Chicago Sinfonietta, which will provide free tickets and transportation to Illinois State students who sign up for a special concert at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall on February 22. Full festival details, including events open to the public and specific offerings for Illinois State students can be found at https://about.illinoisstate.edu/ivesfestival/. Previous stops of the NEH/Music Unwound Ives Sesquicentennial included the Brevard, North Carolina Music Festival (July 15, 2024); Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music (September 30 to October 8, 2024); and New York’s Bard College, a segment that also featured performances at Carnegie Hall (October 9-21, 2024).