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Music From Anders Hillborg at The Phillips Collection

In partnership with the Embassy of Sweden and The Swedish Arts Council, The Phillips Collection is hosting an evening with leading international composers in their Music Room on March 9, 2017 starting at 6:00 pm.

Composer Anders Hillborg studied counterpoint, composition, and electronic music at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm between 1976 and 1982. His teachers included Gunnar Bucht, Lars-Erik Rosell, Arne Mellnäs, and Pär Lindgren. Brian Ferneyhough, who was a guest lecturer on several occasions, was also an important inspiration. Since graduation, Hillborg has worked as a full-time composer, with a significant output for orchestra (with and without soloists) and chamber music, as well as his early choral work Mouyayoum.

Hillborg is a regular collaborator with conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, who has described Hillborg’s music as exploring tensions and contrasts: “the static and the hyperactive, the mechanical and the human, the nobly beautiful and the banally brutal, the comic and the moving. Almost never sentimental, but surreal in a way—like Dalí’s melting watches. And when something familiar does return, it is . . . distorted so far from its original guise that it becomes something quite different.”

Praised for their “high level of musicality and technical ability” and for their “clean, clear and precise sound,” the award-winning Axiom Brass Quintet has quickly established itself as “one of the major art music groups in brass chamber music.” As the only Brass Quintet in 27 years to ever win the prestigious Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition (2012), and the only American ensemble to ever win the Preis der Europa-Stadt Passau in Germany (2012), Axiom has also been named winners of the 2008 International Chamber Brass Competition and prize-winners of the 2010 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, the Plowman Chamber Music Competition, and the Jeju City International Brass Quintet Competition in South Korea.

Internationally recognized for their groundbreaking programming, their repertoire ranges from jazz and Latin music to string quartet transcriptions, as well as original compositions for brass quintet.

This season Axiom continues its rigorous touring schedule across the United States and marks the release of two new albums: Astor, with original arrangements of Astor Piazzolla's music, and the second installment of New Standards.

Axiom Brass is an Ensemble-in-Residence at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and Rush Hour Concerts' “Back of the Yards” program in Chicago.

The Calder Quartet performs a broad range of repertoire at an exceptional level, always striving to channel and fulfill the composer’s vision. Already the choice of many leading composers to perform their works, the group’s distinctive approach is exemplified by a musical curiosity brought to everything they perform.

Purchase tickets here.