Columbia Sounds

In 2015, while teaching in the first year of the Art and Music Humanities summer program in Paris, Susan Boynton, professor of Music and Historical Musicology at Columbia University, realized that the CGC programming did not include any music related to the University, even though concerts took place throughout the year in the Grande Salle, distinguished by its excellent acoustics for solo and chamber music performances. 

The Department of Music has a venerable doctoral program in Composition with a global reputation; its faculty and students, who come from all over, are leaders in the field of contemporary music. Given the long tradition of musical exchange between Columbia and Paris, professor Boynton felt that a series emphasizing the Department’s students, faculty, and alumni (as composers or performers) would be an effective way to represent this important aspect of the University’s historic identity.

The Columbia Sounds series in Paris began in earnest in February 2016 with a recital by Anssi Kartunen, a renowned cellist specializing in new music who has collaborated extensively with Columbia composers (joined by violinist Marina Chiche for the French premières of two duets). With support from the CGC, the Department of Music, and the Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, and aided by the Alumni Club of France and Columbia University Undergraduate Programs in Paris, the series presents about four concerts during the year and two during the summer session. Each program is lovingly curated, tailor-made for the Global Center. Most of the concerts include commentary on the music; sometimes composers have been present for the premières of their works.

Since its inception, the series has been a niche for the performance of new American music in Paris; the majority of the programs focus on contemporary works by Columbia composers.