Music in the Galleries and UNCW New Music Present: The Galan Trio

Thursday, September 25

7pm

Hughes Wing

CAM Member: $15 / Not-Yet Member $20/ Students free

Experience the Game Changers exhibition with a night of contemporary music in the galleries. Presented in partnership with the University of North Carolina Wilmington, CAM welcomes the internationally acclaimed Greek ensemble Galan Trio for a unique performance on their Kinesis Tour.

The concert features new works by composition faculty from leading universities across West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina including the world premiere of Game Changers by UNCW's own Chelsea Loew, Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition. Loew’s Game Changers is a two-movement work composed in direct conversation with the exhibition. Developed over months of composing in the galleries, Game Changers is a musical interpretation of the visual language and artistic techniques of two paintings that hang side by side: Tiger’s Eye by Helen Frankenthaler and Cityscape #3 by Richard Diebenkorn. Join us in the galleries for this one of a kind musical experience.

The Galan Trio:

Known for the passionate and energetic spirit of their performances, the Athens-based Galan Trio is active both in Greece and internationally. Focused primarily on presenting new compositions, the trio creates original programs, the most recent being Kinesis. For this project, Galan Trio commissioned five distinguished composers from the United States to write works on the theme Kinesis
leading to their first tour in October 2021. The title “Kinesis” draws inspiration from both science and language. In biological terms, kinesis refers to an undirected movement in response to external stimuli. In Greek, it simply means movement or motion. For Galan Trio, motion embodies the essence of life—signifying continuity, transformation, and hope. Since 2021, the ensemble has presented Kinesis at more than 30 U.S. universities, with additional performances scheduled through fall 2025.

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PRESS RELEASE:

Galan Trio's Kinesis Tour 2025 will visit Wilmington, North Carolina for a unique performance at the Cameron Art Museum on Thursday, September 25, 2025 at 7:30 PM in the Game Changers exhibition. Presented in partnership with the University of North Carolina Wilmington and CAM, the concert features new works by composition faculty from leading universities across West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina including the world premiere of Game Changers by UNCW's own Chelsea Loew, Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition. Other composers featured on this concert are Mark Zanter, Charles Nichols, Travis Alford, Anne Neikirk, Sophia Sergi, Navid Bargrizan, and Damon Sink.

Performed by the internationally acclaimed Greek ensemble Galan Trio, the Kinesis program is a dynamic exploration of contemporary American music through newly commissioned works for piano trio. The title “Kinesis” draws inspiration from both science and language. In biological terms, kinesis refers to an undirected movement in response to external stimuli. In Greek, it simply means movement or motion. For Galan Trio, motion embodies the essence of life, signifying continuity, transformation, and hope.

Chelsea Loew’s Game Changers is a two-movement work composed in direct conversation with the Game Changers exhibition on view at the Cameron Art Museum. The piece was developed over a two-month period during which Loew spent many hours composing in the gallery, in close dialogue with the artwork. The work is a musical interpretation of the visual language and artistic techniques of two paintings that hang side by side: Tiger’s Eye by Helen Frankenthaler and Cityscape #3 by Richard Diebenkorn.

The first movement, Tiger’s Eye, freely unfolds in sweeping, fluid gestures that echo Frankenthaler's veils of green, which drift and pool with an almost vapor-like quality. Delicate textures and resonant harmonies emerge and dissolve, evoking the painting’s atmospheric nature and organic flow. In contrast, the second movement, Cityscape #3, channels Diebenkorn’s architectural forms and geometric clarity. Structured yet playful, it weaves familiar harmonies through a rhythmically driven landscape shifting via polyrhythms and metric modulations. These techniques create moments of temporal disorientation that mirror the painting's elusive spatial perspective, which feels both grounded and aerial. This performance at CAM offers a uniquely immersive, multisensory experience and is the only concert of the Kinesis tour where audiences can engage with the music in direct conversation with the very artworks that inspired it, exploring canvas and sound within the same physical space at the same time.

Full Tour Schedule:

• Wednesday, September 24, 2025 – East Carolina University

• Thursday, September 25, 2025 –  Cameron Art Museum, in partnership with University of North Carolina Wilmington

• Friday, September 26, 2025 – Norfolk State University

• Saturday, September 27, 2025 – William & Mary

• Monday, September 29, 2025 – Virginia Tech

• Tuesday, September 30, 2025 – Marshall University

• Thursday, October 2, 2025 – Western Carolina University