Explore the musical smorgasbord of contemporary classical music at SoundNOW

The SoundNOW Festival, the Georgia State University School of Music-affiliated contemporary classical festival, returns for its ninth nonconsecutive year with performances spanning January 24 through February 1. Returning performers such as Bent Frequency and Majid Araim will be featured alongside newcomers including the Atlanta Contemporary Music Collective and the Hera Trio, with concerts at the Bradley Planetarium at Agnes Scott College (January 24), Core Dance Studio (January 25) and GSU’s Florence Kopleff Recital Hall (January 28 through February 1).

The world of contemporary classical music can be many things: a forward-moving trek through the vanguard of sonic innovation; a much-needed purging of the compositional constraints of traditional tonal harmony; or, at its worst, a sanity-be-blown-to-smithereens joyride through pretentious chaos. And which is which is often down to the listener.

Knowing such a wide-ranging musical smorgasbord would be on the SoundNOW table, I hit event co-founder and GSU Professor/Coordinator of Music Composition Studies Nickitas Demos with a hardball question: What does he think of the idea that in classical music the word “contemporary” is often just secret code for “no melody”?

“It’s kind of an open bag with contemporary music,” he replies, taking the blunt question in stride. “You can’t say that there’s one style that defines it.” 

Demos carries the explanation further with a short history lesson. As it turns out, the lack of a tonal center that is seen as central to so-called “contemporary” classical composition was more of a passing trend than a fixture of the genre.

“In the ’50’s or the ’60’s of the last century, 12-tone music or dissonant music was the way to compose,” he explains. “All the composition students were taught that was the way to compose, and any kind of tonal music was frowned upon.” Demos points out that the trend continued even into the early 1980s, when he was a student, but, that over time, contemporary classical returned to the harmonic rigors of tonal music. “For every composer that writes really gnarly music that’s difficult to listen to, there’s also a lot of composers that are writing music that is very accessible.”

Demos is quick to add that former Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Conductor Robert Spano played an indelible role in bringing contemporary classical music to Atlanta with his championing of new, boundary-pushing composers. “He created his so-called ‘Atlanta School,’” says Demos of the contemporary classical culture that thrived under Spano’s influence. “The composers he chose were straddling that line between dissonant and accessible music. It was that groove that he liked: energetic; rhythmic; not super dissonant.”

Demos credits Spano’s presence with encouraging the abundance of contemporary classical ensembles in Atlanta and thus the creation of SoundNOW as a forum to showcase the thriving scene. But it was a night of logistical conflicts that brought about the Festival’s conception.

“I run a contemporary music ensemble at Georgia State called NeoPhonia,” he explains. “Usually, after concerts, we always go to Manuel’s Tavern. I was there after a concert, and I ran into a friend of mine, Caleb Herron, who runs the ensemble Chamber Cartel. He had a concert the same night.” Out of that scheduling conflict came the genesis of SoundNOW as an opportunity to present Atlanta’s many contemporary ensembles in a structured, non-overlapping manner. 

Both Chamber Cartel and the NeoPhonia New Music Ensemble will perform at this year’s SoundNOW Festival (on January 28 and January 30, respectively), along with fellow co-founder Brent Milam, whose Terminus Ensemble performs on January 31. Other artists on the bill run the gamut from the experimental (Majid Araim and the Kruziki + Toulouse Duo on January 29) to the more traditional (Hera Trio on January 28). “If you looked at Hera Trio, Chamber Cartel and Majid, you would see a whole spectrum, a microcosm of what we’re trying to do,” enthuses Demos. Smol Ensemble (January 31) continues the adventurous spirit with music featuring toy pianos and found instruments (non-musical objects refashioned as music devices).  

The Festival kicks off with Ayers & Graces alongside the Atlanta Contemporary Music Collective on January 24. Demos notes that the pairing gives the concert an eclectic stylistic kickoff, one that continues his earlier observation on the evolving nature of tonality.

“Ayers & Graces actually isn’t a contemporary music ensemble; they’re an early music ensemble,” remarks Demos in reference to the group’s medieval and Renaissance repertoire. He’s quick to emphasize that pairing such a sound with the modernism of the Atlanta Contemporary Music Collective pairs better than one might expect. “Because medieval and Renaissance music doesn’t follow traditional tonal patterns, the same audiences like both.”  

Atlanta contemporary stalwarts Bent Frequency will close out the Festival on February 1. “They’re probably the premier [contemporary classical] group in the city right now,” says Demos, who was also a co-founder of that ensemble. “They’re probably the most well-known outside of Georgia. They’re extraordinary.”

SoundNOW’s 2026 lineup promises to be diverse and eclectic to say the least. For Demos, it’s the next forward movement in an ever-expanding vision. “Our main focus is to show Atlanta as a burgeoning center for contemporary art,” he concludes. “Anything we can do to make that footprint larger in the country — that’s the next step for us.”

Where & when

SoundNOW takes place at the Bradley Planetarium at Agnes Scott College (January 24), Core Dance Studio (January 25) and GSU’s Florence Kopleff Recital Hall (January 28 through February 1). A complete Festival schedule can be found on the SoundNOW website.

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Jordan Owen began writing about music professionally at the age of 16 in Oxford, Mississippi. A 2006 graduate of the Berklee College of Music, he is a professional guitarist, bandleader and composer. He is currently the lead guitarist for the jazz group Other Strangers, the power metal band Axis of Empires and the melodic death/thrash metal band Century Spawn.