Michael Nix

The New Classic Banjo Project (NCBP) was instituted to develop and record a modern classical banjo repertoire, to include five-, six-, seven-string and other hybrid banjos. The mission of the NCBP is to:   

• Develop a new repertoire for the modern seven-string classical banjo (banjar)
• Develop a modern repertoire for the traditional nylon strung five-string classical banjo. 
• Develop a modern repertoire for other banjo related instruments, such as the six-string guitar banjo, and the traditional seven-string banjo in English tuning.
• Premier and perform this new repertoire in festivals, conferences, concerts and other venues that facilitate promotion of modern seven, six and five string classic style banjo playing.
• Record and release this new repertoire.
• Develop repertoire of all levels from beginning etudes to virtuosic pieces
• Develop a repertoire of easy etudes, teaching aids, material suitable for method books to use as educational material to get players interested in this style of playing.

The purpose of the NCBP Commissioning Program is to encourage and facilitate the development and recording of a modern classical banjo repertoire. The works developed will be played in concerts, workshops, and residences by Michael Nix.  It began in 2019 with the commissioning of works for the Banjar by composers Jim Dalton and Thomas Schuttenhelm.  The initial performance of these works and several by Michael Nix was on July 24, 2020. As it was during the pandemic, the concert was a live-stream concert, sponsored by the Franklin (MA) Public Library.  

If you are a composer interested in the commissioning program and writing for New Classic Banjo, please contact Michael Nix at: michaelnixmusic@gmail.com  to obtain guidelines and instrument specifics. 

PARMA Recordings released Aperçu: The New Classic Banjo Project for solo Banjar on Big Round Records on January 27, 2023, featuring Nix’s own compositions and those of Thomas Schuttenhelm, Clifton J. Noble Jr., Jim Dalton, and Fred J. Bacon. 

The notes from the Big Round Records website: 
APERÇU from composer and banjo innovator Michael Nix challenges listeners to reimagine the banjo as an instrument. The music, part of Nix’s New Classic Banjo Project, is brought to life by Nix’s 7-string Banjar, incorporating a wide range of folk and classical styles to forge an entirely new genre: New Classical Banjo. The album's title, which translates to “A survey or sketch; or an immediate impression, especially an insight” delivers just that. Koromanti, the opening piece on the album, is based on the very first notated banjo music, a transcription of music performed at a gathering of enslaved people in Jamaica in 1688. Banjar Lam Plearn, meanwhile, pays homage to the Mor Lam style traditionally performed in the Issan region of Thailand. These, and many other Aperçu shine through this remarkable collection of music.

To those that wish to learn more, or buy the album see the Big Round Records website: https://www.bigroundrecords.com/catalog/br8975/
 
For a direct link where you can purchase and listen to the release, this alternate link to the catalog page will bring you straight to where you can find the album on various different platforms.
https://www.bigroundrecords.com/catalog/br8975/#listen

On July 24, 2020, composer and classical banjoist Michael Nix performed new music for solo banjos from his New Classic Banjo Project. The program included works by Michael Nix as well as two other composers, Jim Dalton and Thomas Schuttenhelm. The concert recording can be watched on Youtube at https://youtu.be/ZofW9dxsu4A  and the program notes can be downloaded here.

American composer Jim Dalton is a professor of music theory at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. His works are performed by soloists and ensembles throughout the US, Canada, and in Europe, including venues such as Musique Nouvelles, Lunel, France; the Kansas Symposium of New Music; Sound: Scotland’s Festival of New Music; and Akademie der Tonkunst (Darmstadt, Germany). He has enjoyed recent premieres by Aaron Larget-Caplan, Carson Cooman, Sharan Leventhal, Stephen Altoft, Transient Canvas, and Scottish Voices. Dalton is an active performer (solo, chamber, orchestra) on guitar, mandolin, and both tenor and 5-string banjos. He has recently played banjo with orchestras in the U.S., Mexico, and China. He and his wife, soprano Maggi Smith-Dalton, perform frequently throughout the US, specializing in historically-informed performance of 19th and early 20th century American music.

Thomas Schuttenhelm is a composer and guitarist whose compositions have a strong conceptual component. His music uses embodied programs and celebrates in allusions to the musical, literary, poetic, visual, and theatrical influences that resonate throughout his compositions. Much of his music is the result of collaborations with musicians, poets, actors and artists. The music he writes is often as much ‘about’ the people he collaborates as it is for them to perform. He is the Artistic Director at Network for New Music in Philadelphia.