About the Festival

Founded in 2013 by Peter Askim, The Next Festival of Emerging Artists is committed to advancing contemporary concert music through performance, audience engagement, and the nurturing of young artists with a passion for 21st-century music. The festival’s focus extends beyond contemporary music to entrepreneurship, interdisciplinary collaboration, and developing artist citizens. It is committed to the principle of inclusion: promising artists are invited to participate in individual lessons, coaching, masterclasses, and performances regardless of financial circumstances. The festival also includes workshops and recordings of Fellows’ compositions and multi-disciplinary collaboration and improvisation with choreographers and dancers.

Beyond its new home at PS21, the Next Festival has appeared at venues including (Le) Poisson Rouge, National Sawdust, Roulette, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and partnered with American Composers Orchestra. In its first decade, it has presented more than 60 World Premieres, with featured performances by many of the most prominent figures in today’s new music. The roster of guest artists includes Tony Arnold, Matt Haimovitz, Jennifer Koh, Nadia Sirota, Richard Thompson, Jeffrey Zeigler, Miranda Cuckson, and the string quartet ETHEL; composers Aaron Jay Kernis, Derek Bermel, Lisa Bielawa, Liisa Hirsch, Pierre Jalbert, Phil Kline, Jessica Meyer, and Aleksandra Vrebalov;  and choreographer Christopher D’Amboise.

Peter Askim

Artistic Director Peter Askim is a composer, conductor, and bassist and Music Director of the Raleigh Civic Symphony and Chamber Orchestra, as well as Director of Orchestral Activities at North Carolina State University. Championing the music of our time, he has premiered works by Richard Danielpour, Nico Muhly, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Christopher Theofanidis, and collaborated with the Miró String Quartet, Matt Haimovitz, Vijay Iyer, Jeffrey Zeigler, Nadia Sirota, and Sō Percussion. The Strad has called him a “Modern Master” of composition, and his commissions and performances span soloists and groups from the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Honolulu Symphony, Cantus Ansambl Zagreb, and the American Viola Society, ETHEL, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, flutist/conductor Ransom Wilson, and violinist Timothy Fain.

Askim is the founder and Artistic Director of The Next Festival of Emerging Artists, a summer festival dedicated to cultivating the next generation of performers and composers. Focusing on the music of living composers, the festival artists frequently perform at World Premieres and collaborate closely with prominent composers on performances of their works. Led by Mr. Askim, The Next Festival has received numerous grants and awards for performances of American music, adventurous programming, and educational outreach since its inception in 2013. In conjunction with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis and Tony-nominated choreographer Christopher D’Amboise, Mr. Askim founded the Next Festival Composer and Composer/Choreographer workshops, connecting early-career performers, composers, and choreographers in an innovative and highly collaborative laboratory for the creation of new works.

Curtis Stewart

Praised for “combining omnivory and brilliance” (The New York Times), four-time Grammy-nominated violinist and composer Curtis Stewart translates stories of American self-determination to the concert stage. As a solo violinist, composer, Artistic Director of the American Composers Orchestra, professor at The Juilliard School, and member of award-winning ensembles PUBLIQuartet and The Mighty Third Rail, Stewart pursues musical authenticity, finding personal and powerful connections between styles, cultures, and music. His 2023 album of Love., a tribute to his late mother Elektra Kurtis-Stewart, has been nominated for a 2024 Grammy as Best Instrumental Solo, and his 2021 album of quarantined song cycles and art videos, Of Power (Bright Shiny Things), was nominated for a Grammy for Best Classical Instrumental Solo.

Stewart has performed as a soloist at  Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, and the 2022 Grammy Awards, among many other venues. He has appeared with Los Angeles Opera and singer-songwriter Tamar Kali; as curator and guest soloist with Anthony Roth Costanzo and the New York Philharmonic “Bandwagon,” touring performance installations from NYC’s Whitney Museum, Guggenheim Museum, and Museum of Modern Art; in MTV specials with Wyclef Jean and sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden with Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, and Seal. Stewart has held chamber music residencies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and National Sawdust and received commissions for solo, chamber, and orchestral works by many artists and ensembles, including the Seattle Symphony, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall’s Play/USA, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and members of the New York Philharmonic, Newport Classical Festival, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Eastman Cello Institute.

Seth Parker Woods

Hailed as “a cellist of power and grace” (The Guardian), Grammy-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods has established his reputation as a versatile artist and innovator across multiple genres. His projects delve deep into our cultural fabric, reimagining traditional works and commissioning new ones to propel classical music into the future, prompting The New York Times’ Anastasia Tsioulcas to write, “Woods is an artist rooted in classical music, but whose cello is a vehicle that takes him, and his concertgoers, on wide-ranging journeys.” 

He is an Assistant Professor of Practice – Cello and Chamber Music at USC’s Thornton School of Music, a frequent artist in residence with the Kaufman Music Center, the Seattle Symphony, and elsewhere, an honoree of the Seattle Symphony’s 25th Anniversary Silver Gala, and recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award.

Woods has appeared with the ICTUS Ensemble (Brussels, BE), Ensemble L’Arsenale (IT), zone Experimental (CH), Basel Sinfonietta (CH), Ensemble LPR, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Atlanta and Seattle Symphonies, and in chamber music with Hilary Hahn and pianist Andreas Haefliger. A fierce advocate for contemporary arts, Woods has collaborated and worked with musicians and composers including Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, Heinz Holliger, G. F. Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus Lang, Peter Eötvos, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Lou Reed, Dame Shirley Bassey, and Rachael Yamagata, and visual artists Ron Athey, Vanessa Beecroft, Jack Early, Adam Pendleton, and Aldo Tambellini.

He has premiered concertos by Rebecca Saunders and Tyshawn Sorey and is a member of the celebrated new music ensemble Wild Up, recipients of a 2023 Grammy nomination. His concert dates have taken him throughout the US, Europe, and Asia.