Created in the fall of 2003, Exposure is Northwestern’s avant-garde student-composed music group. Instead of performing classical compositions of the past, they specialize in “new music” — an orchestral genre focusing on innovation.
“I didn’t feel that there were enough performance opportunities for (student) composers at Northwestern,” says Exposure co-founder and Music graduate student Nomi Epstein.
The group stresses interaction between composers and performers as well as the introduction of new music to inexperienced listeners.
“Most new music is not easily ‘understood’ and some people are turned off by that,” says co-founder Gilbert Galindo, a Music senior.
Exposure’s founders and five core members say their compositions reflect their influences and include elements of classical composers, hints of jazz, and even operatic performances of poets such as Sylvia Plath and William Carlos Williams.
While new music can be hard to swallow, co-founder and Music sophomore Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody says it’s an acquired taste.
“You’ve got to try new things,” he says. “On the surface it seems really out there and you wonder what the composer was thinking, but once you really get into this art to understand the language they’re using, you find some great things.”
— Alex Niederman
