Bringing the Grossman Ensemble’s total number of world premieres to 106 since the group’s inception in 2018, the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition (CCCC) is pleased to announce 31 new commissioned works for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 seasons. The 2025-26 season also includes the Grossman Ensemble’s first touring engagement—an invitation to perform in a featured concert at the Library of Congress on November 15, 2025.
The Grossman Ensemble, the resident supergroup at the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition, has premiered more than 70 compositions since the ensemble was formed in 2018. The ensemble comprises 13 virtuosic musicians, passionate about performing music with a sensitive understanding, meticulous preparation, and abundant rehearsal time.
Commissioned composers are granted complete creative freedom to create works of their choice for the Grossman Ensemble. The compositions are developed over nine weeks, during a series of unique workshopping rehearsals, open to the public, where all artists and composers are present. This process encourages collaboration between composers, musicians, and conductors and offers time for the music to grow in the mind of the composer and to fully inhabit the minds of the musicians.
Composer Sean Shepherd, whose work Simple Machines was premiered in March 2024, reflected on the rehearsal process, “The benefits of this system are many, but I think my favorite is the way that these workshop rehearsals bring the performer fully into their earned role of collaborator—for a Grossman Ensemble commission, we are making this piece together.”
Grossman Ensemble concerts offer opportunities for the audience and artists to connect. All composers introduce their world premiere works from the stage, with musicians also providing insight into the music. Composers, conductors, and members of the ensemble share about their unique creative process in the concert program welcome letter, along with pre-concert interviews on the CCCC website and social media.
In one welcome letter, Grossman Ensemble percussionist John Corkill wrote, "The possibility of being an agent to the extraordinary is one of the most inspiring and catalyzing feelings experienced with every [Grossman Ensemble] premiere."
The Grossman Ensemble concerts always end with an after-party where all guests can meet and mingle with the artists, meet fellow concert attendees, and reflect upon the music. As part of the CCCC’s mission to record and widely share world premiere music, videos of the entire collection of works performed by the Grossman Ensemble are available to hear and watch on the CCCC’s YouTube Channel. The ensemble also released an album in 2020 titled Fountain of Time—a record that "rewards repeat listenings” (Chicago Reader), and the group was more recently featured on Augusta Read Thomas’s Nimbus Records album Terpsichore’s Box of Dreams, one of three finalists for the BBC Music Magazine’s Orchestral Award.
Twelve composers have been commissioned to create new works for the full Grossman Ensemble in the 2025-26 concert season:
Katherine Balch, Theo Chandler, Ryan Chase, Kyong Mee Choi, Mikel Kuehn, Shawn Okpebholo, Phil Pierick, Gity Razaz, Kay Rhie, Matthew Ricketts, David W. Sanford, Inés Thiebaut
Eighteen new composers have been commissioned to develop works for the Grossman Ensemble’s 2026-27 concert season, along with a new work by CCCC Founder and Director Augusta Read Thomas:
Dorothy Chang, James Díaz, Pierce Gradone, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Ana Lara, Alexandre Lunsqui, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, Zoë Martlew, Charles Peck, Marta Ptaszyńska, Leah Reid, Juri Seo, Peter S. Shin, Elijah Daniel Smith, Rand Steiger, Alex Stephenson, Juan Trigos, Xi Wang
The Grossman Ensemble will also work with three new conductors in the 2025-26 season: Micah Gleason, David Bloom, and Luke Poeppel. The ensemble welcomes back three conductors for the 2026-27 season: Jeffery Meyer, Georgia Mills, and Timothy Weiss.
The 2025-26 season also marks the Grossman Ensemble’s first touring performance on Saturday, November 15, 2025, at the Library of Congress. The concert, curated by George Benjamin, features music by Benjamin, Sean Shepherd, Augusta Read Thomas, and Morton Feldman. The ensemble will take the stage under the baton of Stefan Asbury, a previous collaborator with the ensemble.
Three performances of the Grossman Ensemble will be included on the CCCC’s 2025-26 concert season. The performances take place on December 5, March 6, and May 22, at 7:30 pm at the Logan Center for the Arts. Tickets for the 2025-26 concert season go on sale in August 2025.