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Stile Antico Premieres Christopher Cerrone's It looks quite curious and Hub New Music Releases New Addresses on Better Company Records

Oct. 29, 2026

On October 15, acclaimed early music ensemble, Stile Antico, performed the world premiere of Christopher Cerrone's It looks quite curious at NYC's Church of St. Mary the Virgin, followed by a performance of the work the following day in Cambridge, MA, as part of the Boston Early Music Festival. In It looks quite curious, Cerrone sets a letter from Walt Whitman to his mother about the strange state of the capital. He notes:

"I grew up in Huntington, New York, the birthplace of Walt Whitman. His name was everywhere: my high school, the roads, most ironically, the mall. But I long struggled to connect with his poetry. Whitman’s verse tends toward the expansive, and I’ve always been drawn to adapting more economical language in my music. I found my way back to him indirectly, through George Oppen’s Of Being Numerous, a poem I recently set for voices that quotes an 1864 letter Whitman wrote to his mother from Washington, D.C. The fact that it was a letter and not a poem seemed to unlock something for me: the grandiosity of Whitman’s verse gives way to something honest and unguarded. Phrases like “I suppose” appear where optimism might otherwise reign, and I set those words in imitation through the ensemble, letting the uncertainty ripple outward.

Like me, Whitman is dazzled by the Capitol and bemused by the mediocrity of its inhabitants. He calls it all “curious”, and Oppen’s isolation of that word in his own poem invited me to build a polyphonic web of ambivalence around it, with a gleeful nod to Lewis Carroll: Whitman’s “curious” becomes “curiouser and curiouser,” because more often than not I do feel rather Through the Looking-Glass in this strange American moment. For Stile Antico’s Polyphonic Postcards program, this piece offers a postcard from Washington, D.C., written by our great American poet, and a reminder that ambivalence toward one’s own capital is among our oldest national traditions."

Listen to "Steps 7, 8, and 9" from Beaufort Scales (2022-23) performed by the Lorelai Ensemble:

It looks quite curious was commissioned by Miller Theatre.

Additionally, Christopher Cerrone and Detroit-based ensemble Hub New Music culminate a longtime collaboration with the release of New Addresses, out November 6 on Better Company Records. The album also features percussionist Ian Rosenbaum (Sandbox Percussion) and pianist Adam Tendler. The album showcases Cerrone's music with two premiere recordings (New Addresses and Barnes Dances) —both commissioned by Hub New Music. The third work on the program, South Catalina, was premiered by eighth blackbird in 2015. All three works are available on PSNY.

Hub New Music will celebrate this release with a performance at NYC's Miller Theatre on November 10.

To learn more about Christopher Cerrone, visit schott-music.com.

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