With the closing of the Music Department's Center of the Creative and Performing Arts in 1980, the University, the city of Buffalo and indeed the entire world, was deprived of a major resource center for the study and production of the music of our tim e. As a response to this loss, Yvar Mikhashoff and I founded the North American New Music Festival in 1983. We believed that rather than presenting isolated new music productions spaced out through the concert season, which was done in 1981 and 1982 as an attempt to replace, on a limited scale, the Center's Evenings for New Music, an intensely concentrated barrage of events during a ten day festival would make more impact from a promotional point of view and would also consolidate the administrative aspec ts of the Festival.

Even the most casual perusal of this catalogue reveals Yvar's genius as a program and festival designer. His interests ran the gamut of musical styles, from the most esoteric to the most accessible. His international reputation as an interpreter of new music, established through his world-wide activities as a pianist and concert producer, brought him into contact with both highly visible and performed composers of the day and those just waiting to be discovered by him. Likewise, he performed in and pro duced concerts which included the world's most respected performers of contemporary music.

Because of the mutual respect engendered through his many collaborations with such composers and performers, these artists were eager to participate in NANMF; in fact, so eager that fees far below the going rate could be negotiated, allowing Buffalo au diences to experience an enormous range of new music performed by the world's best soloists and ensembles.

Sadly, Yvar's untimely death, just a month before the 1993 NANMF, robbed us all of a truly gifted and unselfishly dedicated champion of new music. This documentation of his North American New Music Festivals is a fitting legacy and tribute to his life and work. Heartfelt thanks to the staff of the University at Buffalo Music Library, especially James Coover and Carol Bradley, for their dedication to the preservation, compilation, documentation, and dissemination of the information contained in these pa ges.

Jan Williams

January 1996

1. Compositions are listed in order of the performance, which sometimes varies from the sequence of the printed program.

2. Identification numbers for compositions which were NOT recorded include an alphabetical suffix assigned by the order of the printed program. There is also a note to the effect that the performance was not recorded. NB: After this catalogue was compl eted, tapes of the two performances of April 11, 1983 were found.

3. Performances were located in many locations: (alphabetically)

Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Baird Hall, several different rooms

Buffalo & Erie County Public Library Auditorium

Burchfield Art Center

Cabaret 650

Calumet Arts Cafe

Hallwalls Art Gallery and Vault

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church

Kleinhans Music Hall

Lancaster Opera House

Nina Freudenheim Gallery

Pfeifer Theater

Piano Restorations

Shea's Buffalo Center for the Performing Arts

Slee Concert Hall

Studio Arena Theater

Tralfamadore Cafe

4. Performer statements represent the original medium of the composition unless otherwise noted or unless the medium is variable or indeterminate, which is noted when possible.

5. A named conductor is always included in the performer statement.

6. Composers' names are given in the fullest form available, including birth and death dates. Performers' names are given as printed on the programs. In the case of composer/performers, the form of name used as performer may vary from that used as comp oser, which is normally more complete.

7. U.S. and world premières are noted.

8. Access to the audio tapes and their supportive documentation is according to the regulations of the Music Library Archival Collection, State University of New York at Buffalo. The regulations for use of these materials follow.