SOLI Chamber Ensemble

About SOLI

SOLI Chamber Ensemble has been a leading voice for contemporary chamber music since 1994, captivating audiences for over three decades with dynamic performances, pioneering educational initiatives, and unwaveringly supporting living composers through commissions and premieres. Recipient of a 2024 NEA Challenge America Grant, a 2020 Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant, and the 2013 Chamber Music America and ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award, SOLI remains at the forefront of new music, expanding its reach through innovative projects and interdisciplinary collaborations.

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The SOLI Composer Lab brings three groups of composers into the same room in January:

1) San Antonio high-school Apprentices, who spend nine months writing, premiering, and performing a single work

2) Early-career Fellows from across the country who draft a work in the fall and workshop and premiere it at the four-day Composer Lab in January

3) Three professional composers who serve as program faculty

Add to those three groups — SOLI Chamber Ensemble — who work with all participants, guiding, performing, and recording!

Different timelines for Apprentices and Fellows, one purpose. The same four professional musicians, the same three composers on faculty, the same stage.

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2026-2027 Season: CURRENT

Signal carries seven American works up the I-35 corridor in a series of residencies. SOLI and Texas Public Radio celebrate a decade of collaboration with Open Mic Night X. Interiors includes works from Scott Ordway (SOLI’s Feature Focus composer), Rolando Gómez, Sophia Jani, and Aaron Jay Kernis. Lab Works closes SOLI’s inaugural Composer Lab at Trinity University with the world premieres of pieces by early-career Fellows. First Contact is the first night that Scott Ordway’s electronic alter ego, Public Ceremony, shares a stage with SOLI. Ink Still Wet premieres the works of the inaugural SOLI Composer Lab Apprentices, all of whom are San Antonio high school students. A Clearing is built around Scott Ordway’s The Suite from The Clearing and the Forest and filled out with music by the composers who shaped him. The Minimalists is a ninetieth-birthday party for Steve Reich, with Trinity University students joining SOLI to play pieces by Reich, John Adams, Philip Glass, and Gabriella Smith.

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Calling all closet crooners, plucky practicers, and shower singers! Celebrating ten years of partnership, SOLI and Texas Public Radio make this stage San Antonio’s for an afternoon of contemporary classical music, and we want performers like you! Anyone can ask for a spot: students, teachers, and people who practice after work and on weekends, playing works written after 1970. TPR carries some of these performances onto Performance Saturday, taking a living room’s worth of preparation all the way to the airwaves. A decade in, the premise holds: new music belongs to everyone!

Admission is free. Click the button below to register as a performer!

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SOLI Education

SOLI Chamber Ensemble offers engaging programs for musicians of all ages. Adult pianists enjoy musical collaboration in relaxed Monday Salons, while SOLI Saturdays give pre-college students the chance to explore solo pieces with professional players. I SOLO’d with SOLI pairs young pianists with SOLI members David Mollenauer and Stephanie Key for workshops and a mini-tour. This year ISWS is in collaboration with CASA (Composers Alliance of San Antonio). Teachers can grow their studios through the hybrid Enseña Certification Program, and adult musicians connect at SOLI/ACMP Play-In chamber music nights.

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