Vastly Expanding Inward
Premier by Craig Hultgren for cello, fixed media and cell phones.
Vastly Expanding Inward was written for cellist Craig Hultgren to be performed at the North London Mining Office in Alma, Colorado. It returns to a musical conversation that began nearly thirty years ago with Parallax II: Apparitions, also written for Hultgren.
That earlier work explored how perspective changes what we perceive. This piece asks a different question: "What becomes possible when the one who is perceiving changes?" An inner parallax of sorts.
Twenty years ago, I composed Vastly Shrinking Space for cello and fixed media. That work was inspired by the discovery that turning inward could restore balance when the outer world became overwhelming. This new work revisits that same inward journey from a different perspective. It suggests that inwardness is not withdrawal but expansion—that our deepest interior life is not isolated from the world but intimately connected with it.
This music unfolds as a journey through uncertainty. Emerging from a landscape of quiet darkness, the cello searches, questions, cries out, and ultimately releases into surrender. Electronic sound extends the instrument beyond itself, while optional audience participation through mobile phones gently enlarges the shared listening space. Each listener becomes another voice within a single evolving field of resonance.
Perhaps the greatest transformations occur not because the world has changed, but because we have learned to perceive it differently.
Live Stream Link: https://www.youtube.com/live/3GgK3O9EK1Q?si=HkfQridzi_nU_KUP
Facebook event that you can “attend” and invite people to as well here: https://www.facebook.com/share/1BpZho2U9m/
About New Music at NoLo
brings together composers Iddo Aharony, Abby Kellems, Mike McFerron, Paul Rudy, and Robert Voisey with acclaimed cellist and improviser Craig Hultgren for an afternoon of contemporary music at the historic North London Mill site outside Alma, Colorado.
“Craig Hultgren has become a magnet for composers seeking first hearings of their cello works.” — The Birmingham News
Hultgren has had more than 300 solo compositions created for him and has performed extensively on acoustic and electric cello. A recipient of two Artist Fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, he received a 2022 Performance Award from the Doug Davis Endowment. The New York Classical Review praised his Carnegie Hall performance as being played with “impressive poise and sensitivity.” Now based outside Decorah, Iowa, Hultgren continues his work as a performer and improviser specializing in contemporary music.
The program reflects the varied ways contemporary composers engage with place, environment, technology, and the natural world. Mike McFerron's Resonance of Purpose, written for Hultgren at the North London Mill Site, was inspired in part by a summer residency McFerron undertook at NoLo. Iddo Aharony explores environmental sound and technology, while Abby Kellems draws inspiration from the natural world and Colorado landscapes. Paul Rudy, a recipient of the Elliott Carter Rome Prize and Guggenheim Fellowship, investigates sound, perception, environment, improvisation, and place. The New York Times recently highlighted Voisey's Knots, describing it as a graphic score that “put that idea to the test.” That same spirit of exploration and performer agency is at the heart of Spring Action, created for cellist and improviser Craig Hultgren.
About NoLo
The North London Mill site sits at the base of Mosquito Pass outside Alma. Built during Colorado's historic mining era, the site is now being rehabilitated by North London Mill Preservation, Inc. for outdoor recreation and education, the arts and sciences, and historic preservation.
NoLo describes the site as “a work of art” where “the visitor's experience of the spectacular alpine setting is framed by the historic site and vice versa.”
New Music at NoLo
October 10, 2026 · 1:00 PM MDT
North London Mill · Alma, Colorado
Information:nolocolorado.org