Music written in the 21st-century is, by definition, referential. Operating in an age of unprecedented access to staggering amounts of information, modern composers find themselves sifting through and assimilating (or rejecting) a multiplicity of genres, aesthetics and influences. The music of today is in constant dialogue with what has come before, is overloaded by artistic and social developments; it is poised beneath falling sand from an hourglass. This concert explores these varying influences, presenting works that overtly reference Renaissance madrigals, quote revolutionary Latin American poets, explore spatialization and incorporate theatrical elements, all in a quest to take that which has come before and transform it into something essentially modern.