An ensemble music tour that began as a collaborative idea between two childhood friends returns for its 13th season next week. Musicians Katie Cox and Andie Tanning grew up in Fairbanks, where Tanning learned to play violin and Cox learned to play flute.

After going in different directions, Cox to Los Angeles and Tanning to New York City, they teamed up with Homer-raised pianist and composer Conrad Winslow, then living in New York City, to form Wild Shore New Music, a multimodal modern chamber ensemble tour.

Bunnell Street Arts Center will host Wild Shore New Music, a multimedia contemporary Alaska-inspired chamber music ensemble tour, from Sept. 20 to Sept 25. Wild Shore New Music will be Artists in Residents, culminating with a concert at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 25 at Bunnell.

Given the Alaska imagery permeating the eclectic presentations and the Alaska roots of many of the performers, the tour might also be described as a homecoming for a group that brings Alaska to the outside world.

Wild Shore directors Cox, Tanning and Winslow consider Bunnell Street Arts Center to be their “home base”. Cox said, “That is where we are artist-in-residence, and we put the program together. We . . . always premiere at Bunnell, then tour the program to Anchorage and Fairbanks, and finalize our season in Brooklyn with outreach programming along the way.”

Of their beginnings, Cox said, “There were a lot of really great musicians in New York who wanted to come up to Alaska and play music. So it kind of started out like that.”

This being their 13th season, Cox said of the overall experience, “We still love to pull a lot of artists from New York . . . showing them the beauty of Alaska, but then also . . . finding a lot of great Alaskan artists to work with.”

The Wild Shore ensemble this year includes guest musicians Eleonore Oppenheim on bass and classical percussionist and University of Alaska Fairbanks professor Sean Dowgray.

Winslow will not be on the tour this year.

“My schedule did not permit me to travel to Alaska this fall, but Katie, Andie and I have been thrilled about this project —bringing together artists we cherish —since we first hatched it in our discussions almost a year ago,” Winslow said.

Wild Shore’s main program on Sept. 25 will be in three-parts. The first features compositions by Anchorage-raised Ahtna Athabascan and Iñupiaq composer Quinn Christopherson.

Christopherson won NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2019 with his song “Erase Me,” about wrestling with the newfound privileges and experiences of a transgender man. Christopherson has collaborated with cellist Yo Yo Ma and drag vocalist Pattie Gonia on the powerful song “Won’t Give Up,” about the effects of climate change.

The second part pairs a composition Wild Shore commissioned from NYC-based Matt Evans with an experimental film by Alaskan filmmaker Michael Walsh. Walsh’s “Braking Breath” is a silent film featuring natural motifs. Another piece, titled “Less Is More”, is an aleatoric performance — characterized by chance or indeterminate elements — based on 1970s 16mm educational films from the Anchorage School District.

The final part brings all performers onto the stage for a work in progress featuring improvisational music and a birch-wood violin made by Frank Hobson. Frank Hobson was Quinn Christopherson’s great-grandfather, who was born in 1899 and lived in Glennallen from 1943 until his death in 1984. Hobson was widely known in Alaska as “The Eskimo Violin Maker” in recognition of the high-quality instruments he made.

Wild Shore’s first season featured Pulitzer-prizewinning composer John Luther Adams. Other seasons have included members of Grammy winning musical sextet Eighth Blackbird and Emory College music professor and former Homer resident Heidi Senungetuk.

Each year the program features different composers, all of whom draw inspiration from Alaska. This year’s program, Cox said, “is really different in that we’re doing a lot of improvisation, which is exciting but also a little scary . . . We really branch out into different genres. It’s not just contemporary chamber music.”

Regarding selection of Wild Shore performers each season, Cox said, “We tend to kind of have a mix of people who have ties to Alaska, or people that we know are going to really embrace the beauty.”  

Cox noted that each tour some audience members tell her, “you always do something different every year that I don’t expect.”

Wild Shore sometimes will use graphic scores, a nontraditional musical notation system that may include lines, pictures or short instructions instead of the usual notes and clefs.

“Western notation doesn’t always translate very well when we’re working with music of other cultures,” Cox said.

Wild Shore’s concert and reception on Sept. 25 are sponsored by Alasandro’s Market. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets range from $25 to $35.  The group also will do a demonstration at Paul Banks Elementary School during its time in Homer for the school’s students and staff only.