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EarShot brings together the resources and experience of the nation’s leading organizations devoted to the support of new American orchestral music.
American Composers Forum
The American Composers Forum is committed to supporting composers and developing new markets for their music. Through granting, commissioning, and performance programs, the Forum provides composers at all stages of their careers with valuable resources for professional and artistic development. By linking communities with composers and performers, the Forum fosters a demand for new music, enriches communities, and helps develop the next generation of composers, musicians, and music patrons.
League of American Orchestras
The League of American Orchestras leads, encourages, and supports America’s orchestras while communicating to the public the value and importance of orchestras and the music they perform. The League’s vision is to be a transformative and unifying force for the orchestra field – a catalyst for understanding and innovation, a place for conversations that matter, and a champion for orchestras.
The League provides a wealth of services, meaningful information, learning and leadership opportunities, and grass-roots advocacy to its diverse membership, which encompasses nearly 1,000 member symphony, chamber, youth, and collegiate orchestras of all sizes, and links a national network of thousands of instrumentalists, conductors, managers, board members, volunteers, staff members, and business partners.
New Music USA
New Music USA was officially created on November 8, 2011, as the result of the merger between the American Music Center and Meet The Composer. Its mission to increase opportunities for composers, performers, and audiences is advanced through two basic kinds of activity: Support and Promotion. By providing financial and other support, it enables composers and other musical artists to create the new work that is the beating heart of our musical culture. Through its strong and evolving new media dimensions, it seeks to bring more attention to the field and engage a broad audience of potential listeners. New Music USA is designed to build upon the combined and interconnected strengths of AMC and MTC. AMC, founded in 1939 by composers Marion Bauer, Aaron Copland, Howard Hanson, Harrison Kerr, Otto Luening, and Quincy Porter, was dedicated to building a national community of artists, organizations, and audiences creating, performing, and enjoying new American music. Over the past decade, AMC concentrated on advocacy for the community through a variety of online initiatives and also continued to support the community through grant programs, an array of information services, and by engaging with the broader performing arts field. MTC was founded in 1974 as a project of the New York State Council on the Arts. Led by the visionary composer John Duffy, MTC soon became an independent organization dedicated to the idea of composers as active professionals with a central role in our country’s musical culture. In the more than thirty years since, MTC grew to become a truly national organization, serving composers and audiences in all fifty states and promoting a thrillingly broad range of new music. MTC’s core programs—which include Commissioning Music/USA, Music Alive, and MetLife Creative Connections—are all continuing, as are NewMusicBox and Counterstream Radio (both originally AMC programs) under the New Music USA umbrella. Maintaining a strong online presence as well as an active network of worldwide contacts, which includes serving as the official United States member of the International Association of Music Information Centres (IAMIC), New Music USA aims to bring the music created in this country to a global audience.
American Composers Orchestra
American Composers Orchestra (ACO) is the only orchestra in the world dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation and promulgation of music by American composers.
ACO identifies today’s brightest emerging composers, champions prominent established composers as well as those lesser-known, and increases regional, national and international awareness of the infinite variety of American orchestral music, reflecting geographic, stylistic, and temporal diversity. ACO also serves as an incubator of ideas, research and talent, as a catalyst for growth and change among orchestras, and as an advocate for American composers and their music.
To date, ACO has performed music by 800 American composers, including more than 350 world premieres and newly commissioned works. In pursuit of its singular mission, ACO maintains an unparalleled range of activities including an annual concert series at Carnegie Hall, commissions, recordings, radio broadcasts, educational programs, new music reading sessions, composer residencies and fellowships, as well as special projects designed to advance the field.