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Sunday, March 18, 3 pm at Carnegie Hall
“Ellis Island to JFK”
American music continually enriched by immigrant composers.
American Composers Orchestra
Dante Anzolini, conductor
Leon Fleisher, piano
Jin Hi Kim, komungo
JIN HI KIM: Eternal Rock (World Premiere, ACO Commission)
TANIA LEÓN: Desde…
(World Premiere, Commissioned by ACO with support from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Inc.)
LUKAS FOSS: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG: Variations for Orchestra
A pre-concert discussion with the composers, free to ticket holders, begins at 1:45 pm; A post-concert audience dialogue will follow.
Tickets: $46, $35, and $16
Call CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800.
Tickets are also available on the Internet at www.carnegiehall.org, or at the Carnegie Hall box office.
Click here for a complete schedule of activities
“Coming to America” celebrates immigrant American composers in public forums and free concerts February 14 – March 18
On Sunday, March 18, 2001 at 3pm in Carnegie Hall, American Composers Orchestra presents “Ellis Island to JFK,” a program that explores the continual enrichment of American music by immigrant composers. The afternoon features two world premieres and ACO 
commissions: Desde&ldots;, a new work by Cuban-American composer-conductor Tania León, and Eternal Rock by Korean-American Jin Hi Kim. The latter work features Ms. Kim as komungo (traditional fretted Korean zither) soloist. Also on the program is the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand by German-American Lukas Foss, performed by Leon Fleisher, and Arnold Schoenberg’s monumental Variations for Orchestra. Dennis Russell Davies will conduct.
Ms. León has a close and long-term relationship with ACO and its audiences. As the orchestra’s Latin American Music Advisor, she has been the guiding force behind Sonidos de las Américas, ACO’s six annual festivals of music from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Cuba, that introduced music by nearly 100 contemporary Latin American composers. Ms. León’s own music combines the sophisticated rhythms of her home country with rigorous and incisive harmonic and melodic development. Last season she created a sensation in Europe with her opera, A Scourge of Hyacinths, developed in collaboration with Robert Wilson, which had ten performances by the Grand Theatre de Genève, with more planned in Europe and Latin America. Last summer her new work Horizons received its premiere at the Tanglewood Festival.
Jin Hi Kim’s Eternal Rock is her first orchestral commission. The work combines Eastern and Western instruments exploring a sound-world that crosses ethnic, national, stylistic, and ontological boundaries. Eternal Rock is the latest in Ms. Kim’s series of compositions based on her “Living Tones” concept-an improvisational approach deeply rooted in Korean Shamanistic music in which each tone is alive, embodying its own individual shape, sound and subtext.
Ms. Kim was trained as a traditional komungo player in her native Korea, and later studied composition at Mills College. She is also co-developer of the world’s only electric komungo, creating interactive multimedia pieces for that instrument and MIDI computer systems. She has performed her compositions with the likes of the Kronos Quartet, Xenakis Ensemble, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and has worked with such leading improvisers as James Newton, Oliver Lake, Evan Parker, and Elliott Sharp. Her music has been performed at major festivals throughout the world, including the Next Wave, Darmstadt, and Lincoln Center Festivals. She also collaborated with virtuosos of the Indian sitar, Japanese koto, African drum and Australian didgeridoo on her “Komungo Around the World” CD project. Josef Woodard of The Los Angeles Times calls her work, “new music/world music at its finest, beyond political correctness, into the realm of the sublime, where words and cultural postures fall away.”
In advance of her orchestral premiere, Ms. Kim will perform in ACO’s “Composers OutFront” series at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater on Friday, March 9th, 2001 at 8:30 pm. There she will perform komungo and electric komungo solos, plus her Nong Rock for string quartet and komungo, commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Kronos Quartet. That program also features Ms. Kim’s improvisational ensemble, Quagmire, with William Parker on bass and the famed Oliver Lake on saxophone.
Born in Berlin, Lukas Foss was awarded the Gold Medal for Music of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May of 2000, recognizing his position as one of the 20th century’s major musical figures. His Piano Concerto for the Left Hand was written in 1994 for the program’s soloist, Leon Fleisher, commissioned by the Boston Symphony for its Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert at Tanglewood. Fleisher, a foremost interpreter of piano left-hand literature, meets the many challenges posed by Foss in the three-movement work, especially in the fugal last movement which includes a cue for the orchestra to shout an homage from the composer to the pianist: “Here’s to L.F from L.F.”
Rounding-out the program is Arnold Schoenberg’s landmark Variations for Orchestra, a work from 1926-28, that solidified the composer’s 12-tone techniques around a grand traditional form. This performance marks ACO’s debut performance of the Schoenberg masterpiece.
The March 18 concert is the culmination of “Coming to America: Immigrant Sounds/Immigrant Voices,” an outreach and civic dialogue project that ties the music of immigrant composers to issues central to immigration and cultural absorption in American society. From racial conflict to ethnic blending, immigration is changing the face of America. 
Central issues of “Coming to America are how composers who are new Americans play a role in this drama, how they contribute to and are affected by changing American culture, and larger questions of identity and access. “Coming to America” includes free events around New York City beginning on February 14, including concerts, public forums, in-school residencies, and community informances (performance/discussions). Click here for a complete schedule of activities
Composers participating in the project include Jin Hi Kim, Tania León, Lukas Foss, and P.Q. Phan, among others. Together these composers span several generations and waves of immigration, and three continents.
Immigrant Voices: New York Concert Singers Sunday, March 11 at New-York Historical Society
On Sunday, March 11 at 2pm at the New-York Historical Society, Judith Clurman will lead the New York Concert Singers, a twenty-voice professional choir, in a program inspired by immigrant folksong. Special guests include ACO principal harpist Susan Jolles, along with Alan Muraoka-Sesame Street cast member-as narrator. The concert features music by early twentieth-century immigrants such as Max Helfman, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Stravinsky, and Ernst Krenek, as well as more recent music by such recent American arrivals as Chen Yi (China), Alla Borsova (Soviet Union), and Paula Prestini (Italy).
Immediately following the performance will be a public forum entitled “Access and Identity in Immigrant-American music.” Panelists will include composers Lukas Foss and P.Q. Phan; noted historian and immigration specialist Nancy Foner (author of From Ellis Island to JFK); Kathleen Hulser, public historian of the New-York Historical Society; and Lisa Knauer a musicologist and specialist in Latin American music.
Tickets & Info:
Tickets for the March 18, 2001 concert at Carnegie Hall are $46, $33, and $16. Tickets may be purchased through CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, by visiting Carnegie Hall’s website at www.carnegiehall.org, or at the Carnegie Hall box office, 57th Street at 7th Ave. The concert is preceded by a discussion with the composers, free to ticket-holders, at 1:45pm. A post-concert audience dialogue will follow the concert.
Admission is free for all Informances. The public forum and choral concert are free with museum admission. Seating for all events is limited. Call individual venues for information and travel directions. Additional information is available by calling ACO at 212-977-8495.
Click here for a complete schedule of activities
Major support of the American Composers Orchestra is from Alliance Capital Management L.P., Americans for the Arts, Mr. Thomas Buckner, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, Citigroup Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Eleanor Naylor Dana Charitable Trust, Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation, Fidelity Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, Christian Humann Foundation, Meet The Composer, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, J.P. Morgan & Co., New York Foundation for the Arts, New York Times Co. Foundation, Virgil Thomson Foundation, and the Helen F. Whitaker Fund. ACO programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. The residency of composer P.Q. Phan is made possible through Music Alive, a program of the American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet The Composer. Funding for Music Alive is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and The Aaron Copland Fund for Music. ACO’s “Coming to America: Immigrant Sounds/Immigrant Voices” project is supported by the Animating Democracy Initiative, a program of Americans for the Arts funded by the Ford Foundation with additional support of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Sunday, March 11, 2 pm at New-York Historical Society
New York Concert Singers: Immigrant Voices
Judith Clurman, director; Susan Jolles, harp; Alan Muraoka, narrator
MAX HELFMAN: The Lady with the Lamp; MARIO CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO: Cherry Ripe; IGOR STRAVINSKY: Ave Maria & Anthem; ERNST KRENEK: The Four Sweet Months; ARNOLD SCHOENBERG: Drei Volksliedsatze; ERNST TOCH: Geographical Fugue; CHEN YI (arr.): Fengyang Song; ALLA BORSOVA: Festive; PAOLA PRESTINI: Solitude (World Premiere); ALICE PARKER (arr.): Irish Folk Songs
PUBLIC FORUM: Access and Identity in Immigrant-American Music
(follows the concert at 3:30 pm)
Kathleen Hulser, Public Historian of the New-York Historical Society, moderator Nancy Foner, historian, author of From Ellis Island to JFK; Lukas Foss, composer, conductor, & pianist; Lisa Knauer, musicologist & historian, authority Cuban music; P.Q. Phan, composer & educator; Judith Clurman; musician and educator
Community Informances
Free public concert/dialogues connecting music to discussion about immigration issues.
Wednesday, February 14 at 7 pm: Lukas Foss [at NCHS]
Wednesday, February 28 at 7 pm: Jin Hi Kim [at NCHS]
Friday, March 9 at 11 am: P.Q. Phan [at LC]
Tuesday, March 13 at 7 pm: Tania León [at HCAC]
Wednesday, March 14 at 7 pm: Tania León [at NCHS]
Saturday, March 17 at 7 pm: Lukas Foss, Jin Hi Kim, and Tania León [at HSP]
See venue information below.
Venue Information
Admission is free for all Informances. The public forum and choral concert are free with museum admission. Seating for all events is limited. Call individual venues for information and travel directions.
Call individual venues for information, reservations and travel directions.
[HSP] Henry Street Playhouse. 466 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002. Tel: 212-598-0400.
[HCAC] Hostos Center for Arts & Culture: Repertory Theater. 450 Grand Concourse, Bronx 10451. Tel: 718-518-6700.
[NCHS] Newcomers High School: Auditorium. 28-01 41st Avenue, Long Island City 11101. Tel: 718-937-6005.
[NYHS] New-York Historical Society. 2 West 77th St., New York 10023. Tel: 212-873-3400.
[LC] Lehman College Recital Hall (Music Rm. 306). Bedford Park Blvd & Goulden Ave, Bronx 10468. Tel: 718-960-7806.
Sunday, March 18, 3 pm at Carnegie Hall
“Ellis Island to JFK”
American music continually enriched by immigrant composers.
American Composers Orchestra
Dennis Russell Davies, conductor
Leon Fleisher, piano; Jin Hi Kim, komungo
JIN HI KIM: Eternal Rock (World Premiere, ACO Commission)
TANIA LEÓN: Desde&ldots;
(World Premiere, Commissioned by ACO with support from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Inc.)
LUKAS FOSS: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG: Variations for Orchestra
A pre-concert discussion with the composers, free to ticket holders, begins at 1:45 pm;
A post-concert audience dialogue will follow.
Tickets: $46, $35, and $16
Call CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800.
Tickets are also available on the Internet at www.carnegiehall.org, or at the Carnegie Hall box office.