ACO Parables part of Symphony Space’s FUSE PROJECT
Tuesday, May 23, 2017 at 8 PM
Peter Jay Sharp Theatre @ Symphony Space
JOHN CORIGLIANOTroubadours: Variations for Guitar & Orchestra with Sharon Isbin, guitar
NINA C. YOUNGOut of whose womb came the ice for baritone, orchestra and electronics with David Tinervia, baritone, and R. Luke DuBois, video
(World Premiere – ACO/Jerome Foundation Commission)
CARLOS SIMONPortrait of a Queen with Rehanna Thelwell, narrator
(World Premiere – ACO/Underwood Commission)
Parables, led by guest conductor Rossen Milanov, explores music’s incredible ability to tell stories and weave tales. The program includes John Corigliano’s Troubadours featuring star guitarist Sharon Isbin, for whom the piece was written; the world premiere of Portrait of a Queen by 2016 Underwood New Music Readings commission winner Carlos Simon with narrator Rehanna Thelwell; the world premiere of Nina C. Young’s Out of whose womb came the ice featuring baritone David Tinervia and video by R. Luke DuBois, which tells the survival story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition of 1914-17; and the New York premiere of Postcards by Bright Sheng, with four short movements in a folk music style from different regions of China.
The four composers will be in attendance and will briefly discuss their pieces from the stage. Join us after the concert at Symphony Space for drink specials and conversation.
Symphony Space’s FUSE PROJECT celebrates artistic innovation through new commissions, premieres, vibrant collaborations, and extraordinary performances.
In the Composers’ Own Words:
JOHN CORIGLIANO Troubadours
For me, the compositional process starts well before the generation of actual musical ideas. Troubadours began with guitarist Sharon Isbin nearly 13 years ago. At that time, she asked if I would write her a concerto, and I was decidedly lukewarm about the idea. The challenges of writing for a highly idiomatic instrument that I didn’t fully understand were augmented by my dislike of most “idiomatic” guitar music, as well, as my fear of writing a concerto for an inherently delicate instrument. But Sharon persisted. She sent me scores, tapes, and letters with ideas on the kind of concerto it could be. When I received a letter from her some years ago with articles about the age of the troubadours, and particularly some celebrated women troubadours, I started thinking about the idea of serenading and of song. Slowly the conception of a troubadour concerto began to form. During this process the crystallization of what I love most about the guitar took place: it is an instrument that has always been used to speak directly to an audience. Lyrical, direct, and introspective, it has a natural innocence about it that has attracted amateurs and professionals, young and old. Read full program notes Composer Spotlight Q&A with John Corigliano| Q&A with guitarist Sharon Isbin
CARLOS SIMON Portrait of a Queen Women have always been the pillar in the African-American community. My piece, Portrait of a Queen, will trace the evolution of black people in America from the prospective of the African-American female who represents strength, courage and selflessness. Through four movements, representing different places in time (Africa, Plantation/Slavery, Southern Jim Crow and Present Day), I will express her pride, sorrow, anger, and nurturing character. Each movement will be marked by short poetic statements that depict her emotions during her journey from Africa to present day. Here’s an example of the poetry:
Prologue
I am Queen
Strength rest upon my head: a gold-dipped crown adorned with jewels of Patience, Kindness and Wisdom that shine diamond bright.
Like a baby wrapped on my back in swaddling silk, I first nurtured it in my womb.
Created a love so deep.
NINA C. YOUNG Out of whose womb came the ice Out of whose womb came the ice creates a sonic and visual glimpse of a segment of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-17). In August 1914, at the onset of WWI, polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton gathered a crew of 27 men and set sail for the South Atlantic. They were in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize of the Heroic Age of Exploration: to be the first to cross the Antarctic continent by foot. Upon entering the Weddell Sea, they encountered unusually foul weather. Weaving south through the treacherous seas of ice, their ship, the Endurance, became trapped only 85 miles from their destination. After months of waiting for the ice to break, the ship was crushed and sank, leaving the crew stranded upon the ice floes without any means of contacting the outside world. In pursuit of survival, Shackleton and his crew endured 22 months traversing ice floes up the Antarctic Peninsula. The final leg included a deadly 800-mile open boat journey in their lifeboat, the James Caird, in hopes of reaching South Georgia Island. The crew was rescued on August 30, 1916; everyone survived. Though this expedition failed, it remains one of the most miraculous stories of polar exploration and human survival. Read full program notes
BRIGHT SHENG Postcards In 1997, I was approached by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for a commission. I was told that I was selected from 10 composers by the commissioner Ruth and John Huss, who were the patrons of the orchestra and chose me to write a work in celebration of their silver wedding anniversary. I subsequently had a nice conversation with the Husses and was told that they chose me because my music reminded them of their fantastic trip to China a few years earlier. So I thought a selection of music postcards from various places in China would be appropriate for the occasion. Thus I based each of these four short movements on a folk music style from different regions in China: Movement 1 is from Qinghai (Eastern Tibet), Movement 2 is from Sichuan, Movement 3 is from the southern China (nearby Shanghai), and last movement is based on a folk song from Shaanxi Province. For those who have been to China, I hope the music reminds them of their trip. For those who have not, maybe the listening will whet their appetite to visit China. Postcards was premiered on January 22, 1999 in St. Paul’s Ordway Theater by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hugh Wolff, and is dedicated to Ruth and John Huss.
Friday, March 24, 2017 at 7:30 PM
Zankel Hall @ Carnegie Hall
STEVE REICHTehillim with vocal ensemble: Elizabeth Bates, Martha Cluver, Mellissa Hughes, Rachel Calloway DAVID HERTZBERGChamber Symphony
(World Premiere – ACO/Underwood Commission)
TREVOR WESTONFlying Fish (World Premiere – ACO/Carnegie Hall Commission)
PAOLA PRESTINIThe Hotel That Time Forgot for Video Artist & Orchestra
(World Premiere – ACO/Toulmin Commission)
Led by George Manahan, Past Forward illustrates the role the past plays in the present, from composers’ own personal explorations of their roots, to broader investigations of the universal role of memory and recollection.
The concert celebrates Steve Reich’s 80th birthday with a performance of his Tehillim, presented as part of Reich’s season-long residency as holder of Carnegie Hall’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair; the world premiere of Paola Prestini’s The Hotel that Time Forgot with video by Mami Kosemura; the world premiere of Trevor Weston’s Flying Fish, which honors the composer’s Barbadian heritage; and the world premiere of 2015 Underwood New Music Readings commission winner David Hertzberg’s Chamber Symphony.
Photo from the Tehillim rehearsal at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1981 – George Manahan conducting Steve Reich & Musicians | George Manahan conducting Steve Reich & Musicians at the recording session | Courtesy of the Steve Reich Collection, Paul Sacher Foundation – Photos by Deborah Feingold
Listen to this excerpt from Steve Reich’s radio interview aboutthe 1981 New York premiere of Tehillim, which George Manahan conducted:
STEVE REICH Tehillim Tehillim will probably strike most listeners as quite different from my earlier works. There is no fixed meter or metric pattern in Tehillim as there is in my earlier music. The rhythm of the music here comes directly from the rhythm of the Hebrew text and is consequently in flexible changing meters. The use of extended melodies, imitative counterpoint functional harmony and full orchestration may well suggest renewed interest in Classical or, more accurately, Baroque and earlier Western musical practice. The non-vibrato, non-operatic vocal production will also remind listeners of Western music prior to 1750. However, the overall sound of Tehillim and in particular the intricately interlocking percussion writing which, together with the text, forms the basis of the entire work, marks this music as unique by introducing a basic musical element that one does not find in earlier Western practice including the music of this century. Tehillim may thus be heard as traditional and new at the same time. Composer Spotlight Q&A
DAVID HERTZBERG Chamber Symphony
In writing my Chamber Symphony (2017), I sought to create something essential, pared down. In the argument, voices speak to one other across vistas, from different sides of time, finding resonances both sympathetic and volatile. The music breathes with stoic indifference; silence turns space to sound like organ bellows. Though I conceived this work abstractly, the following lines of the American poet Wallace Stevens often came to my mind while composing:
Of Mere Being
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance,
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down. Composer Spotlight Q&A
TREVOR WESTON Flying Fish Images of flying fish have been ubiquitous in my life. As a national symbol and cuisine of Barbados, this animal has always intrigued me. Most of my family comes from Barbados so I do not remember a time before knowing about flying fish. My grandfather’s restaurant and bar in Speightstown, now owned by my cousin, uses the image of flying fish in its logo. When I was a child, I thought that flying fish were magical, mythical creatures moving through water and air at great speeds. Visiting the island of Barbados reminds me how much of my life resonates the culture of Bimshire (Barbados). Every time I visit Barbados, I feel like I am walking with my ancestors and with the vast history of the African presence in the Americas and the Caribbean. On the island, I feel like I am figuratively visiting the sound source of the resonance that I live. Flying Fish honors the African roots of Bajan (Barbadian) culture and African diasporic expression. Composer Spotlight Q&A
PAOLA PRESTINI The Hotel That Time Forgot for Video Artist & Orchestra
Across the border from Syria, in a forgotten Lebanese city, sits an unexpected building, The Grand Hotel Palmyra. The hotel hasn’t closed since its opening in 1874, even as war has raged just outside its doors. The owner Rima Husseini says, “No one has a right to touch hotel Palmyra, except for time.” I became fascinated with the hotel when I first came upon a video showing its interior. It became clear that I wanted to create a sonic orchestral world to relive its memories. In her new eponymous video installation, Pendulum, Mami Kosemura sought to create a mysterious and unrealistic atmosphere, while using a real structure as its basis. This structure is the main salon of the Dillon + Lee townhouse, where Kosemura spent the summer. As it relates to The Hotel that Time Forgot, this room is meant to represent a room in The Grand Hotel Palmyra and is filled with every day actions. The pendulum gives the viewer the sense of loss of time, and blurred memories. Composer Spotlight Q&A
Watch the short documentary on the Hotel Palmyra that inspired Paola to write this piece:
The 2016-17 season marks ACO’s 40th season as a catalyst for the creation of new orchestral music, creating new opportunities for American composers and for audiences. The season includes two Orchestra Underground concerts at Zankel Hall and a final concert at Symphony Space under the direction of guest conductor Rossen Milanov.
The season also includes a performance of Steve Reich’s The Desert Music as part of the Wall to Wall Steve Reich marathon concert at Symphony Space. And the 26th Underwood New Music Readings, our annual round-up of the nation’s top young composers, as well as emerging composers readings around the country through ACO’s EarShot network.
Friday, October 28, 2016, 7:30 PM – Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall Orchestra Underground: Contempo-Scary Music American Composers Orchestra George Manahan, music director & conductor
Nancy Allen Lundy, narrator and soprano
Maxwell Tfirn, electronics engineer
PAUL MORAVEC The Overlook Hotel Suite from “The Shining”
(World Premiere – ACO Commission) JUDITH SHATIN Black Moon for Orchestra and Conductor-Controlled Electronics
(World Premiere – ACO/Carnegie Hall Commission) BERNARD HERMANN Psycho Suite DAVID DEL TREDICI Dracula
Friday, March 24, 2017, 7:30 PM – Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall Orchestra Underground: Past Forward American Composers Orchestra George Manahan, music director & conductor
Vocal Ensemble: Elizabeth Bates, Martha Cluver, Mellissa Hughes, Rachel Calloway
Mami Kosemura, video artist
STEVE REICH Tehillim DAVID HERTZBERG Chamber Symphony
(World Premiere – ACO/Underwood Commission) TREVOR WESTON Flying Fish (World Premiere – ACO/Carnegie Hall Commission) PAOLA PRESTINI The Hotel That Time Forgot for Video Artist & Orchestra
(World Premiere – ACO/Toulmin Commission)
Sunday, April 30, 3 PM – 11 PM (Exact Start Time TBD) – Symphony Space
Wall to Wall Steve Reich American Composers Orchestra
Alan Pierson, conductor
Vocal Ensemble:
Sopranos – Sarah Brailey, Mellissa Hughes, Jamie Jordan
Altos – Kate Maroney, Kirsten Sollek, Tim Keeler
Tenors – Tomás Cruz, Andrew Fuchs
Basses – Thomas McCargar, Jonathan Woody
STEVE REICHThe Desert Music
Tuesday, May 23, 2017, 8 PM – Symphony Space ACO Parables Rossen Milanov, guest conductor
Sharon Isbin, guitar
Rehanna Thelwell, narrator
David Tinervia, baritone
R. Luke DuBois, video
JOHN CORIGLIANOTroubadours: Variations for Guitar & Orchestra CARLOS SIMONPortait of a Queen
(World Premiere – ACO/Underwood Commission) NINA C. YOUNG Out of whose womb came the ice for baritone, orchestra and electronics
(World Premiere – ACO/Jerome Foundation Commission) BRIGHT SHENG Postcards (NY Premiere)
We proudly announce the 25th edition of ACO’s annual roundup of the country’s brightest young and emerging composers.
Sessions will take place under the baton of Music Director George Manahan with a recorded reading open to the public on June 14, 2016. Up to seven emerging composers will be selected to participate from a national candidate pool. The selected participants will have their pieces read by ACO in two reading sessions. Composers will receive artistic and career guidance from the Symphony artistic staff, orchestra musicians, and renowned mentor-composers Derek Bermel, Sarah Kirkland Snider and Stephen Hartke.
A recorded reading will be open to the public on June 14, 2016 at Miller Theatre, Columbia University beginning at 7:30pm. Tickets are free but please reserve seats through the link on the left of this text.
The Underwood Readings are the core of ACO’s ongoing professional training programs for emerging American composers. At the Readings, composers will meet with ACO artistic staff, orchestra members — including the conductor and mentor composers. Members of ACO’s composer advisory panel and guest composers participate in preliminary reviews of scores, provide critical commentary and feedback, post-Reading evaluations and selection of the composer to receive the commission award.
The Readings include two sessions with the orchestra, a working-rehearsal and a run-through performance. The performances are professionally recorded, and each composer is given a high-quality audio recording to be used for archival, study and portfolio purposes. Composers also participate in a series of professional development workshops covering such topics as promotion, score preparation and publishing, copyright and commissioning agreements, and other career essentials. Transportation and meals are provided for all participants.
A Career Development Seminar will be offered to composers, students, or anyone interested in learning more about the business of being a composer on Tuesday, June 14th from 10am-4pm at Columbia University. These invaluable talks, led by leaders in the industry, provide information ranging from copyright and commission agreements, to music preparation, to promotion, and fundraising.
The workshops are a practical guide for any composer wishing to gain a better understanding of these critical aspects to success as a composer today. Previously only available to participants in the Readings, ACO has made a limited number of spaces available to aspiring composers from the community for a small registration fee.
Topics to include:
Copyright and Commissioning Basics
James Kendrick Esq., Alter & Kendrick LLP
Engraving and Self-Publishing
Bill Holab, Bill Holab Music Publishing
Support Structures for Composers
Scott Winship, New Music USA
Career Inspiration for Composers: How To Share Your Best Self Through Branding
Astrid Baumgardner, President, Astrid Baumgardener Coaching + Training
Publicity and Promotion
Christina Jensen, Principal, Christina Jensen PR
Panel Discussion: The Real Path to Programming
Hosts:
Frank J. Oteri, Composer Advocate, New Music USA
Christina Jensen, Principal, Christina Jensen PR
(additional panel participants to be determined)
Registration fee $20 (lunch provided)
The Underwood New Music Readings are part of EarShot, the national orchestral composition discovery network. EarShot activities include new music readings and other composer development programs with orchestras around the country. EarShot is coordinated by ACO in collaboration with American Composers Forum, the League of American Orchestras, and New Music USA (formerly American Music Center and Meet The Composer).
Lead support for the Underwood New Music Readings comes from Mr. Paul Underwood, The Fromm Music Foundation and The Helen F. Whitaker Fund. ACO’s emerging composers programs are made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with the support of Jerome Foundation and the Eleanor Naylor Dana Charitable Trust.
Zankel Hall @ Carnegie Hall Friday April 1, 2016 at 7:30 pm
ACO looks East, capping-off ACO’s Underground Season with a program, which includes three world premieres, drawing on Indian and Middle Eastern music. Mehmet Ali Sanlikol (“colorful, fanciful, full of rhythmic life” The Boston Globe) sings and plays the Ud (Turkish lute) in a premiere using classical Ottoman composition techniques, with long rhythmic cycles, and a poem by Sufi dervish Edib Harabi. Reena Esmail, who is Indian-American, explores her Hindustani roots in a multimedia premiere that focuses on first impressions and Indian rhythmic cycles. Iranian-American composer Gity Razaz (“limpid Impressionist timbres, ravishing and engulfing throughout” New York Times) explores the internal and psychological stages of Narcissus’ metamorphosis. Matthias Pintscher reflects on his time spent in Israel as he creates a musical dialogue of the voices in Solomon’s Song of Songs, with mixed emotions of love found and love lost and features baritone Steven LaBrie. Saad Haddad, a first generation Arab-American, premieres his piece combining electronics and traditional performance practices of Arabic musicians, with antiphonal trumpets serving as musical “beacons” for the orchestra.
Saad Haddad‘s Manarah (“beacon” in Arabic), commissioned by ACO, is scored for two digitally processed antiphonal trumpets and orchestra, and borrows from the performance practices of Arabic musicians, particularly Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum. Harabat – The Intoxicated by Mehmet Ali Sanlikol was commissioned by ACO and Carnegie Hall, is inspired by the classical Ottoman/Turkish music tradition and features a poem by a late 19th/early 20th century Sufi dervish. Reena Esmail‘s Avartan, also commissioned by ACO, is inspired by the “avartan,” a rhythmic cycle featured in Hindustani music and is paired with video by Neeraj Jain. The Metamorphosis of Narcissus by Gity Razaz is based on Salvador Dali’s portrayal of the Greek myth. The work is a musical drama reflecting on the internal and psychological transformation of Narcissus, beginning with his obsessive self-infatuation, moving through his drowning in the pond that reflected his image, and ending with his rebirth as the narcissus flower. Matthias Pintscher‘s songs from Solomon’s garden is based around the Biblical Song of Songs, and draws on the Hebrew language for rhythmic patterns and gestures.
The Program:
SAAD HADDAD: Manarah (World Premiere. ACO Commission.) GITY RAZAZ:The Metamorphosis of Narcissus MEHMET ALI SANLIKOL: Harabat / The Intoxicated (World Premiere. ACO/Carnegie Hall Commission.) – intermission – REENA ESMAIL: Avartan (World Premiere. ACO Commission.)
MATTHIAS PINTSCHER: Songs from Solomon’s Garden
ACO’s Annual Round Up Of Up-And-Coming Jazz Composers
June 15 & 16, 2016, Miller Theatre, New York, NY
16 composers will participate in JCOI’s public readings and performance. Sessions will take place under the baton of Music Director George Manahan on June 15 & 16, 2016. The selected participants will have their pieces read by ACO in two reading sessions. During the JCOI Readings, the new works will be heard in rehearsal, open public readings, and a public performance. Composers will receive coaching from mentor composers during the period they are writing their pieces; and feedback from orchestra principal musicians, conductors, librarians, and mentor composers.
This event was a preview for Black Moon premiering at Zankel Hall on Oct. 28, 2016.
Composer Judith Shatin will be joined by George Manahan and members of the orchestra in a demonstration of Kinect, a motion sensing input device for computer controlled electronics. This will be demonstrated musically through a sketch entitled Red Moon of how this technology will be used for her ACO commission Black Moon, to be premiered in our October 28, 2016 concert at Zankel Hall (Carnegie Hall). Also, Judith’s For The Birds for amplified cello and electronics with birdsong from the Yellowstone region will be performed.
Workshop and performance starting at 2:00pm, followed by a hands-on demonstration for audience members
Tickets are free, but space is limited!
CoLABoratory, is the world’s only “R & D” lab for experimental new music. CoLABoratory is a high tech incubator where composers bring fantastic new ideas to ACO that are workshopped, refined and developed into new works over the course of a season, before they are premiered by ACO at Carnegie Hall.
Watch Judith test the Kinect for her earlier piece Being In Time
Friday, October 23, 2015 at 7:30 PM Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall
AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA
GEORGE MANAHAN, Music Director & Conductor
HANNAH LASH, harp
CAROLINE SHAW, vocals
PAUL LIEBER, projections
All World Premieres
MICHAEL-THOMAS FOUMAI: The Spider Thread
JUDAH ADASHI: Sestina MELODY EÖTVÖS: Red Dirt | Silver Rain HANNAH LASH: Concerto for Harp and Chamber Orchestra
CONRAD WINSLOW: Joint Account
ACO brings SONiC to a rousing grand finale with an ALL-WORLD-PREMIERE concert at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, with diverse composer-alumni from ACO’s national new music readings programs. Conrad Winslow creates a multimedia essay built on Baroque techniques described by 18th-century theorist Johann Mattheson. Melody Eötvös relives her Australian childhood, recreating the earth and sky in music. Hannah Lash, as both composer and soloist, devises music in which the harp takes over an entire orchestra. Inspired by a Japanese tale of morality, Michael-Thomas Foumai recounts a rapturous and frantic dash for spiritual salvation—an orchestral high-wire climb, before the thread snaps.
The 2015-2016 season marks ACO’s 39th season as as a catalyst for the creation of new orchestral music, creating new opportunities for American composers and for audiences. The beginning of the season includes an Orchestra Underground concert at Zankel Hall – and a concert at Arts Brookfield’s Winter Garden to be broadcast on WQXR’s New Sounds Live hosted by John Schaefer.
Our first two orchestra concerts this season serve as the start and finish of our SONiC FESTiVAL which highlights new music of composers under forty written in the 21st century. Through these 12 chamber and two orchestral concerts, we explore the boundaries of the imagination in the music of today’s creative generation.
The season also includes our 25th Underwood New Music Readings, our annual round-up of the nation’s top young composers, as well as emerging composers readings around the country through ACO’s EarShot network. We also return for the third round of readings of participants in the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute which just finished its third series of week-long workshops at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music.
Friday, October 16, 2015, 8 pm
The Winter Garden at Brookfield Place
ACO: New York Stories (New Sounds Live – an all world premiere concert) George Manahan, Music Director & Conductor
JACK Quartet
DM Stith, vocals
The Crossing, Donald Nally, director
ANGELICA NEGRON: Me He Perdido (I’ve Gotten Lost) (World Premiere. ACO Commission) ANDY AKIHO: Tarnished Mirrors (World Premiere. ACO/Underwood Commission) ALEX MINCEK: Continuo, Concerto for JACK Quartet (World Premiere. ACO/NYSCA Commission) JUDD GREENSTEIN: My City (World Premiere. ACO Co-Commission)
Friday, October 23, 2015, at 7:30pm – Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall
Orchestra Underground: 21st Firsts (an all world premiere concert) American Composers Orchestra
George Manahan, Music Director & Conductor
Hannah Lash, harp
David Tinervia, baritone
Paul Lieber, projections
MICHAEL-THOMAS FOUMAI:The Spider Thread (World Premiere) NINA C. YOUNG:Out of whose womb came the ice (World Premiere. ACO/Jerome commission) MELODY EOTVOS: Red Dirt | Silver Rain (World Premiere. ACO/Toulmin commission) HANNAH LASH: Concerto for Harp and Chamber Orchestra (World Premiere. ACO/Carnegie Hall/Cheswatyr commission) CONRAD WINSLOW: Joint Account (World Premiere. ACO/Carnegie Hall commission)
Friday, April 1, 2016 at 7:30 pm –Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall Orchestra Underground: Eastern Wind George Manahan, Music Director & Conductor
Mehmet Ali Sanlikol, vocals & ud
Evan Hughes, bass-baritone
SAAD HADDAD: Manarah (World Premiere. ACO Commission.) REENA ESMAIL: New Work for orchestra and video
(World Premiere. ACO Commission.) MEHMET ALI SANLIKOL: Harabat (The Intoxicated)
(World Premiere. ACO/Carnegie Hall Commission.) GITY RAZAZ: The Metamorphosis of Narcissus MATTHIAS PINTSCHER: Songs from Solomon’s Garden
Mid June, 2016 25th Annual Underwood New Music Readings George Manahan, Music Director & Conductor Derek Bermel, Artistic Director
ACO’s annual roundup of the country’s brightest young and emerging composers.
American Composers Orchestra (ACO) and The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, in cooperation with the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, presents the third Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute (JCOI) in 2015-16. The program commences August 8-13, 2015 with a Summer Intensive at The Herb Alpert School at UCLA. A second phase of the program includes Orchestral Readings of new music by select participants in spring-fall of 2016.
JCOI brings together jazz composers at various stages in their careers chosen from a national pool of applicants, to explore the challenges of writing for the symphony orchestra. Composers working in jazz, improvised, and creative music will be selected based on their excellent musicianship, originality, and potential for future growth in orchestral composition.
JCOI is a new development in the jazz field. While many jazz composers seek to write for the symphony orchestra, opportunities for hands-on experience are few. JCOI aims to provide new resources for both jazz and classical music, promoting the emergence of composers trained in both jazz and new orchestral techniques. Participants in JCOI will study with leading composers, conductors and performers in a curriculum designed and led by James Newton (JCOI Director; University of California, Los Angeles), Derek Bermel (Artistic Director, ACO), Anthony Davis (University of California, San Diego), Gabriela Lena Frank (composer in residence, Houston Symphony), Anthony Cheung (composer), Vince Mendoza (composer/arranger), Nicole Mitchell (composer/flutist), Steve Coleman (saxophonist/composer/MacArthur Fellow), and Christopher Rountree (conductor). Wild Up is ensemble-in-residence.
The two phases of JCOI are described below. Participation in Phase 1 is required as a prerequisite to be considered for the Phase 2.
PHASE 1: SUMMER INTENSIVE August 8-13, 2015. UCLA, Herb Alpert School of Music APPLICATION DEADLINE: Sunday, May 3, 2015
A series of workshops and seminars will include the study of scores and compositional techniques, including electronics; best practices regarding orchestration, instrumentation, notation, score preparation, performance practice, and practical work with crucial orchestral instruments, such as the string family. Other important topics include the culture of working with a symphony, dealing with a conductor as a collaborator, and techniques for structuring improvisation within the orchestral context. Students will receive live demonstrations of instrumental techniques from wildUp, a resident chamber ensemble known nationally for its performances of new music that often embraces improvisation and cutting-edge new music techniques.
Tuition for Summer Intensive is $500 per participant, which includes daily continental breakfast and lunch. Participants are responsible for their own travel and housing arrangements; a list of recommended accommodations will be provided to those accepted, including UCLA dormitories available at reasonable rates. There is no application fee.
Eligibility and Guidelines
Applicant must be either a U.S. or Canadian citizen or a non-citizen, lawfully and permanently residing or studying full-time in the United States.
There are no age restrictions on participation.
Previous experience composing orchestral music is not required, but applicants must demonstrate a strong desire to compose for symphony orchestra and the capacity and interest to engage in intensive study of the details and complexity of orchestral music, as a way to expand their own creative possibilities.
Composers who have participated in prior ACO New Music Readings or previous JCOI Intensives are ineligible to apply for the 2015 JCOI Intensive. (Previous JCOI participants are eligible to apply for the Phase 2 JCOI Readings.)
The online application must be submitted no later than Friday, April 30, 2015.
There is no application fee.
Incomplete, illegible, or late applications will not be considered.
How to Apply
Before submitting an application, carefully review the eligibility & submission guidelines and the requirements below. A complete submission must include the following:
One original score composed within the last four years (any instrumentation, aesthetic, or style), clearly labeled with the composer’s name and title of the work on the cover page. Upload the score in PDF format with this online application. The score need not be orchestral, but scores that demonstrate the applicant’s ability to clearly express her/his musical intentions in notation, and display an understanding of the complexities of instrumentation in larger ensembles are recommended.
Two audio examples of the composer’s original work, composed within the last four years (any instrumentation, aesthetic, or style). The recording need not be of the submitted score, and may also feature the composer’s work as a performer, improviser, and/or band leader, etc. Work samples need not include orchestral music. Each example should not exceed 5 minutes in length. Upload in MP3 audio format with this application.
A current resume including educational background, major teachers, awards, and professional affiliations. Upload resume in PDF format with this online application.
A personal statement addressing the applicant’s goals as a composer and how participation in the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute might impact future creative directions. Previous hands-on orchestral experience is not expected, but applicants should address how increasing their skills, knowledge and experience with orchestral instruments and composition will affect the creative output. Upload in PDF format with the online application.
One letter of recommendation from an established composer, performer, improviser, or other music professional, attesting to the applicant’s accomplishments and potential as an orchestral composer. Upload in PDF format with this application. If you prefer, a printed copy of the the recommendation may be sent under separate cover to:
Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute
American Composers Orchestra
244 West 54th Street, Suite 805
New York, NY 10019
Upon completion of the Summer Intensive, each participant will be eligible to apply for inclusion in the Institute’s second phase, the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute New Music Readings, to be held spring – fall, 2016. Up to 16 composers selected for participation in this second phase will each compose an original work for orchestra during the intervening months between the two phases.
During the JCOI Readings, the new works will be heard in rehearsal, open public readings, and a public performance. Composers will receive coaching from mentor composers and a professional music copyist/engraver during the period they are writing their pieces; and feedback from orchestra principal musicians, conductors, librarians, and mentor composers during the Readings. Each composer will also receive a professional digital audio recording of their new piece for archival and study purposes. Each composer participating in the Readings will receive a $500 honorarium to assist with the copying and preparation of score and parts, as well as domestic travel and lodging to attend the Reading of their work.
Orchestras participating in the Phase 2 Readings are members of EarShot, the National Orchestral Composition Discovery Network, a program of American Composers Orchestra in partnership with American Composers Forum, The League of American Orchestras, and New Music USA. Past orchestras participating in JCOI have included American Composers Orchestra, the La Jolla Symphony, and the Buffalo Philharmonic.
With its three outstanding departments of Ethnomusicology, Music and Musicology, The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music aspires to educate the whole student through productive collaborations between performance and scholarship, a cross-cultural, global understanding of the art of music, and preparatory training for a broad range of careers in music after graduation. Public concerts, lectures, symposia, master classes, and musical theater and opera productions, are a hallmark of The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Each department hosts a calendar of events open to the entire community, enriching the lives of both those on stage and those in the audience, and contributing to the quality of life in the city and beyond. The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music was formed in 2007, with the support of a $30 million endowment from the Herb Alpert Foundation, made possible through the generosity of the renowned performer, producer and philanthropist Herb Alpert and his wife Lani Hall Alpert. www.schoolofmusic.ucla.edu
About Columbia University Center for Jazz Studies
At the Center for Jazz Studies, jazz becomes a music without borders that provides new models for innovative teaching and scholarly inquiry in the arts, humanities, and sciences. Our themes of internationalization, technology and community encourage excellence in research, in the teaching of music and culture, and in the presentaion of public events. The Center views the interdisciplinary expansion of the intellectual conversation surrounding jazz, and especially its lifeblood practice, improvisation, as tracing a path toward the development of new knowledge that illuminates the human condition.
The Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute is made possible by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Continuing Innovation Program, with additional funding provided The Herb Alpert Foundation and the Fromm Music Foundation.
Though the six-man ensemble Hudson Shad (five singers and a pianist) debuted officially in 1992 in a concert featuring the music of the legendary German group The Comedian Harmonists, their nucleus formed in 1977 when three of them made their Carnegie Hall debuts as soloists in Penderecki’s Magnificat. In 1989, the Arts at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn asked bass Wilbur Pauley to contract a quartet to perform as The Family in Kurt Weill’s “Seven Deadly Sins” with Marianne Faithfull. The response was favorable.
Over the last quarter century, Hudson Shad has most likely racked up more performances as The Family in the Seven Deadly Sins than any other group in history. They have performed in almost 40 different locations, from Arezzo to Zagreb, numbering over 100 performances worldwide. They participated in a staging of the work, in a double bill with Weill’s Der Lindbergflug, at the Macerata Festival. They have twice recorded the work, once with Masur and the NY Philharmonic and once with Ms. Faithfull, Dennis Russell Davies and the RSO-Wien. In NYC alone, Hudson Shad has sung the Sins in six different venues, most recently in 2008 with Ute Lemper at the Carnegie Hall premier of the work.
Other orchestra appearances by Hudson Shad have featured more Weill: “Kleine Mahagonny” with the St.Paul Chamber Orchestra, and ”Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny” at the Salzburg Festival. The Schubert bicentennial found Hudson Shad returning to the NY Philharmonic for orchestral works with men’s voices, and they performed Schubert songs using the Reger orchestrations with the Bruckner Orchester in Linz. Hudson Shad debuted with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as “Wild Things” in Oliver Knussen’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” conducted by the composer. They have developed their own English translation of Stravinsky’s “Renard” and have performed it with Charles Dutoit at the Miyazaki Festival and at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
In 1999 Hudson Shad was featured on Broadway in a musical tribute to the Comedian Harmonists: Band in Berlin. Since their German debut in 1995, they’ve presented the Comedian Harmonists’ repertoire in major opera houses, concert halls and prestigious cabarets throughout Europe.
Recent performances in 2014 included five performances with Storm Large of the Seven Deadly Sins at the Ojai Festival, the Britt Festival, and with the Louisville Orchestra; two tours of the Midwest under the auspices of Allied Concert Services; and their debut at Joe’s Pub last October.
Tech & Techno is the fifth installment in American Composers Orchestra’s series of Orchestra Underground digital releases that reinvent the orchestra with exciting new compositions, eclectic influences, unusual instruments, cutting-edge experiments, and multidisciplinary collaborations.
The music on this album inhabits a musical zone that is part underground dance club, part computer science lab, and part symphony hall. There’s hip-hop, trip-hop, techno, laptops, and a “cyborg” fiddle. Intrepid new music that is never timid—it’s neither afraid to groove, nor afraid to stretch WAY OUT. We hope these genre-bending artistic explorations will have you rethinking what an orchestra can be (and can do) in our evolving streaming/downloadable sound-world.
So put on your dancing shoes, and maybe your thinking cap, too, and enjoy.
Edmund Campion: Practice “Practice does not make perfect, it is a process that generates change; change governed by unseen gravitations and rituals that, in the end, determine form…”
Justin Messina: Abandon “In the early 1990’s, while American automobile manufacturers were fleeing Detroit, the deserted city saw an electronic music renaissance based in its many underground dance clubs… a new musical language since dubbed ‘Detroit Techno.’ This work is a sort of analog homage… ”
Anna Clyne: Tender Hooks “Tender Hooks features technologies and instruments created and developed by laptop-artists. The orchestra is a source for live processing incorporating a wide variety of input devices such as microphones, foot pedals, controllers, drawing tablets and one of the earliest electronic instruments, the Theremin.”
Neil Rolnick: iFiddle Concerto “A concerto for a new kind of instrument, one that combines the computer and violin into a single musical instrument… a cyborg violin.”
Mason Bates: Omnivorous Furniture “The thumping electronica beats of an underground club—which are other-worldly sounds to some listeners of 200 year-old acoustic instruments—can provide an interesting stasis that an orchestra’s myriad textures can explore.”
Rolnick, Campion, Bates and Messina conducted by Steven Sloane and recorded live on March
18, 2006. Clyne conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky and recorded live on April 27, 2008
Composers OutFront! Erin Gee and Colin Gee
Presented by American Composers Orchestra
and Whitney Live
A performance and discussion by siblings Erin Gee (composer & vocalist) and Colin Gee (writer, director & actor) Whitney Museum of American Art 945 Madison Ave. at 75th St., NYC
FREE with pay-what-you-wish Museum admission (begins at 6 pm)
Information: 212.570.3676 or www.whitney.org/live
York, NY — American Composers Orchestra (ACO) and Whitney Live will present ComposersOutFront! featuring siblings Erin Gee (composer and vocalist) and Colin Gee (writer, director, actor, and Whitney Live Artist-in-Residence) on Friday, October 30, 2009, at 7pm at the Whitney Museum of American Art (945 Madison Ave. at 75th St., NYC). The performance and discussion is free with pay-what-you-wish Museum admission, and no tickets or reservations are required.
According to Kultur Steiermark, “Erin Gee’s music defies a simple description. Often, an impression of ephemeral, fragile poetry is formed from the gossamer-quality of the work, which continually aspires to plumb the possibilities of the human voice.” At the Whitney Museum, Ms. Gee will perform several of her works for solo voice, which employ unusual techniques using two microphones and live computer processing. The performance and discussion will also include an excerpt from Dakota, an evening-length film mixed with live performances by both Ms. Gee and Colin Gee, and a preview of the siblings’ work in progress – Mouthpiece XIII: Mathilde of Loci, Part 1, for electronically processed voice, actor, and orchestra, with film by Mr. Gee. Mouthpiece XIII will be premiered by ACO’s Orchestra Underground at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on November 30 at 7:30pm.
ACO’s annual Composers OutFront! series puts composers on the stage, bringing audiences closer to the creative process and making connections between composers’ roots as performers and their music for the concert hall. The series presents composers who will have major works performed by ACO during the concert season. In keeping with ACO’s eclectic musical programming, featured composers come from diverse backgrounds in jazz and improvised music, rock and pop, classical, and world music. Composers OutFront! events take place throughout the city in unusual spaces including community centers, museums and galleries, libraries, and other non-traditional venues for classical music.
Fun, bold, and unpredictable, the Whitney Live performance series showcases an eclectic variety of cutting-edge artists. Performances represent new trends, reinterpret American traditions, and resonate with the Whitney’s exhibitions and permanent collection.
Erin Gee, composer-performer
Erin Gee’s Mouthpiece XIII: Mathilde of Loci, Part 1, which will premiere at ACO’s season opening concert on November 30 in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, is based on a fictionalized account of the life of Matteo Ricci, proponent of the Memory Palace or the Method of Loci, a mnemonic technique. Ms. Gee (voice) and her brother (actor) will be performing with the orchestra. The work was made possible through a new partnership between ACO and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc.
Ms. Gee received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in piano and composition, respectively, from the University of Iowa, where she studied with Réne Lecuona, Lawrence Fritts, and Jeremy Dale Roberts. In Austria and Germany, she studied composition with Beat Furrer, Mathias Spahlinger, Chaya Czernowin, Richard Barrett, and Steve Takasugi. She completed her Ph.D. in music theory from the University of Music and Dramatic Arts Graz in 2007. Ms. Gee’s awards for composition include the Teatro Minimo first round prize from the Zürich Opera House, the International Rostrum of Composers Award, the Samuel Barber Rome Prize, the Impuls award, a CAP award from the American Music Center, the Look & Listen Festival Prize, the Judith Lang Zaimont Prize, and she was featured composer at the 4020 festival in Linz, Austria in 2008. She has worked with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, the Vokalensemble Zürich, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group with conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, Klangforum Wien, and others..
Her opera, SLEEP, with libretto by Colin Gee, was premiered by the Zürich Opera House in January 2009. In November, the Zurich Tage für Neue Musik will present Repertorio Zero in a performance of Mouthiece XII. Gee is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Montalvo Arts Center. In 2010, she will be in residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. She is a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow.
Colin Gee, writer, director & actor
Trained as an actor at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris and Dell Arte School of Physical Theater, Colin Gee is currently the founding artist-in-residence in an 18-month Whitney Live residency program, and a visiting artist-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Prior to his residency, he was commissioned by the Whitney Museum in 2008 to create and perform Objective Suspense in the exhibition “Alexander Calder: the Paris Years.” His film Dakota (2006), with live solo performance and music by Erin Gee, was presented at P.S. 122, Diskurs’04 Giesen, Wexford Arts Center, 4020 Festival, and received the Best Male Performer award at the 2006 Dublin Fringe Festival.
Mr. Gee was a principal clown for Cirque du Soleil from 2001 to 2004 in the touring production, Dralion, and appeared in the company’s television program Solstrom (2003). Recent works include Portrait and Landscape (2002 – current), an ongoing series of video portraits first shown at Dance Theater Workshop, Cathedral Project (2009), a series of 12 short films, and The Chestnut (2009), with Limerick Youth Theatre in Limerick, Ireland. Also in 2009, his essay Firespots, was published in the Austrian art journal kursiv. A second film/performance project, Across The Road (2009) premiered at The Chocolate Factory. Screenplays for Lady Heard Voices (2007) and Across The Road (2007) were selections for the Bare Bones International Film Festival Screenplay Competition, and other film projects include the shorts Lady Heard Voices (2004), featuring Irene Hultman, and Stardust (2007). Gee performed with the Irene Hultman Dance Company from 2000 to 2001, and was co-artistic director of The Flying Machine Theater Company from 1998 to 2001, with works including Petrushka (2000) at Carnegie Hall with the New York Youth Symphony Orchestra, Utopians (1998), The Escapist (1999), and Archipelago (2000).
About ACO
American Composers Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers. Through its concerts at Carnegie Hall and other venues, recordings, radio broadcasts, educational programs, New Music Readings, and commissions, 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. More information about ACO is available online at www.americancomposers.org.
About the Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art is the leading advocate of 20th- and 21st-century American art. Founded in 1930, the Museum is regarded as the preeminent collection of American art and includes major works and materials from the estate of Edward Hopper, the largest public collection of works by Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Lucas Samaras, as well as significant works by Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Georgia O’Keeffe, Claes Oldenburg, Kiki Smith, and Andy Warhol, among other artists. With its history of exhibiting the most promising and influential American artists and provoking intense debate, the Whitney’s signature show, the Biennial, has become the most important survey of the state of contemporary art in America today. The Whitney is currently moving ahead with plans to build a second facility, designed by Renzo Piano, located in downtown New York at the entrance to the High Line in the Meatpacking District.
Composers OutFront! is made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Whitney Live is made possible by the Whitney Live Producers.
Major support of American Composers Orchestra is provided by The Achelis Foundation, Amphion Foundation, Arlington Associates, ASCAP, ASCAP Foundation, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, BMI, BMI Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Edward T. Cone Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Fromm Music Foundation, GAP Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, The Irving Harris Foundation, Jephson Educational Trust, John and Evelyn Kossak Foundation, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc, Meet The Composer, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Virgil Thomson Foundation, Paul Underwood Charitable Trust, The Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation and The Helen F. Whitaker Fund.
ACO programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and by New York City Council Member Gale A. Brewer.
American Composers Orchestra
Robert Beaser, Artistic Director
Dennis Russell Davies, Conductor Laureate
Steven Sloane, Principal Guest Conductor
Derek Bermel, Creative Advisor
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 nearly 500 American composers, including more than 100 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, and new music reading sessions. New initiatives include composer fellowships and special projects designed to serve and advance the field.
ACO is currently under the artistic leadership of conductor and Music Director, Steven Sloane, and composer and Artistic Director Robert Beaser. ACO’s founding conductor, Dennis Russell Davies, became ACO’s first Conductor Laureate in spring 2002.
Like many a brilliant idea, the one to create the ACO originated over a good meal. In October, 1975 composer Francis Thorne and conductor Dennis Russell Davies were at a SoHo restaurant discussing plans for the 40th anniversary of the American Composers Alliance. As Davies, recalls, “We started talking about the fact that American orchestras don’t play much American music, and that led to the idea of an orchestra that would fill that gap.” Davies agreed to serve as principal conductor and music advisor. Composer Nicolas Roussakis and conductor/flutist Paul Lustig Dunkel joined the founding leadership team, and the orchestra, assembled from New York’s top musicians with expertise in contemporary music, held its inaugural concert on February 7, 1977 at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.
ACO moved to its current home at Carnegie Hall for its 10th anniversary, 1985-86 season. Among the distinguished artists who have appeared with ACO are Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas, Leonard Bernstein, Itzhak Perlman, André Watts, and Emanuel Ax.
The Orchestra’s commissioning program is acknowledged as the leading program of its kind, generating more new American symphonic works since its commencement than any other. ACO has distinguished itself by providing many composers with their first orchestral commissions, among them Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Joseph Schwantner, both of whom received the Pulitzer Prize for their ACO-commissioned work.
In 1994, the Orchestra extended its American mandate by including the music of Latin America. Under the guidance of composer and Latin American music advisor, Tania León, ACO launched Sonidos de las Américas. These annual week-long festivals, each devoted to a single Latin American country, introduced a rich body of repertoire, bringing visiting delegations of Latin American composers and performers to New York.
From 1999 to 2001, ACO undertook 20th Century Snapshots, a landmark celebration of the Millennium. This eleven-concert series based on evocative and provocative American themes that chronicled America in the last century, and leading the way to the next. ASCAP recognized this series with its national award for innovative programming.
2000-2001 saw the launch of Coming to America: Immigrant Sounds/Immigrant Voices, an exploration of the evolution of American music through the music of immigrant composers, with concerts, forums and community dialogues taking place around New York City. For its work in reaching new audiences through Coming to America, ACO received the inaugural MetLife Award for Excellence in Community Engagement.
In fall 2001, ACO convened a National Conference on Technology and the Orchestra, the first major event of its five-year Orchestra Technology Initiative (Orchestra Tech), to explore and encourage the creation, performance and development of music that unites orchestral forces with new technology. Renowned composer and music-technology innovator Tod Machover serves as ACO’s artistic advisor to the Orchestra Tech initiative.
In February 2004, ACO makes its debut at the newly constructed state-of-the-art Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, with Orchestra Underground, that challenges conventional notions about orchestra music, literally deconstructing the symphonic experience, with unusual instrumentations and multimedia collaborations.
A major focus of the spring of 2004 will be Improvise!, a festival devoted to the exploration of music that integrates improvisation and the orchestra. The festival includes a wide range of events, providing a vibrant presentation and exchange of ideas about conceptual, aesthetic and practical approaches to improvisation in orchestral music, with concerts by ACO and guest artists, commissions, reading sessions, professional meetings, master classes, and in-school workshops. Composers Anthony Davis and Alvin Singleton serve as Music Alive Composers-in-Residence and artistic advisors for Improvise!
ACO’s professional development initiatives include the annual Whitaker New Music Readings Sessions, which afford emerging composers, selected though a national search, the opportunity to hear their works performed for the first time. One of the participating composers is then awarded a commission for an orchestra work to be performed at Carnegie Hall. ACO also offers an annual composer fellowship, which allows a young professional composer to work with the orchestra over the course of an entire season. ACO-Xchange is the Orchestra’s new professional network that helps promote communication and dissemination about American orchestral music to composers, conductors and other music professionals.
ACO has also been a leader in music education, offering youth concerts in conjunction with the Carnegie Hall’s LinkUP! program, reaching some 20,000 New York City school children each year. In 1999, ACO launched The Music Factory, a pilot educational program bringing composers into public schools working with students to explore and create new music.
ACO records regularly, with a discography of twenty-two recordings on the ARGO, MusicMasters, CRI, ECM, Point, Tzadik, Nonesuch, and New World labels. ACO performances have been broadcast on American Public Radio, National Public Radio, and Voice of America.
Among the honors ACO has received are a special award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP’s annual prize for adventuresome programming, 26 times. The American Music Center has awarded ACO its Letter of Distinction, “for unique dedication to the music of American composers,” and BMI has honored ACO for its outstanding contribution to American music. In 1983, 1992, 1994, 1999 and 2002, ACO was singled out by ASCAP as “the orchestra that has done the most for new American music in the United States.”
August, 2003
key developments
1976-77
• Inaugural concert in Alice Tully Hall, broadcast on National Public Radio and Voice of America.
1978-79
• Pulitzer Prize awarded for ACO-commissioned work, Aftertones of Infinity by Joseph Schwantner.
ASCAP gives ACO first of eighteen awards for adventuresome programming.1979-80
• ACO-commissioned work wins Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, Piano Concerto by John Harbison.1980-81
•The American Music Center awards ACO its first “Letter of Distinction.”1981-82
• Time and Newsweek pick ACO’s Elliott Carter recording as among “Year’s Ten Best.”1982-83
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich becomes first woman composer to receive Pulitzer Prize for ACO- commissioned work, Symphony No. 1.
NEA awards Challenge grant to initiate endowment fund.1983-84
• The American Academy of Arts and Letters awards ACO a special award for “the cause of American music.”
1985-86
• Carnegie Hall presents ACO’s subscription season, attendance doubles, and subscriptions triple.1987-88
• NEA awards second Challenge grant of $150,000 to augment endowment.1988-89
• ACO hosts Composer in Residence, Robert Beaser, through Meet The Composer Orchestra Residencies Program.
ACO holds its first reading sessions of works by emerging composers, through the American Symphony Orchestra League’s New Music Project.1989-90
• New annual radio series debuts nationally over the American Public Radio Network.
Hovhaness/Harrison recording makes Billboard Classical Music charts for three months.
First national television appearance in the Guggenheim “Works and Process” series.1990-91
• BMI honors the ACO with an award for “Outstanding Contribution to American Music.”1991-92
• ACO signs multi-disc agreement with London Records’ ARGO label.
Dennis Russell Davies appointed Music Director after having served as Principal Conductor for 16 years.1992-93
• ACO performs opening concert of American Symphony Orchestra League’s 51st Conference in Carnegie Hall.1993-94
• Inauguration of Sonidos de las Américas Festival.
First youth concerts given in collaboration with Carnegie Hall‘s Link Up! educational program.
New Music Reading Sessions reinstated as annual program with five-year support from The Helen F. Whitaker Fund.1994-95
• NEA awards third Challenge Grant of $320,000 in support of Sonidos de las Américas.
ASCAP awards ACO Morton Gould Award for innovative programming.1995-96
• Harrison/Ung/McPhee recording selected as “Best of the Month” by Stereo Review.1996-97
Carnegie Hall invites ACO to begin planning a special series celebrating American music in the Millennium.
1997-98
• ACO “comes of age” with its 21st season, and 75th concert.
Recording of Philip Glass’s Heroes Symphony is released to wide acclaim, quickly becoming ACO’s best-selling album ever.1998-99
• ACO launches “20th Century Snapshots” a multi-year series exploring American music in the Millennium.
ACO presents Sonidos de las Américas: Cuba, a festival of Cuban music in collaboration with more than a dozen community and arts organizations, culminating six years of planning and research.
ACO wins 22nd ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, and is singled out as the “the orchestra that has done the most for new American music in the United States.”1999-2000
• ACO launches “Composer Out Front” Series featuring composer-performers in new informal crossover events.
Van Lier Composer Fellowships established: new extended professional development opportunities for emerging composers.
The Music Factory: Composers in the Schools debuts, bringing composers into New York City elementary and high schools, exploring the process of creating orchestral music.
ECM record releases The Seasons, ACO’s album of music by John Cage.
ACO conceives the Orchestra Technology Initiative, a multi-year program exploring the application of digital technology in orchestra composition and performance.
ACO receives ASCAP’s Morton Gould Award for innovative programming for its “20th Century Snapshots” series.2000-01
• Steven Sloane, appointed Music Director Designate, to succeed Dennis Russell Davies, beginning in 2002.
ACO Inaugurates “Coming to America: Immigrant Sounds/Immigrant Voices,” exploring the constant evotution of American music through the work of immigrant composers. The project is selected by Americans for the Arts as one of 16 model performing arts programs in the country for integrating the arts into civic dialogue.2001-02
ACO convenes national conference on technology and the orchestra, bringing together dozens of composers, technologists and music professionals for five days of artistic and technological exchange.
ACO celebrates its first 25 years with newly commissioned works made possible by ASCAP and BMI.
ACO Oral History Project commences under direction of historian Vivian Perlis, documents ACO’s role in American music over the last 25 years.
Music Director Designate Steven Sloane makes Carnegie Hall debut with ACO.
ACO receives ASCAP’s Jonathan S. Edwards Award for “Strongest Commitment to New American Music in its 25th Year.”
ACO is selected as one of five orchestra nationwide to receive the MetLife Award for Community Engagement.2002-03
• Steven Sloane becomes ACO’s second Music Director. Founding conductor Dennis Russell Davies becomes ACO’s first Conductor Laureate.2003-04
• ACO launches Orchestra Underground, a groundbreaking series designed to challenge the conventions of the symphony orchestra concert.
• ACO creates Improvise!, a festival exploring improvisation and the orchestra.
Underwood New Music Readings Monday and Tuesday, April 8-9 The DiMenna Center for Classical Music
The 22nd Annual Underwood New Music Readings are under the direction of ACO’s Artistic Director, composer Robert Beaser, and will be conducted by ACO Music Director George Manahan, with Christopher Theofanidis and Joan Tower as mentor composers.
This year, six of the nation’s most promising composers in the early stages of their professional careers have been selected from over 150 submissions received from around the country. The selected composers – Jonathan Blumhofer, Louis Chiappetta, Joshua Groffman, Saad Haddad, A.J. McCaffrey, and Nina C. Young – represent a broad spectrum of musical backgrounds and sound worlds.
In addition, this year the Readings offer composers, students, or anyone interested in learning more about the business of being a composer a Professional Development Seminar on Tuesday, April 9 from 9:30am-3:00pm at the DiMenna Center. Workshop topics include Intellectual Property and Copyright Law, Engraving and Self-Publishing with Bill Holab, Owner, Bill Holab Music; Support and Fundraising for Composers with Ed Harsh, President and CEO of New Music USA; and Publicity and Promotion with Jessica Lustig, Founding Partner 21C Media Group. The cost for the Seminar is $25, which includes lunch.
The composer participants:
Jonathan Blumhofer: Diversions for Orchestra
Jonathan Blumhofer (1979) has received numerous awards and honors and his compositions have been performed and recorded by a number of ensembles in the United States and Europe. Jonathan has taught at Clark University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester, MA, and at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. He earned his doctorate from Boston University. His principal teachers include Edwin Childs, Dalit Warshaw, Jan Swafford, Joshua Fineberg, Richard Cornell, and Samuel Headrick. Of his work, Samuel says, “Jonathan has a wonderful ear for orchestral color, and his unique sounds and interesting textures are creatively and effectively used to create well-structured, innovative new compositions that are musically interesting and innovative, highly expressive, and dramatically compelling.” Jonathan also studied with Allain Gaussin and Andre Bon at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, and with Ladislav Kubik at the Czech-American Summer Music Institute in Prague. The New Music Readings will be his first experience working with a professional orchestra.
Of his piece for the Readings, Diversions, Jonathan says, “Diversions is my first purely orchestral work; as its title suggests, I aimed to write a piece that was entertaining and lighthearted in character. Diversions is dedicated to Andrew Johnston, the son of long-time family friends, Jim and Lisa Johnston. Between 2001 and 2003, I dedicated three short pieces to each of Andrew’s older sisters. When Andrew was born in 2004, his father requested that any piece I write for Andrew be suitably big and loud, ‘preferably with anvils.’ Alas, I couldn’t bring myself to include an anvil in the scoring for Diversions, though I trust a log drum and some tom-toms will suffice.”
photo: Beowulf Sheehan
Louis Chiappetta: Chroma
Louis Chiappetta (b. 1989) began studying composition at Mannes College of Music’s Preparatory Division at the age of 13. He is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, receiving a bachelor’s degree studying with Keith Fitch. In 2011, Chiappetta was awarded a Fulbright Grant to study with Julian Anderson at the Guildhall School of Music in London. His works have been performed at London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Aspen Music Festival and School, Dartington International Summer School (UK), and MusicX Festival (Switzerland). Chiappetta has won several prizes including an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award (2010), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Scholarship (2011), and the Cleveland Institute of Music Donald Erb Prize (2011). In 2012 Chiappetta participated in a professional training workshop at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute where he studied with Kaija Saariaho and Anssi Karttunen. As a participant, his trio Loops, Clocks, and Shadows was premiered at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall.
Of his piece Chroma, he says, “In Chroma I set out to write a piece that tries to fuse my own musical vocabulary with Morton Feldman’s painterly approach. I am trying to treat musical ideas as if they were strips of color, building a structure that creates tension through juxtaposing distinctive materials in ever changing ways. Chroma also draws inspiration from my interest in contemporary literature. I was reading David Foster Wallace’s unfinished novel The Pale King while working on it, and I was struck by the unique way Wallace employed nonlinear narratives to gradually reveal who characters are and how they’ve come to know each other.”
Joshua Groffman: Music from elsewhere: orchestra
Joshua Groffman (b. 1984) of Millbrook, NY has written works for orchestral, vocal, and chamber ensembles, as well as for electronic media, theater, and film that have received numerous performances. The Readings will be Joshua’s first experience working with a professional orchestra. He graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University in 2007, where he completed double majors in music and history. While at Cornell, he studied composition with Roberto Sierra and Steven Stucky and piano with Xak Bjerken and Malcolm Bilson. Joshua holds Doctor of Music (2012) and Master of Music (2009) degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he studied composition with Sven-David Sandström, P.Q. Phan, Claude Baker, Aaron Travers, and Don Freund and computer music with Jeffrey Hass and John Gibson. He currently teaches composition and theory at the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University.
The title of Joshua’s piece, music from elsewhere, comes from a passage in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Robber Bride. He explains, “The title evokes, for me, a sense of dichotomy between two types of music: One that is fully present, audible, and familiar to us, and another which is more mysterious, emerging into our perception only in fits and starts – the ‘music from elsewhere.’ The idea of this dichotomy seems to capture a facet of the experience of daily life, namely, that if prosaic and familiar concerns largely shape our existence, they are occasionally interrupted by a sense that something larger and more fundamental is at work behind the scenes. Music from elsewhere attempts to capture that sense of an ineffable, larger something.”
Joshua Groffman: Music from elsewhere: ensemble
Saad Haddad: Maelstrom
Saad Haddad (1992) is an Arab-American composer based in Los Angeles whose music showcases his Middle-Eastern heritage. A junior at the University of Southern California, he is majoring in Music Composition with a minor in Cinematic Arts. In addition to his concert work, Saad has composed the soundtracks to eighteen short films, eight which were recorded live by the Thornton School of Music at the John Williams Scoring Stage. He is currently scoring “Core Overload,” a video game thesis being developed at USC. In the summer of 2011, he was selected as the youngest of fourteen students across the United States to study with Professor Samuel Adler of the Juilliard School in Berlin as part of the Freie Universitat
in Berlin International Summer Program. Saad has been a finalist in the 2012 ASCAP Morton Gould Award contest and was a member of the first group of high school composers to participate in the Los Angles Philharmonic’s Composer Fellowship Program under the direction of Steven Stucky. His composition professors include Frank Ticheli, Mark Weiser, Stephen Hartke, Samuel Adler, Donald Crockett, and Steven Stucky.
Maelstrom was selected as an alternate for the 2012 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. Of the piece, Saad says, “Maelstrom will keep people right on the edge of their seats, holding on for dear life, as their ship, the concert hall, catches a devastating current that puts them at the heart of an unrelenting storm.”
A.J. McCaffrey Thank You For Waiting
A.J. McCaffrey (1973) has received commissions from the Tanglewood Music Center and the Radius Ensemble, and his music has been performed by the New Fromm Players and members of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Alarm Will Sound, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and the Chiara Quartet. A native of the Boston area, A.J. has been an active singer, guitarist, and songwriter since high school. He studied composition at Rice University, as well as at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with composer James MacMillan. He has just completed his doctorate in music composition with composers Donald Crockett and Stephen Hartke at the University of Southern California. A.J. currently lives in southern California, where he teaches music theory and aural skills at USC, composition through the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Composer Fellowship Program, and composition and musical analysis at the Longy School of Music of Bard College’s Los Angeles-based Masters of Arts in Teaching program. A.J. is currently at work on his own composition/musician documentary series This Is What Really Happened for solo and pre-recorded instruments, and is also member of the Portland (OR)-based band Planes Intersect.
A.J. says, “The title of this piece, Thank You for Waiting, could easily serve as a note to any audience of my music, but here specifically it expresses my hope that the unsettled and unresolved nature of the musical material will be heard as a texture in and of itself, and that the ‘waiting’ on the part of the listener will become its own reward. Additionally, as this piece was my doctoral dissertation in composition at the University of Southern California, the title is a very direct message to my wife, family and professors, all of whom did lots of waiting of their own while I finished this piece.”
Nina C. Young: Remnants
Nina C. Young (1984) is a New York-based composer who writes instrumental and electronic music incorporating her research of blending amplification and live electronics into instrumental ensembles, always with a view toward creating a natural and cohesive sound world. Nina’s music has been performed by ensembles such as the Orkest de Ereprijs, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, JACK Quartet, Yarn/Wire and Sixtrum. Her music has received honors from BMI, the International Alliance for Women in Music, and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States. She is currently a doctoral fellow at Columbia University, studying with Fred Lerdahl, Brad Garton, and George Lewis, where she also teaches electroacoustic composition at the Computer Music Center. Nina earned a master’s degree in music composition from McGill University, studying with Sean Ferguson and completed her undergraduate studies at MIT, receiving degrees in ocean engineering and music. This is her first experience working with a professional orchestra.
Nina says of Remants, “When a resonant body is activated, the loudness and spectral content of the resulting sound change over time in complex interactions; this process can be described using the Attack Decay Sustain Release model (ADSR). Remnants explores this interaction of sound over time. The traditional orchestra is treated as a complex but integrated resonant body that can be excited in a variety of ways. This instigating sound then ripples through the ensemble in a causal chain, with each instrument reacting according to its inherent characteristics.”
Tickets & Info
The readings are free and open to the public. No ticket is required but reservations are recommended.
Support for the Underwood New Music Readings comes from Paul Underwood, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation and the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University. The project also receives public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.
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with David Tinervia, baritone, and R. Luke DuBois, video
STEVE REICH Tehillim
From 1999 to 2001, ACO undertook 20th Century Snapshots, a landmark celebration of the Millennium. This eleven-concert series based on evocative and provocative American themes that chronicled America in the last century, and leading the way to the next. ASCAP recognized this series with its national award for innovative programming.
Joshua Groffman:
Saad Haddad:
A.J. McCaffrey
Nina C. Young: