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.