HITOMI OBA: September Coming (2016, World Premiere) ETHAN IVERSON: Concerto to Scale for piano and orchestra (2018, World Premiere, ACO Commission) STEVE LEHMAN: Ten Threshold Studies (2018, World Premiere, ACO Commission) T.J. ANDERSON: Bahia Bahia (1990, New York Premiere) CLARICE ASSAD: Dreamscapes for violin and chamber orchestra (2009, New York Premiere)
ACO’s April concert at Carnegie Hall, Dreamscapes, is a global celebration of musical dreams, fusing jazz, world, and classical music. It features the world premieres of The Bad Plus founding member Ethan Iverson’s first orchestral work, Concerto to Scale with the composer as the piano soloist, and Steve Lehman’s Ten Threshold Studies, both commissioned by ACO; and the New York premieres of Clarice Assad’s Dreamscapes featuring violinist Elena Urioste, TJ Anderson’s Bahia Bahia, and Hitomi Oba’s September Coming, which was first read at the Buffalo Philharmonic EarShot Readings led by ACO after Oba’s participation in ACO’s 2015 Jazz Composers Orchestra Initiative.
Ethan Iverson is best known as a founding member and pianist of The Bad Plus, a game-changing collective with bassist Reid Anderson and drummer David King. The New York Times describes the group as, “better than anyone at melding the sensibilities of post-60’s jazz and indie rock.” With The Bad Plus, Iverson has collaborated with Joshua Redman, Bill Frisell, and the Mark Morris Dance Group and created a faithful arrangement of Stravinky’s The Rite of Spring and a radical reinvention of Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction. In 2017, Iverson composed and arranged Pepperland for the Mark Morris Dance Group and curated a major centennial celebration of Thelonious Monk at Duke University. With Mark Morris Dance Group he played Robert Schumann’s chamber music with Yo-Yo Ma; for the release of The Rest is Noise he toured with Alex Ross and performed examples of 20th-century repertoire. Iverson describes his piano concerto for ACO, Concerto to Scale, as being of, “modest dimensions but of sincere intent.”
Clarice Assad is a Brazilian-American Grammy-nominated composer, pianist, vocalist, bandleader and educator. A versatile musician of depth and imagination, she has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Orquestra Sinfônica de São Paulo, the Albany Symphony, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the New Century Chamber Orchestra, the BRAVO! Vail Music Festival and the La Jolla Music Festival, among others. Her works have been recorded by some of the most prominent names and groups in classical music today, including Yo-Yo Ma, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Eugenia Zuckerman, Chanticleer and Liang Wang. Assad is a founding member of the Chicago-based music and poetry publishing company Virtual Artists Collective and VOXPloration, an award-winning research based outreach program and workshop for children and adolescents on spontaneous music creation, composition, and improvisation. Her piece Dreamscapes for violin and chamber orchestra is based loosely on Assad’s research on the subject of rapid eye movement (REM) and lucid dreaming. The piece follows a storyline based on notes Assad made about her own dreams, and depicts her struggle to have a pleasant dreaming experience against the strong subconscious draw of negativity.
TJ Anderson was born in 1928 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania and received degrees from West Virginia State College, Penn State University, and a Ph.D. in Composition from the University of Iowa. He also holds several honorary degrees. He now lives in Atlanta, Georgia where he is devoted full time to writing music. He studied composition with George Ceiga, Philip Bezanson, Richard Hervig, and Darius Milhaud. Anderson is well known for his orchestration of Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha, which premiered in Atlanta in 1972. His first opera, Soldier Boy, Soldier, is based on a libretto by Leon Forrest, and was commissioned by Indiana University. His opera Walker was commissioned by the Boston Athenaeum with a libretto by Derek Walcott and his opera Slip Knot is based on a historical paper by T.H. Breen with libretto by Yusef Komunyakaa. Anderson has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Arts, the Djerassi Foundation, the National Humanities Center (their first composer), and a scholar-in-residence at the Rockefeller Center for the Creative Arts, Bellagio, Italy. Other honors include an honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and a Rockefeller Center Foundation grant. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005. His piece Bahia Bahia was written in 1990 as part of his Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and is dedicated to the Brazilian composers Alda and Jamary Oliveira. It represents impressions of popular music Anderson heard on two visits to Brazil in 1976 and 1988, and was premiered in 1998 by the North Carolina Symphony. ACO presents its New York premiere.
Described as “one of the transforming figures of early 21st century jazz,” by The Guardian and as a “creator of intricately detailed contemporary classical works,” by The New York Times, Steve Lehman is a composer, performer, educator, and scholar who works across a broad spectrum of experimental musical idioms. Lehman’s music has been performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), So Percussion, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, the JACK Quartet, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Talea Ensemble, and by the pianist Marilyn Nonken. His recording Mise en Abîme was chosen as the No. 1 Jazz Album of 2014 by NPR Music and The Los Angeles Times. The recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2014 Doris Duke Artist Award, Lehman is an alto saxophonist who has performed and recorded nationally and internationally with his own ensembles and with those led by Anthony Braxton, Vijay Iyer, George Lewis, Jason Moran, Georgia-Anne Muldrow, Meshell Ndegeocello, and High Priest of Anti-Pop Consortium, among many others. He describes his new piece for ACO, Ten Threshold Studies, as, “making use of elastic rhythms and shadowy spectral harmonies to explore the nature of hearing and perception in modern day music.”
Saxophonist and composer Hitomi Oba completed her master’s degree at the University of California, Los Angeles in Music Composition after receiving her bachelor’s degree in Ethnomusicology/Jazz Studies. Her projects include a sixteen-piece jazz orchestra called Jazz Nexus and an electro-acoustic pop duo, Nova. Her second jazz album, Negai, received a prestigious Swing Journal 42nd Annual Jazz Disc Award. Her commissions include works for the Los Angeles Asian American Jazz Festival, Kenny Burrell’s Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra Unlimited, the Jon Jangtet, and the Indian classical/jazz collaborative Aditya Prakash Ensemble. Oba is one of the co-founders of the new music collective LA Signal Lab, premiering and recording stylistically diverse new music with a focus on integrating improvised and pre-composed music. She teaches jazz saxophone and music theory at UCLA. Her piece, September Coming, explores ways to express the momentum and gestures of improvisational language through the orchestra, using orchestration to further enhance the spirit of improvised material. The concepts explored in the piece were inspired by the workshops, discussions, and music from the 2015 ACO Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Intensive. The first version of September Coming was read at the 2016 Buffalo Philharmonic Readings, conducted by Stefan Sanders, made possible by ACO and Earshot.
American Composers Orchestra Derek Bermel, Artistic Director & George Manahan, Music Director
Performs in the New York premiere of Fellow Travelersby composer Gregory Spears & librettist Greg Pierce
Co-presented with PROTOTYPE Festival and John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Fri., Jan. 12, 2018 at 8pm | Sat., Jan. 13, 2018 at 2pm & 8pm | Sun., Jan. 14, 2018 at 2pm Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College of Criminal Justice | 524 W. 59th Street | NYC Tickets: $30-$75 at 212.352.3101 or www.prototypefestival.org
American Composers Orchestra (ACO) continues its 2017-2018 season, Dreamscapes, under the leadership of Artistic Director Derek Bermel, Music Director George Manahan, and President Edward Yim, with New York premiere performances of Fellow Travelers as part of the PROTOTYPE Festival from Friday, January 12, 2018 through Sunday, January 14, 2018 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Gerald W. Lynch Theater. Based on Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel and directed by Kevin Newbury, composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers is an extraordinary personal journey through the intriguing, gut-wrenching world of the McCarthy era 1950s American witch-hunts, and the often overlooked “Lavender Scare.”
“We’re so excited to work again with Greg Spears. Several years ago, ACO read, performed, and recorded his hypnotizing orchestral work Finishing, which among other devices employs dog-whistles and microcassette tapes,” said ACO Artistic Director Derek Bermel. “We all became instant Spears fans, and the enthusiasm has not waned with time. I’m personally thrilled that ACO will perform the New York premiere of Fellow Travelers; Greg’s lush and dramatic score is a powerful vessel for communicating this moving story. To be collaborating with PROTOTYPE and John Jay College of Criminal Justice supports our belief in collaborating with like-minded partners to produce important work.”
About Fellow Travelers
At the height of the McCarthy era in 1950s Washington, D.C., recent college grad Timothy Laughlin is eager to join the crusade against Communism. A chance encounter with handsome State Department official Hawkins Fuller leads to Tim’s first job, an illicit love affair with a man, and an entanglement that will end in a stunning act of betrayal. This acclaimed Cincinnati Opera productionpairs American Minimalism with Medieval troubadour melodies, reflecting the tension between two men’s professional, public lives and their private, forbidden longings.
“Opera thrives on stories with rich subtext, where characters cannot fully express themselves in words,” states Spears. “Both politicians and gay men and women in Washington, D.C. in the 1950s lived in a world full of coded sensibility – a culture operating under the surface and in counterpoint with the rigid formality of 1950s mores. In both the fraught political world of the McCarthy Era and the private world of Hawk and Tim, dialogue could only tell part of the story. My goal was to craft a musical language for Fellow Travelers that would foreground the undercurrent of clandestine machinations and forbidden longing churning under the surface of Greg Pierce’s elegant adaptation. My hope is that the nuanced machinery of opera might play some small part reminding us of this history, while also preserving in music the sensibility of doubleness that so often defined gay experience in this era.” Photo: Philip Groshong
Gregory Spears (Composer) music work has been called “astonishingly beautiful” (The New York Times), “coolly entrancing” (The New Yorker), and “some of the most beautifully unsettling music to appear in recent memory” (The Boston Globe). In recent seasons, he has been commissioned by The Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Cincinnati Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seraphic Fire, The Crossing, and the JACK Quartet among others. Spears’ Fellow Travelers was written with playwright Greg Pierce and premiered in 2016 at Cincinnati Opera in a ten-performance run. It was hailed as “one of the most accomplished new operas I have seen in recent years” (Chicago Tribune) and an opera that “seems assured of lasting appeal” (The New York Times). The premiere of Fellow Travelers was also included in The New York Times’ Best in Classical Music for 2016. Spears’ children’s opera Jason and the Argonauts, written with Kathryn Walat, also premiered in the summer of 2016 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and was subsequently performed on tour the following fall. His opera about space exploration, O Columbia, was written in collaboration with Royce Vavrek and premiered in 2015 at Houston Grand Opera. Spears and Walat’s first opera, Paul’s Case, was described as a “masterpiece” (New York Observer) and was developed by American Opera Projects. It was premiered by Urban Arias in 2013, restaged at the PROTOTYPE Festival in 2014, and presented in a new production by Pittsburgh Opera. Spears has won prizes from BMI and ASCAP as well as awards and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Vagn Holmboe Competition. His music is published by Schott Music and Schott PSNY.
Greg Pierce(Librettist) grew up in Shelburne, Vermont. His play Slowgirl was the inaugural play of Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater (LCT3). It was subsequently produced by Steppenwolf Theatre and the Geffen Playhouse, among others. His play Her Requiem, a Lincoln Center Theater commission, was also produced by LCT3. The Landing, a musical written with composer John Kander, premiered at the Vineyard Theatre in NYC. His second musical with Kander, Kid Victory, was co-produced by Signature Theatre in Virginia and the Vineyard Theatre. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, co-written with director Stephen Earnhart, based on the novel by Haruki Murakami, premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival, and went on to play the Singapore Arts Festival. The Quarry, with music by Pierce’s brother Randal Pierce was commissioned and produced by Vermont Stage Company. Pierce has received fellowships from the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Yaddo, The Djerassi Institute, the New York Public Library, and the Baryshnikov Arts Center. He currently holds commissions from Second Stage Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club/Sloan Foundation. His work has been developed with Naked Angels, The New Group, Atlantic Theatre Company, Asia Society, the Rattlestick Theater, and the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival. He recently wrote a film for Lionsgate. He has a B.A. from Oberlin College and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the WGA.
Kevin Newbury (Director) is a theatre, opera, and film director based in New York City. Newbury has directed over sixty original productions and his work has been presented by many opera companies, festivals, and symphonies including the Park Avenue Armory, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, The Santa Fe Opera, Barcelona Liceu, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Minnesota Opera, The San Francisco Symphony, L’Opera de Montreal, The Prototype Festival, Urban Arias (DC), Bard Summerscape, Portland Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Philadelphia Orchestra, Seattle Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Cincinnati Opera, The Virginia Arts Festival, and The Wexford Festival in Ireland, among many others. Kevin is especially committed to developing and directing new work. He has directed over two dozen world premiere operas and plays, many of which were subsequently published or recorded. Recent world premiere highlights include Bates/Campbell’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (Santa Fe Opera), Spears/Pierce’s Fellow Travelers (Cincinnati Opera, New York Times Best of 2016), Todd Almond’s Kansas City Choir Boy (starring Courtney Love, PROTOTYPE/NYC and Boston, LA and Miami), Puts/ Campbell’s The Manchurian Candidate and Cuomo/Shanley’s Doubt (Minnesota Opera), and Lopez/Cruz’s Bel Canto (Lyric Opera of Chicago, broadcast on PBS’ Great Performances and recently nominated for the 2016 International Opera Awards: Best World Premiere). Newbury’s first two short films, Monsura Is Waiting and Stag, have screened at a total of forty film festivals and have each won festival awards. Both of his films are now available online. His third short, Epiphany V, a classical music video, will be released in mid 2017. Other upcoming projects include Fairouz/Hanif’s Bhutto (Pittsburgh Opera and Beth Morrison Projects) and Fellow Travelers (Lyric Opera of Chicago).
Sterling Zinsmeyer (Executive Producer and Co-Commissioner) conceived the idea, commissioned, and developed Fellow Travelers into a chamber opera. He spent most of his career in New York City, early on working in classical arts management with Sol Hurok and theater production with producer Saint Subber. This career was interrupted by the AIDS epidemic, in which Zinsmeyer spent twenty years as a leader in developing special needs residences for persons living with HIV/AIDS. Ten years ago, Zinsmeyer resumed his arts career by developing independent films, serving as Executive Producer on the award-winning film Latter Days; other films include Adam & Steve, The Deceptionand Young Blue Eyes. Zinsmeyer and his husband, Louis Bixenman, reside in Santa Fe, New Mexico along with their three adorable critters: Oliver, Marcus and Tyler.
Thomas Mallon (Author) is an American novelist, essayist, and critic. His novels are renowned for their attention to historical detail and context and for the author’s crisp wit and interest in the “bystanders” to larger historical events. He is the author of nine books of fiction, including Henry and Clara, Two Moons, Dewey Defeats Truman, Aurora 7, Bandbox, Fellow Travelers, Watergate, and most recently, Finale. He has also published nonfiction on plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One’s Own), letters (Yours Ever) and the Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine’s Garage), as well as two volumes of essays (Rockets and Rodeos, and In Fact). He is a former literary editor of Gentleman’s Quarterly, where he wrote the “Doubting Thomas” column in the 1990s, and has contributed frequently to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, and other periodicals. He was appointed a member of the National Council on the Humanities in 2002 and served as Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2005-2006. His honors include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle citation for reviewing, and the Vursell prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for distinguished prose style. He was elected as a new member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.
George Manahan (Music Director) The wide-ranging and versatile George Manahan has had an esteemed career embracing everything from opera to the concert stage, the traditional to the contemporary. He is the Music Director of American Composers Orchestra and the Portland Opera (OR), previously served as Music Director of New York City Opera for fourteen seasons, and has appeared as guest conductor with the Opera Companies of Seattle, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Chicago, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Opera National du Paris and Teatro de Communale de Bologna, the National, New Jersey, Atlanta, San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis Symphonies, and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. A recipient of Columbia University’s Ditson Conducting Award, he was honored four times by the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) for his commitment to 20th-century music during his tenure as Music Director of the Richmond Symphony (VA). Dedicated to the music of our time, he has led premiers of Tobias Picker’s Dolores Claiborne, Charles Wuorinen’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, David Lang’s Modern Painters, Hans Werner Henze’s The English Cat, Terence Blanchard’s Champion, the New York premiere of Richard Danielpour’s Margaret Garner and Emmy Award-winning composer Laura Karpman’s Grammy Award winning Ask Your Mama, a collaboration with soprano Jessye Norman, The Roots, and the orchestra of St. Luke’s. Recent Seasons have included appearances at the Santa Fe Opera, Rose Theater at Lincoln Center in a concert performance of Gluck’s Alceste featuring Deborah Voigt, the Music Academy of the West, and the Aspen Music Festival. The Live from Lincoln Center broadcast of his New York City Opera production of Madame Butterfly won an Emmy Award. Manahan’s discography includes the Grammy Award nominated recording of Edward Thomas’ Desire Under the Elms, with the London Symphony, and Steve Reich’s Tehillim on the EMI-Warner Brothers label. He is Director of Orchestral Activities at the Manhattan School of Music as well as frequent guest conductor at the Curtis Institute of Music.
FELLOW TRAVELERS
Gregory Spears, composer
Greg Pierce, librettist
Kevin Newbury, director
George Manahan, conductor
Braden Toan, assistant conductor
G. Sterling Zinsmeyer, executive producer
with American Composers Orchestra
Cast:
Timothy Laughlin: Aaron Blake
Hawkins Fuller: Joseph Lattanzi
Mary Johnson: Devon Guthrie
Senator Potter & Bartender: Vernon Hartman
Estonian Frank, Interrogator, & Sen. McCarthy: Marcus DeLoach
Potter’s Assistant, Bookseller, & Priest: Christian Pursell
Tommy McIntyre: Paul Scholten
Miss Lightfoot: Alexandra Schoeny
Lucy: Cecilia Violetta Lopez
Fellow Travelers is a Cincinnati Opera Production, developed and co-commissionedby G. Sterling Zinsmeyer and Cincinnati Opera, and co-presented by PROTOTYPE Festival with John Jay College of Criminal Justice and American Composers Orchestra.
About PROTOTYPE
PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now launched in January 2013, unleashing a powerful wave of opera- and music-theatre from a new generation of composers and librettists. Across its first five seasons, PROTOTYPE produced and presented a total of 160 performances of 32 presentations, and shared the work of more than 500 local, national, and international artists. Now in its sixth season, PROTOTYPE, as Opera News proclaimed, “has become a major leader in opera theatre for the twenty-first century.”
Founded by Kristin Marting (of HERE), Beth Morrison (of Beth Morrison Projects), and Kim Whitener (of HERE), and now produced and directed by them along with new co-director Jecca Barry, PROTOTYPE supports and spotlights a diverse range of culturally and socially engaged work from intrepid creators across ethnicity and gender. Half of PROTOTYPE’s lead artists to date have been women, and the Festival has presented work from Belgian, Chinese, Dutch, Egyptian-American, Indian-American, Irish, Kazakh, Korean-American, Lithuanian, Mexican, Russian, and Slovenian lead artists.
Reflected in Glass: Philip Glass and the Next Generation
Friday, December 8, 2017 at 7:30pm Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall | 57th St. and 7th Ave., NYC Tickets & Information: www.carnegiehall.org (http://bit.ly/ReflectedinGlass) Subscriptions now available; single tickets available August 28, 2017.
PAUCHI SASAKI: GAMA XVI for Orchestra and Speaker Dress with composer as electronics soloist
(2017, World Premiere, ACO/Carnegie Hall Commission) BRYCE DESSNER: Réponse Lutosławski(2014, New York Premiere) PHILIP GLASS: Violin Concerto No. 2, “American Four Seasons” (2009) Conversation with Philip Glass and Pauchi Sasaki, moderated by ACO President, Ed Yim
Reflected in Glass is Philip Glass’ first concert as Carnegie Hall’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair, which he holds for the 2017-2018 season. It features Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 2, “The American Four Seasons,” with Tim Fain as soloist. Glass’ work is paired with two composers he has mentored and inspired – Pauchi Sasaki and Bryce Dessner. Dessner’s Réponse Lutosławski is the creative fruit of his study of Lutosławski’s string orchestra piece Musique funèbre. Pauchi Sasaki’s GAMA XVI features the composer as electronics soloist, wearing and performing an original Speaker Dress made from 100 speakers.
Philip Glass is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of our time. In the early 1960s, following studies at the University of Chicago and the Juilliard School, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and while there, earned money by transcribing Ravi Shankar’s Indian music into Western notation. By 1974, Glass had a number of innovative projects, creating a large collection of new music for The Philip Glass Ensemble and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company. This period culminated in Music in Twelve Parts, and Einstein on the Beach for which he collaborated with Robert Wilson. Since Einstein, Glass has expanded his repertoire to include music for opera, dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and film. ACO has a long history of performing Glass’ work frequently, going back to the world premiere of his first violin concerto written for the late Paul Zukofsky in 1987. ACO recorded Glass’ Heroes symphony in 1997 and most recently gave the U.S. premiere of his Symphony No. 9 at Carnegie Hall on Glass’ 75th birthday in 2012. Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 2 was written for violinist Robert McDuffie in 2009. The work is a companion piece to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” but Glass states in the note for the piece that McDuffie and he did not agree on which movement corresponded to which season. He writes, “This struck me as an opportunity, then, for the listener to make his/her own interpretation. Therefore, there will be no instructions for the audience, no clues as to where Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall might appear in the new concerto – an interesting, though not worrisome, problem for the listener.”
Pauchi Sasaki’s interdisciplinary approach integrates musical composition with the design of multimedia performances and the application of new technologies. A composer, performer, and improviser, she collaborates actively on projects linked to film, dance, theater, installation, site specific, and interdisciplinary performances; Sasaki has performed internationally in Peru, the U.S., Japan, Spain, Chile, Colombia, and Switzerland. This year she was selected by Philip Glass to become his protégé as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Initiative for a one-year mentorship. Sasaki’s classical violin studies began at age five; she studied Andean music at CEMDUC; classical music of North India with maestro Ali Akbar Khan in San Rafael, California; and Klezmer music with Alicia Svigals in New York. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from PUCP in Lima and a master’s degree in Recording Media and Experimental Music from Mills College in Oakland, California. Her compositions involve acoustic, amplified, and electronic instrumentation influenced by improvisational aesthetics and ethnic musical traditions. Her work also focuses on the development of real time interactive music and self-designed instruments using Max Msp and circuit bending. This branch of her work seeks the embodiment of electronic music performance integrating the emission of electronic sounds with corporal expressivity. Her piece for ACO, GAMA XVI, is a performative electroacoustic composition for orchestra and speaker dress – a wearable sound sculpture created with 100 speakers.
Photo: Juan Pablo Aragon
Bryce Dessner is one of the most sought-after composers of his generation, with a rapidly expanding catalog of works commissioned by leading ensembles. Known to many as a guitarist with The National, he is also active as a curator – a vital force in the flourishing realm of new creative music. His orchestral, chamber, and vocal compositions have been commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Metropolitan Museum of Art (for the New York Philharmonic), Kronos Quartet, BAM Next Wave Festival, Barbican Centre, Edinburgh International Festival, Sydney Festival, eighth blackbird, So Percussion, New York City Ballet, and many others. He has curated Mountains and Waves at the Barbican, and founded MusicNOW in Cincinnati. Dessner now resides in Paris and has been increasingly active composing for major European ensembles and soloists. Last fall he premiered a new piece entitled Wires commissioned for Ensemble Intercontemporain and Matthias Pintscher, as well as recent solo works for violinists Pekka Kuusisto and Jennifer Koh, and a concerto for renowned pianists Katia and Marielle Labeque. Dessner’s Réponse Lutosławski was written as an homage to Witold Lutosławski͛’s composition for string orchestra, Musique funèbre. “This was an amazing process of discovering one of the 20th century’s great musical minds and allowing his adventurous spirit to influence my own musical decisions,” Dessner says. “I like to think that his music opened a window in a certain direction for me, or pushed open a door, through which I could then pass and take my journey with the music.”
Avery Fisher Career Grant-winning violinist Tim Fain was featured on the soundtracks to the films Moonlight, 12 Years a Slave, and Black Swan, where he also was seen on screen. Recipient of the Young Concert Artists International Award, he has appeared internationally as soloist with the Baltimore Symphony and Cabrillo Festival (Marin Alsop), the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Pittsburgh, Hague and Buffalo Philharmonics, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestras, and National Orchestra of Spain. His recitals have taken him to the world’s major music capitals, he has toured with Musicians from Marlboro, as a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and around the globe in a duo-recital program with Philip Glass. He collaborated with Google on a Virtual Reality music video for his composition, Resonance, which introduced its 360 stereoscopic VR capability for YouTube, and was recently shown at The Sundance Film Festival. His multi-media solo evening Portals premiered to sold-out audiences on both coasts and continues to travel world-wide. Featuring a new work written for him by Philip Glass, Portals includes collaborations with Benjamin Millepied, Leonard Cohen, pianist Nicholas Britell and radio personality Fred Child. He has collaborated with an eclectic array of artists from Pinchas Zukerman and Mitsuko Uchida, to the Mark Morris Dance Group and New York City Ballet to Iggy Pop, Rob Thomas (Matchbox 20), and he has performed for the Dali Lama. His discography includes River of Light, (Naxos), and Philip Glass: The Concerto Project IV with the Hague Philharmonic and Tim Fain plays Philip Glass (Orange Mountain Music), and First Loves (VIA). Photo: Bill Bernstein
PROTOTYPE Festival: Fellow Travelers by Gregory Spears (New York Premiere)
Friday, January 12, 2018 at 8pm
Saturday, January 13 at 2pm and 8pm
Sunday, January 14 at 2pm
Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College of Criminal Justice | 524 W. 59th St., NYC
VIP Memberships now available. Single tickets are available for VIP Members after Labor Day and for the general public after September 18, 2017.
Gregory Spears, composer
Greg Pierce, librettist
Kevin Newbury, director
George Manahan, conductor
Braden Toan, assistant conductor
G. Sterling Zinsmeyer, executive producer
with American Composers Orchestra
Cast:
Timothy Laughlin: Aaron Blake
Hawkins Fuller: Joseph Lattanzi
Mary Johnson: Devon Guthrie
Senator Potter & Bartender: Vernon Hartman
Estonian Frank, Interrogator, & Sen. McCarthy: Marcus DeLoach
Potter’s Assistant, Bookseller, & Priest: Christian Pursell
Tommy McIntyre: Paul Scholten
Miss Lightfoot: Alexandra Schoeny
Lucy: Cecilia Violetta Lopez
At the height of the McCarthy era in 1950s Washington, D.C., recent college grad Timothy Laughlin is eager to join the crusade against Communism. A chance encounter with handsome State Department official Hawkins Fuller leads to Tim’s first job, an illicit love affair with a man, and an entanglement that will end in a stunning act of betrayal. Based on Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel, Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers is an extraordinary personal journey through the intriguing, gut-wrenching world of the 1950s American witch-hunts, and the often overlooked “Lavender Scare.” Directed by Kevin Newbury and featuring American Composers Orchestra in the opera’s New York debut, this acclaimed Cincinnati Opera productionpairs American Minimalism with Medieval troubadour melodies, reflecting the tension between two men’s professional, public lives and their private, forbidden longings.
“Opera thrives on stories with rich subtext, where characters cannot fully express themselves in words,” states Spears. “Both politicians and gay men and women in Washington, D.C. in the 1950s lived in a world full of coded sensibility – a culture operating under the surface and in counterpoint with the rigid formality of 1950s mores. In both the fraught political world of the McCarthy Era and the private world of Hawk and Tim, dialogue could only tell part of the story. My goal was to craft a musical language for Fellow Travelers that would foreground the undercurrent of clandestine machinations and forbidden longing churning under the surface of Greg Pierce’s elegant adaptation. My hope is that the nuanced machinery of opera might play some small part reminding us of this history, while also preserving in music the sensibility of doubleness that so often defined gay experience in this era.”
Gregory Spears writes music that blends aspects of romanticism, minimalism, and early music. His work has been called “astonishingly beautiful” (The New York Times), “coolly entrancing” (The New Yorker), and “some of the most beautifully unsettling music to appear in recent memory” (The Boston Globe). In recent seasons, he has been commissioned by The Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Cincinnati Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seraphic Fire, and the JACK Quartet, among others. Spears’ children’s opera Jason and the Argonauts premiered in summer 2016 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and was performed on tour that fall. His opera about space exploration, O Columbia, premiered in 2015 at Houston Grand Opera. Spears’ first opera, Paul’s Case, described as a “masterpiece” (New York Observer) was developed by American Opera Projects and premiered by Urban Arias in 2013. It was restaged at the PROTOTYPE Festival in New York, and presented in a new production by Pittsburgh Opera in 2014. He has won prizes from BMI and ASCAP as well as awards and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Vagn Holmboe Competition. He holds degrees in composition from the Eastman School of Music (BM), Yale School of Music (MM), and Princeton University (PhD). His music is published by Schott Music and Schott PSNY.
Fellow Travelers is a Cincinnati Opera Production, developed and co-commissionedby G. Sterling Zinsmeyer and Cincinnati Opera, and co-presented by PROTOTYPE Festival with John Jay College of Criminal Justice and American Composers Orchestra.
American Composers Orchestra’s 40th Birthday Concert & Gala Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 7:30pm Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall | Broadway at 60th St., NYC
Thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate American Composers Orchestra’s 40th Birthday and important contributors to American music:
Ellen and James S. Marcus Francis Thorne Paul Lustig Dunkel Jamie, Nina & Alexander Bernstein Paola Prestini
Video
Learn more about the honorees below
George Manahan, music director & conductor Dennis Russell Davies, conductor Derek Bermel, clarinet Mikaela Bennett, soprano
Jakub Józef Orliński, countertenor
ELIZABETH OGONEK: Sleep and Unremembrance (2015) (U.S. Premiere) LEONARD BERNSTEIN: Clarinet Sonata (1941-42, orchestrated by Sid Ramin 1994) PAOLA PRESTINI: Prelude and Aria from Gilgamesh (2016) (NY Premiere) DUKE ELLINGTON: Black, Brown & Beige (1943) FRANCIS THORNE: Fanfare, Fugue and Funk (1972) Selections from the American Songbook for voice and orchestra including George GERSHWIN: Fascinatin Rhythm Jerome KERN: All The Things You Are Harold ARLEN: Over the Rainbow
Our Honorees:
Mr. and Mrs. Marcus
Ellen and James S. Marcus are dedicated and passionate supporters of classical music. ACO has been fortunate to be among the beneficiaries of their commitment and generosity. Our 40th Birthday Concert & Gala are made possible through their generous sponsorship.
When Mr. Marcus passed away in July 2015, thoughtful tributes were made by The New York Times and WQXR among many others. Their impact and influence on American music is nothing short of incredible, and their legacy is one that continues to enable many artistic visions to thrive today.
Ellen Marcus was raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio. After attending the University of Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1959, took courses at the New York Institute of Finance and was registered to sell securities. During this time, she worked on Wall Street for a number of prominent firms. Afterward, Ellen sold residential real estate for Stribling from 1995 until 2012. Ellen met James S. Marcus in 1970 and they married in 1974. A devoted opera-lover, Jim introduced Ellen to the art form and through him she became involved in the life of the Met. Jim served as Met chairman from 1986 to 1993 and as honorary director of the Met until his death in 2015. In 2010, the Marcuses donated $10 million to the Juilliard School to create the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts. Ellen has served on the auxiliary board of Lenox Hill Hospital since 1975 and currently sits on the boards of Young Concert Artists, MasterVoices and the Juilliard School. She is chairman of the patron program at WNET and a member of the Cosmopolitan Club’s board of governors. In addition to Ellen’s interest in opera, she is a lover of Broadway and cabaret music and is an aficionado of the American Songbook.
Francis Thorne
Francis Thorne‘s music has always had a healthy respect for the vernacular, both popular song and jazz. Born in Bay Shore, New York in 1922 into a musical family (his grandfather was Gustave Kobbé who is best known for Kobbé’s Opera Book), he started picking out tunes when he was five years old. By the age of nine he was entertaining his parents’ dinner guests.
His first formal training took place under Paul Hindemith at Yale University. After college came three-and-a-half years in the Navy during World War II, followed by nine years on Wall Street. All this time he kept up his jazz piano which brought him in contact with Duke Ellington whose personal recommendation led to a two-year stint as jazz pianist at Manhattan’s Hickory House – his first professional job as a musician. His return to the world of music reactivated his desire to compose, which brought him to David Diamond and two years of private study with him in Florence, Italy. Shortly thereafter his Elegy for Orchestra was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra with Eugene Ormandy conducting three subscription concerts in November, 1964.
The principal founder of American Composers Orchestra, of which he was both President and CEO, he has helped to commission and perform works by numerous other composers. He was also President/Treasurer of the Thorne Music Fund as well as Executive Director of Music Theatre Group, the Naumburg Foundation, and American Composers Alliance. He served on the Boards of Composers Recordings, Inc., American Music Center, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony, among several others. A member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters, for which he has been Treasurer and has sat on the Music Committee, Thorne’s own music is published by Merion Music, Inc. (BMI) and distributed by Theodore Presser Company–Rosalie Calabrese
Paul Lustig Dunkel
Paul Lustig Dunkel, one of America’s most versatile conductors, has been hailed for his command of the classical repertoire and applauded as a pre-eminent exponent of the music of our time. He served as Music Director and Conductor of the Westchester Philharmonic (WP) from its founding in 1983 to 2008, and has taken his place in the history of American contemporary music as a founder of the American Composers Orchestra (ACO) in 1978 with Dennis Russell Davies, Francis Thorne and Nicholas Roussakis. Until he stepped down in 2000, Mr. Dunkel was instrumental in elevating the ensemble to its position as a leader in American music. He also enjoys an active career as a flutist, noted for his brilliance as a performer and his desire to expand the flute repertory through premieres and commissions. Melinda Wagner’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion was commissioned for him by the Westchester Philharmonic in recognition of his fifteenth year with that orchestra. Premiered and recorded for Bridge Records by the Westchester Philharmonic, the work was performed with Mr. Dunkel as soloist with ACO in Carnegie Hall and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. His recordings for Bridge, Summit, CRI and New World Records have received wide critical acclaim, and his recording of The Early Music of Elliott Carter conducting the ACO was selected as one of the Top 10 recordings of the year by Time and Newsweek.
Since the inception of his career, Mr. Dunkel has been active in all aspects of classical music, and the depth and range of his talents and experience have taken him around the world. He has been Music Director of the Denver Chamber Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Vermont Mozart Festival, and has appeared as guest conductor with orchestras throughout the United States at the Kremlin and in Taiwan. He conducted the Washington Opera premiere of The Postman Always Rings Twice by Stephen Paulus and, at the invitation of Virgil Thomson, a New York City revival of his Four Saints in Three Acts. He has been involved extensively in the dance world, appearing with many companies here and abroad. He also served as Co-Director with pianist Michael Boriskin of Music from Copland House, a chamber music ensemble dedicated to the advocacy of American music based at the long-time home of Aaron Copland.
Maestro Dunkel played a crucial role in the extraordinary success of what Symphony magazine called “the suburban miracle” at the Westchester Philharmonic, where he was largely responsible for performances at the highest level and for its ever-growing audience and subscriber base and public profile until his retirement. He and the orchestra were the recipients of the 2000 Leonard Bernstein Award for Educational Programming from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and the American Symphony Orchestra League for excellence and innovation in music education. “Exploring New Worlds: Music of the Americas” and its ground-breaking program of student commissioning of a new work by a young composer was featured on “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS and recognized by the Westchester Arts Council with a 2001 Award.
Active in all aspects of classical music as conductor, flutist, composer/arranger and educator, Mr. Dunkel, an original member of Speculum Musicae, was principal flute of the American Symphony Orchestra under Stokowski, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble and many others. He has participated in the Spoleto, Casals, Aspen, Stratford Marlboro and Estival Festivals and toured with Music from Marlboro.
He has received the American Symphony Orchestra’s Leopold Stokowski Conducting Award, a Grammy nomination, awards from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, Harriet Ditson Fund, New York State Council on the Arts, and National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Silver Jubilee Award for outstanding alumni from Queens College, and many regional and
local awards for his work in the community.
His has just completed his memoir, Dancing on My Head, exploring his musical education in New York City with witty and penetrating commentary on music, musicians and cultural institutions.
Jamie, Nina & Alexander Bernstein
Jamie, Alexander and Nina photo by Steve Sherman
Jamie Bernstein is a writer, narrator, broadcaster and film maker who has transformed a lifetime of loving music into a career of sharing her knowledge and excitement with others.
Inspired by her father Leonard Bernstein’s lifelong impulse to share and teach, Jamie has devised multiple ways of communicating her own excitement about orchestral music. Beginning 15 years ago with “The Bernstein Beat,” a family concert about her father’s music modeled after his own groundbreaking Young People’s Concerts, Jamie has gone on to design, write and narrate concerts for worldwide audiences of all ages about the music of Mozart, Copland, Stravinsky and many others. Jamie creates and narrates two educational concerts a year with the New World Symphony in Miami; these engaging, informal “Discovery Concerts” are specially designed to attract audiences of all ages who are less familiar with concertgoing.
Jamie travels the world as a concert narrator, appearing everywhere from Beijing to London to Vancouver. A frequent speaker on musical topics, Jamie has presented talks around the world, from conferences in Japan to seminars at Harvard University. In Spanish-speaking locations such as Madrid and Caracas, Jamie narrates en español – thanks to her Chilean-born mother, Felicia Montealegre, who raised her children to be bilingual.
In her role as a broadcaster, Jamie has produced and hosted shows for radio stations in the United States and Great Britain. She has presented the New York Philharmonic’s live national radio broadcasts, as well as live broadcasts from Tanglewood.
Jamie is the co-director of a film documentary, Crescendo: the Power of Music — which focuses on children in struggling urban communities who participate in youth orchestra programs for social transformation inspired by Venezuela’s groundbreaking El Sistema movement. The film has won numerous prizes on the festival circuit, and is now viewable on Netflix. More about Crescendo: the Power of Music can be found at http://www.crescendofilmdoc.com
Jamie has also directed her father’s chamber opera, Trouble in Tahiti, in various locations around the country, including the Moab Music Festival and Festival del Sole in Napa, CA.
Jamie is currently at work on a memoir, title to be announced, which will be published by HarperCollins in the spring of 2018, when her father’s centennial celebrations will be well under way around the world. Jamie and her siblings, Alexander and Nina, will be racking up unprecedented mileage points!
Jamie also writes articles and poetry, which have appeared in such publications as Symphony, DoubleTake, Gourmet, Opera News, and Musical America. She also edits “Prelude, Fugue & Riffs,” a newsletter about issues and events pertaining to her father’s legacy.
More about Jamie’s multifaceted life can be found on her website: jamiebernstein.net
Alexander Bernstein is Leonard Bernstein’s second child. He is president of Artful Learning, Inc., and founding chairman of The Leonard Bernstein Center For Learning. Prior to his full-time participation in the center, Bernstein taught for five years at the Packer-Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York, first as a second grade teacher, then as a teacher of drama for the middle school. He has studied acting, performed professionally, and worked as a production associate at the ABC News Documentary Unit. Bernstein holds a Master’s degree in English education from New York University and a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University.
Nina Bernstein Simmons is Leonard Bernstein’s youngest daughter. After several years working as an actress, initially at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, she turned her attention to tending her late father’s legacy. In the earliest days of the internet, she worked with the Library of Congress on making the Bernstein Archives digitally available to the public. The fruits of that collaboration can be seen at the Library’s American Memory website. From 2000 until 2005, Nina worked on a film about her sister, Jamie, and her remarkable journeys around the world bringing Bernstein’s music and teaching legacy to new audiences. Leonard Bernstein: A Total Embrace premiered in Germany in December of 2005. Since 2008, Nina has been working as a food educator in underserved communities.
Paola Prestini
Paola Prestini is “the enterprising composer and impresario” (The New York Times) behind the new Brooklyn venue National Sawdust and the “Visionary-In-Chief” (Time Out NY) of the production company VisionIntoArt (VIA), home to VIA Records. Named one of NPR’s “Top 100 Composers in the World under 40,” her compositions are deemed “radiant… amorously evocative” by The New York Times, and “luminously involving” by The LA Times. She has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, and the Kronos Quartet and creates large scale multimedia works including The Hubble Cantata (a Virtual Reality space operatic experience), Aging Magician, and the opera Gilgamesh with Michael Counts, Cerise Jacobs and Beth Morrison Projects. Other recent works include Two Oars with Robert Wilson, The Hotel That Time Forgot for the ACO at Zankel Hall, and The Colorado, an eco-film cantata currently on tour in halls and film festivals.
Photo Gallery
(click on images for full slideshow)
Photo Credit: Noah Stern Weber
American Composers Orchestra Announces 2017-2018 Season: Dreamscapes Derek Bermel, Artistic Director & George Manahan, Music Director
40th Birthday Concert & Gala
November 7, 2017 at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall
Music by ACO Co-Founder Francis Thorne, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington,
George Gershwin, Paola Prestini, and Elizabeth Ogonek
Two Performances at Carnegie Hall December 8, 2017 and April 6, 2018 at Zankel Hall
Music by Philip Glass, Pauchi Sasaki, Bryce Dessner, Ethan Iverson, Clarice Assad,
Steve Lehman, TJ Anderson, and Hitomi Oba
Fellow Travelers by Gregory Spears at the PROTOTYPE Festival
January 12-14, 2018 at Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
co-presented with PROTOTYPE Festival and John Jay College of Criminal Justice
The 27th Annual Underwood New Music Readings on June 21 & 22, 2018
ACO’s annual roundup of the country’s brightest young and emerging composers at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music
American Composers Orchestra (ACO) announces its complete 2017-2018 season, Dreamscapes, under the leadership of Artistic Director Derek Bermel, Music Director George Manahan, and President Edward Yim, featuring ten world, U.S., and New York premieres by a diverse set of composers. ACO continues its concerts at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall (December 8, 2017 and April 6, 2018) while expanding its presence in New York to include performances at Jazz at Lincoln Center (November 7, 2017) and as part of the 2018 PROTOTYPE Festival (January 12-14, 2018). ACO continues to take its commitment to fostering new work beyond the stage in its annual Underwood New Music Readings (June 21 and 22, 2018) for emerging composers, now in its 27th year, and through EarShot, the National Orchestra Composition Discovery Network, which brings the Readings experience to orchestras across the country.
In 2017-2018, ACO celebrates 40 years as the only orchestra in the world wholly dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and promotion of music by American composers. To date, ACO has performed music by 800 American composers, including 350 world premieres and newly commissioned works. This season explores the overarching theme of dreams as an inspiration for both music itself and community created through music – celebrating ACO co-founder Francis Thorne’s dream of an orchestra to champion the American composer; iconic composer Philip Glass’ dream for the next generation; and the American dream of inclusiveness reflected in the infinite ways American orchestral music illustrates geographic, stylistic, gender, and racial diversity.
“I am particularly excited by the breadth and depth of American music that ACO will explore – classic American works by Gershwin, Ellington, and Bernstein, music by modern masters like Philip Glass and T.J. Anderson, and compositions by a wide range of young composers fluent in styles ranging from contemporary jazz to indy-rock to samba to performance art and opera,” said ACO Artistic Director Derek Bermel. “Featuring four world and U.S. premieres and six New York premieres, as well as our annual readings of emerging compositional voices, ACO’s season offers a vital and eclectic mix that is quintessentially American.”
“In my first full season with ACO, the upcoming year fills me with excitement and hope for what this organization can contribute to the musical landscape,” said ACO President Edward Yim. “In addition to concerts with our wonderful and long-time collaborators at Carnegie Hall, we are particularly happy to work for the first time with the visionary team at the PROTOTYPE Festival and to celebrate our 40th anniversary with a tribute to American composers and those who support them at our fall gala.”
In addition to performances by the orchestra in New York, throughout the 2017-2018 season, ACO will partner with other orchestras in EarShot, a nationwide network that takes the ACO New Music Readings experience across the country, designed as an opportunity for emerging composers to develop their works with a professional orchestra. To date, over fifty composers have been selected for New Music Readings with orchestras. EarShot partnerships have included the New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Pioneer Valley Symphony (MA), New York Youth Symphony, and the San Diego Symphony. EarShot is a partnership among American Composers Orchestra, League of American Orchestras, American Composers Forum, and New Music USA.
The deadline for composers interested in applying to both the Underwood New Music Readings and the EarShot Readings is October 16, 2017. Application guidelines and information are available at www.americancomposers.org/composers/calls-for-submissions.
ACO also continues its thriving education program, Music Factory, which since 1999 has brought composers into New York City’s public schools, reaching over 3,000 students every year. Music Factory is a hands-on and minds-on creativity-based initiative, designed to maximize learning and develop a diversity of transferable skills among children from fourth grade through high school through in-school and after-school programs with partner schools and community organizations. During the 2017-2018 school year, Music Factory will partner with a dozen schools and community organizations throughout Harlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. ACO’s Compose Yourself program provides in-depth study, including group lessons and readings, for promising high school composers. Compose Yourself students compiled an impressive list of honors in national young composers’ competitions in 2017, and all the program’s graduates have gained seats in conservatory composition departments.
ACO launches its Commissioning Club with the 2017-2018 season, through which members invest in the lifespan of a commission: from the composer’s first kernel of artistic inspiration to the realization of the music as a printed score, the early rehearsals and through the premiere performance. Members of the Commissioning Club support all expenses in the commission process including fees paid to the composer, printing and engraving costs, as well as rehearsal and production costs related to the concert premiere. Throughout the season, members are invited to exclusive preview events with the composer to learn about the composer’s vision, hear excerpts of the work in-progress, and experience a full orchestral rehearsal of the piece before its premiere. In its inaugural season, ACO’s Commission Club will support Ethan Iverson as he creates a new piano concerto, which he will perform with ACO on April 6, 2018 at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. For more information about ACO’s Commissioning Club, contact Lyndsay Werking at Lyndsay@americancomposers.org, or 212.977.8495 x204.
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)
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
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.
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.
Derek Bermel Named Artistic Director & Music Director George Manahan Re-Ups
Derek Bermel has been named ACO’s new Artistic Director, becoming the top composer in ACO’s artistic leadership. Meanwhile, conductor George Manahan has renewed his commitment as Music Director, with a new five-year contract.
Bermel has been ACO’s Creative Advisor since 2009, and succeeds composer Robert Beaser who has been served as an artistic leader with ACO since 1993.
Departing Artistic Director Robert Beaser has dedicated over twenty years to the orchestra, and will continue as ACO’s Artistic Advisor Laureate. Executive Director Michael Geller said, “ACO and the entire community of composers owe a great debt to Bob. He has been a key member of ACO’s artistic team for over 20 years, and helped shape programs during the tenures of three ACO principal conductors. His work in launching and guiding our New Music Readings for 22 years has provided mentorship and career-building experience to over 100 young composers. I am thrilled that Bob will continue to play an integral role on ACO’s board, as artistic advisor laureate.”
Derek also just finished his residency at the Institute for Advanced Study, and as Director of Copland House’s Cultivate. Bermel, an “eclectic with wide open ears” (Toronto Star), has become recognized as a dynamic and unconventional curator of concert series that spotlight the composer as performer. Alongside his international studies of ethnomusicology and orchestration, an ongoing engagement with other musical cultures has become part of the fabric and force of his compositional language, in which the human voice and its myriad inflections play a primary role.
Bermel first came to ACO’s attention as a participant in the Whitaker Emerging Composers Readings with his piece Dust Dances in 1994. ACO has provided Bermel with numerous commissions and premieres including his first professional orchestral commission, and his Carnegie Hall debut, with his clarinet concerto Voices, which premiered in 1998; the commission and premiere of A Shout, A Whisper, and a Trace (2009); Elixir (2006); and The Migration Series with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which premiered to sold-out audiences in 2006. Bermel was ACO’s Music Alive Composer-in-Residence from 2006-09 and later joined ACO’s board and became the orchestra’s Creative Advisor in 2009.
Among his major accomplishments, Bermel excels at programming the innovative Orchestra Underground series at Carnegie Hall which has reinvented and reinvigorated the orchestra with dozens of premieres featuring new technology, multidisciplinary collaborations, and new influences not often encountered in the symphonic concert hall; and SONiC, Sounds of a New Century Festival (2011) that featured 21st century music by 120 emerging composers. Bermel has also been active in several of ACO’s composer development initiatives including serving as a mentor for the Underwood New Music Readings and EarShot programs, and serving as an artist-faculty member for the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute.
In addition to his commissions from American Composers Orchestra, he has received commissions from the Pittsburgh, National, Saint Louis, and Pacific Symphonies, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, WNYC Radio, eighth blackbird, the Guarneri String Quartet, Music from Copland House and Music from China, De Ereprijs (Netherlands), Jazz Xchange (U.K.), violinist Midori, electric guitarist Wiek Hijmans among others. Bermel’s clarinet playing has been hailed by The New York Times as “brilliant,” “rhythmically fluid, rich-hued” and “first-rate.”
George Manahan, Music Director
Music Director George Manahan, who joined ACO in 2010, said of his five-year renewal with the orchestra, “Nothing could make me happier than to be continuing as Music Director of ACO. For me the work is one of constant discovery and enjoyment. In no other conducting job do I get to explore so much new work. It certainly keeps me on my toes! And the ACO musicians are phenomenal. Nowhere else have I experienced the level of collaboration, commitment and experience that our players bring to new music. I can’t wait to see what surprises next season brings.” In addition to his work with ACO this season, Manahan continues his commitment to working with young musicians as Director of Orchestral Studies at the Manhattan School of Music as well as guest conductor at the Curtis Institute of Music.
Manahan was Music Director at New York City Opera for fourteen seasons. There he helped envision the organization’s groundbreaking VOX program, a series of workshops and readings that have provided unique opportunities for numerous composers to hear their new concepts realized, and introduced audiences to exciting new compositional voices. In addition to established composers such as Mark Adamo, David Del Tredici, Lewis Spratlan, Robert X. Rodriguez, Lou Harrison, Bernard Rands, and Richard Danielpour, through VOX Manahan has introduced works by composers on the rise including Adam Silverman, Elodie Lauten, Mason Bates, and David T. Little.
In May 2011 Manahan was honored by the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) for his “career-long advocacy for American composers and the music of our time has enriched and enabled Concert Music both at home and abroad.” His recent Carnegie Hall performance of Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra was hailed by audiences and critics alike. The New York Times reported, “the fervent and sensitive performance that Mr. Manahan presided over made the best case for this opera that I have encountered.”
George Manahan’s wide-ranging recording activities include the premiere recording of Steve Reich’s Tehillim for ECM; recordings of Edward Thomas’s Desire Under the Elms, which was nominated for a Grammy; Joe Jackson’s Will Power; and Tobias Picker’s Emmeline. His enthusiasm for contemporary music continues today; he has conducted numerous world premieres, including Charles Wuorinen’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, David Lang’s Modern Painters, and the New York premiere of Richard Danielpour’s Margaret Garner. As music director of the Richmond Symphony (VA) for twelve years, he was honored four times by the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) for his commitment to 20th century music.
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Composer’s Chair, which he holds for the 2017-2018 season. It features Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 2, “The American Four Seasons,” with Tim Fain as soloist. Glass’ work is paired with two composers he has mentored and inspired – Pauchi Sasaki and Bryce Dessner. Dessner’s Réponse Lutosławski is the creative fruit of his study of Lutosławski’s string orchestra piece Musique funèbre. Pauchi Sasaki’s GAMA XVI features the composer as electronics soloist, wearing and performing an original Speaker Dress made from 100 speakers.
dance, theater, installation, site specific, and interdisciplinary performances; Sasaki has performed internationally in Peru, the U.S., Japan, Spain, Chile, Colombia, and Switzerland. This year she was selected by Philip Glass to become his protégé as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Initiative for a one-year mentorship. Sasaki’s classical violin studies began at age five; she studied Andean music at CEMDUC; classical music of North India with maestro Ali Akbar Khan in San Rafael, California; and Klezmer music with Alicia Svigals in New York. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from PUCP in Lima and a master’s degree in Recording Media and Experimental Music from Mills College in Oakland, California. Her compositions involve acoustic, amplified, and electronic instrumentation influenced by improvisational aesthetics and ethnic musical traditions. Her work also focuses on the development of real time interactive music and self-designed instruments using Max Msp and circuit bending. This branch of her work seeks the embodiment of electronic music performance integrating the emission of electronic sounds with corporal expressivity. Her piece for ACO, GAMA XVI, is a performative electroacoustic composition for orchestra and speaker dress – a wearable sound sculpture created with 100 speakers.
STEVE REICH Tehillim
Joshua Groffman:
Saad Haddad:
A.J. McCaffrey
Nina C. Young:
Bermel has been ACO’s Creative Advisor since 2009, and succeeds composer Robert Beaser who has been served as an artistic leader with ACO since 1993.
Music Director George Manahan, who joined ACO in 2010, said of his five-year renewal with the orchestra, “Nothing could make me happier than to be continuing as Music Director of ACO. For me the work is one of constant discovery and enjoyment. In no other conducting job do I get to explore so much new work. It certainly keeps me on my toes! And the ACO musicians are phenomenal. Nowhere else have I experienced the level of collaboration, commitment and experience that our players bring to new music. I can’t wait to see what surprises next season brings.” In addition to his work with ACO this season, Manahan continues his commitment to working with young musicians as Director of Orchestral Studies at the Manhattan School of Music as well as guest conductor at the Curtis Institute of Music.