Admission is free.
Reservations
suggested. Call (212) 977-8495 x260
or make a online
reservation
for the Readings.
American Composers Orchestra
Selects Top Emerging Composers for 13th Annual Whitaker New Music Readings
Eight premieres to be
presented on May 20 and 21, 2004 in NYC
American
Composers Orchestra announces the winners of what has become one of
this country’s most coveted opportunities for emerging
composers, its thirteenth annual Whitaker New Music Readings. The
Readings will run Thursday, May 20th, from 10:00 am to 3:30 pm, and
Friday, May 21st from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm at Miller Theatre at
Columbia University. Thursday’s session concludes with a
panel discussion, beginning at 2pm, focusing on emerging
composers’ access to the American orchestral field. The
Readings provide an invaluable opportunity for up-and-coming
composers to experience a full orchestral rendering of their work,
receive the reactions of other composers and performers. The Readings
are made possible by leadership grants from The Helen F. Whitaker
Fund, The Jerome Foundation, and Mr. Paul Underwood, and are open to
the public free of charge.
Eight
of the nation’s most promising composers in the early
stages of their professional careers have been selected out hundreds
of submissions received from around the country. This year’s
winners are Daniel Bradshaw, Anthony Cheung, Ralf Gawlick, Kristin
Kuster, Jonathan Newman, Thomas Osborne, Robert Paterson, and
Christopher Trapani.
One of
these composers will receive a $15,000 commission to write a new work
to be performed by ACO at Carnegie Hall. Last year’s
winner, Manly Romero won the top prize with his work, Merengue.
Mr. Romero’s work, predominantly concerned with
spirituality, self-knowledge, and with his paternal roots in Mexico
and Spain, impressed ACO’s judges as “lively,
rhythmic, and punchy,” with a “personal
voice” that is “quirky and decidedly
effective.” In February 2004, ACO gave the world premiere
of Lisa Bielawa’s Whitaker-commissioned The Right Weather
as part of the debut of Orchestra Underground, ACO’s
adventurous new series at Zankel Hall. Ms. Bielawa won the top prize
at ACO's 2002 Whitaker New Music Readings with the first movement of
that work, Roam, which was called “gripping,
evocative...highly effective.”
To
date, the Whitaker New Music Readings have offered a vital resource
to the industry by providing essential career development
opportunities to more than 50 composers, including such award-winning
composers as Melinda Wagner, Derek Bermel, Daniel Bernard Roumain,
Sebastian Currier, Pierre Jalbert, Randall Woolf, Jennifer Higdon,
and Augusta Read Thomas. Since participating in ACO’s
readings, these composers have held important residencies and had
scores of works commissioned, premiered, and performed by many of the
country’s prominent symphony orchestras. ACO has placed
particular emphasis on its role in helping to launch composers
careers, including many of today’s top composers, such as
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Joseph Schwantner, both of whom received
Pulitzer Prizes for ACO commissions; and Robert Beaser, Ingram
Marshall, Joan Tower, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Rouse, and Tobias
Picker, whom the orchestra championed when they were beginning their careers.
The
reading sessions are under the direction of ACO Artistic Director Robert
Beaser, and conductors Jeffrey Milarsky and Carl St. Clair.
Mentor composers for this year’s reading sessions are
Stephen Hartke and Michael Daugherty. The conductors, mentor
composers and principal players from ACO who serve as liaisons,
provide critical feedback to the each of the participants during and
after the reading sessions.
Composer-Participants &
Works to be Performed
Daniel
Bradshaw: Jubilus Daniel
Bradshaw currently pursues a doctoral degree in Music Composition at
Indiana University where he has studied with Claude Baker, Sven-David
Sandström and David Dzubay. He won the 2003 Dean’s
Prize for Orchestral Composition and the 2002 Contemporary Vocal
Ensemble Choral Competition at Indiana U. He graduated from Brigham
Young University in 1999 with a Bachelors degree in Music
composition, where his teachers were Murray Boren, Steve Jones and
David Sargent. Mr. Bradshaw’s most recent inspiration comes
from his daughter, Jane (3½ years), whose uncontainable
energy and experiments at the piano provided the impetus and much of
the musical material for his recent orchestra piece, Jubilus.
His work has been described as “simply
beautiful,” “stunning,” and
“flashy, with enough risky stuff to give it some heft.”
Anthony
Cheung: 1st Movement from Symphony No. 1
Anthony Cheung, a native of San Francisco, is a senior at Harvard
University, where he studies composition with Bernard Rands and piano
with Robert Levin. Last summer he studied at the American
Conservatory in Fontainebleau, and in July he will attend the Centre
Acanthes festival, where he will work with Jonathan Harvey, Philippe
Manoury, and the Ensemble InterContemporain. His orchestral works
have been performed by the Haddonfield Symphony, Marin Symphony, New
York Youth Symphony, and San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. Last
year he received a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters and a Morton Gould award from ASCAP. He continues
his studies at Columbia University in the fall.
Ralf
Gawlick: …De La Mas Sabrosa Y Agradable Vida… Ralf
Gawlick studied composition at the University of California in Santa
Barbara, University of Texas at Austin, and the New England
Conservatory of Music, where he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts
degree. Principal teachers include Carolyn Bremer, Dan Welcher, and
Malcom Peyton. He has received grants and awards from the American
Music Center and ASCAP among others. Mr. Gawlick’s music
has been performed by the Slovak State Philharmonic, Boston Modern
Orchestra Project, Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston, New England
Conservatory Classical Orchestra, Music at the Anthology, and
Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, among others. Recently, Mr.
Gawlick’s At the still point of the turning world
for cello was chosen to represent the U.S. at the 2005 ISCM World
Music Days in Zagreb. His work “captures the
listener’s ear and imagination… melodic,
romantic, grand, and exuberant.”
Kristin
Kuster: The Narrows Composer
Kristin Kuster collaborates with instrumentalists, vocalists, poets,
and visual artists. Her current pieces are influenced by the
architectural relationships between public and private spaces. She
recently completed Rorate caeli for mixed chorus, The Narrows
for orchestra, and Ando: light against shade for chamber
ensemble. She is the composer-in-residence for the 12-voice Vox Early
Music Ensemble, and has recently received commissions from Quorum and
the Colby College Chorale. Dr. Kuster is a recipient of a 2004
Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. She is currently an Adjunct Lecturer of Composition, Theory,
and Performing Arts Technology at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor. Ms. Kuster has been praised as a “wonderfully
ambitious” composer “reaching deep for meaning
and expressive breadth.”
Jonathan
Newman: Hip + Now Jonathan
Newman’s recent performances his first string quartet, Wapwallopen,
premiered in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and written on
commission from the New York Youth Symphony, and Ohanashi
for chamber orchestra, written for the New Juilliard Ensemble and
premiered in Alice Tully Hall. His works for winds have been
performed and recorded by the UNLV Wind Orchestra, the UNC Greensboro
Wind Ensemble, Rutgers Wind Ensemble, AND the Tokyo Symphonic Band.
His dance compositions have enjoyed multiple performances at The
Juilliard Theater, Alice Tully Hall, and P.S. 122 in NY. In 2003 he
won the biannual NBA/Merrill Jones Composition Award for Moon by Night,
and in 2001 he received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. Newman holds degrees from The
Juilliard School and Boston University's School for the Arts. His
principal teachers have been John Corigliano, Richard Cornell, David
Del Tredici, and George Tsontakis. Mr. Newman has been described as
“an outstanding composer… with a quirky and
intellectually provocative bent.”
Thomas
Osborne: The Burning Music Thomas
Osborne received a BM degree in composition from Indiana University
and an MM degree in composition from Rice University. He is currently
pursuing a DMA degree in composition at the University of Southern
California. His primary composition teachers have been Don Freund,
Claude Baker, Edward Applebaum, Stephen Hartke, and Donald Crockett.
Osborne’s music has been performed by the Cabrillo Festival
Orchestra, the USC Thornton Symphony Orchestra and Contemporary Music
Ensemble, and Rice University’s Shepherd School Symphony
Orchestra, and featured at the American Composer Alliance’s
Festival of American Music, the Music03 festival, the Chamber Music
Festival of the East, and the Imagine Festival. His music has
received awards from BMI and the Indiana Music Teacher’s
Association. He has recently received commissions from
Singapore’s T’ang Quartet and the New York Youth
Symphony. The Burning Music has been selected for its
“brilliantly colored score… showing exemplary
skill and artistry.”
Robert
Paterson: Electric Lines for Orchestra Robert
Paterson’s music has been performed by the New York New
Music Ensemble, The Chicago Ensemble, Ensemble Aleph (Paris), the
Intergalactic Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and at the June in Buffalo
New Music Festival. His awards include two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards,
the Minnesota Orchestra Reading Session, the Brian M. Israel Prize,
the Tampa Bay Composers’ Forum First Prize and the 2001
Minnesota Music Teachers Association’s Composer of the
Year. He has received additional grants and awards from Meet the
Composer, ASCAP, the American Music Center and the National
Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts. In 2003 he was a fellow
at the MacDowell Colony and has also been a fellow at the Aspen Music
Festival and an associate composer at the Atlantic Center for the
Arts. Paterson studied at Indiana University and the Eastman School
of Music before earning a DMA degree from Cornell University. Mr.
Paterson has been called “a highly gifted
composer,” who is “one of the major contenders in
American music.”
Christopher
Trapani: North Christopher
Trapani was born in New Orleans in 1980. He holds a Bachelors degree
in Music and English and American Literature and Language from
Harvard College, where he studied composition with Bernard Rands. In
2002 he traveled to London to pursue a Masters of Music degree at the
Royal College of Music with Julian Anderson. Christopher’s
recent works include Songs from the Plays, a cycle for
singers and chamber orchestra on poems by Kenneth Koch; and The
Sea is Awash with Roses for men’s choir, a staple in
the Harvard Glee Club performing repertoire. His recent Sunflower Suite
for sextet, was written in response to an invitation from the
Philharmonia Orchestra’s Music of Today series, and
premiered in London at the Royal Festival Hall and National Gallery
in June 2003. Mr. Trapani is now in residence at Paris’s
Citi Internationale des Arts. North has been praised as both
“striking and imaginative,” and
“especially beautiful writing.”
Conductors: Carl St. Clair
& Jeffrey Milarsky
Carl
St. Clair’s conducting appearances include such
American orchestras as the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic,
Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the San
Francisco, Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston and Indianapolis
Symphonies. In Europe, St. Clair is the principal guest conductor of
the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, and a frequent guest conductor with
orchestras in Berlin, Bonn, Frankfurt, Hannover, Hamburg, and
Bamberg. He has also conducted orchestras in Jerusalem, Hong Kong,
Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South America. Mr. St.
Clair is Music Director of the Pacific Symphony, a post he has held
for 14 years, guiding the Symphony to national prominence through
acclaimed recording projects, commissions of new works, world
premieres, live broadcasts, and innovative music education programs.
St. Clair was the assistant conductor at the Boston Symphony
Orchestra from 1986 to 1990, and served as music director of the Ann
Arbor Symphony and the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra.
Wherever
Mr. St. Clair conducts, he nourishes audiences with an eclectic mix
of respected classics and new works by modern composers. He has
commissioned and performed many world premieres, including works by
Richard Danielpour, Frank Ticheli, and William Bolcom. Mr. St.
Clair’s recording of two piano concerti by Lukas Foss,
released in 2000, was nominated for a Grammy Award. Other premiere
recordings including music of Toru Takemitsu, John
Corigliano’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, and
Elliot Goldenthal’s Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio,
with Yo-Yo Ma as cello soloist.
Mr.
St. Clair studied with several conducting legends of the 20th
Century, including Felix Weingartner, Walter Ducloux, Wilhelm
Furtwangler and Arturo Toscanini. He has enjoyed mentor relationships
with several great conductors, including Seiji Ozawa, Kurt Masur and
Leonard Bernstein. His long mentorship with Bernstein culminated when
he was invited by Mr. Bernstein to conduct the premiere of his Arias
and Barcarolles on what was to become his final concert. In
1990, Mr. St. Clair’s accomplishments and potential were
recognized with the prestigious National Endowment for the
Arts/Seaver Conductors Award.
Jeffrey
Milarsky is a leading conductor of contemporary music,
currently serving as Assistant Conductor of American Composers
Orchestra. He has premiered and recorded works by many contemporary
composers, including Charles Wuorinen, Milton Babbitt, Elliott
Carter, Gerard Grisey, Ralph Shapey, Luigi Nono, Mario Davidovsky,
and Wolfgang Rihm. He has lead such accomplished groups as the New
York New Music Ensemble, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center,
Speculum Musicae, Cygnus Ensemble, and the Fromm Players. Recently,
Mr. Milarsky made his European debut conducting the BIT20 Ensemble.
Next season Milarsky will perform at the ULTIMA Festival in Oslo,
where he will lead the world premiere of Lasse Thoresen’s Folksongs,
as well as conducting performances in Norway, Italy and Austria.
Mr.
Milarsky received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the
Juilliard School, where he was awarded the Peter Mennin Prize for
outstanding leadership and achievement in the arts. He now serves on
the faculty at Juilliard, where he regularly conducts the Juilliard
Orchestra, with which he has premiered more than 70 works by
Juilliard student composers over the past 15 years. Mr. Milarsky is
Professor in Music at Columbia University and Director of the
Columbia University Orchestra. He is also Artistic Director of the
Manhattan School of Music Percussion Ensemble, and Music Director of
New Jersey’s Musica Viva Festival. Mr. Milarsky has
recorded extensively for Angel, Teldec, Telarc, New World, CRI,
MusicMasters, EMI, Koch, and London Records.
Reservations and Info
The Whitaker
New Music Reading Sessions take place on Thursday, May 20, 2004 from
10:00 am to 3:30 pm, with a panel discussion from 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm;
and Friday, May 21, 2004 from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm at Miller Theatre
at Columbia University, 116th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. The
Readings and symposia are open to the public at no charge, but
reservations are suggested. For reservations or further information,
please call (212) 977-8495, ext. 260 or email
ACO.
About ACO
Founded in
1977, American Composers Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world
dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and
promulgation of music by American composers. [find
out more...]
Lead support
for the Whitaker New Music Readings comes from The Helen F. Whitaker
Fund, The Jerome Foundation, and Mr. Paul Underwood.
Daniel
Bradshaw currently pursues a doctoral degree in Music Composition at
Indiana University where he has studied with Claude Baker, Sven-David
Sandström and David Dzubay. He won the 2003 Dean’s
Prize for Orchestral Composition and the 2002 Contemporary Vocal
Ensemble Choral Competition at Indiana U. He graduated from Brigham
Young University in 1999 with a Bachelors degree in Music
composition, where his teachers were Murray Boren, Steve Jones and
David Sargent. Mr. Bradshaw’s most recent inspiration comes
from his daughter, Jane (3½ years), whose uncontainable
energy and experiments at the piano provided the impetus and much of
the musical material for his recent orchestra piece, Jubilus.
His work has been described as “simply
beautiful,” “stunning,” and
“flashy, with enough risky stuff to give it some heft.”
Anthony Cheung, a native of San Francisco, is a senior at Harvard
University, where he studies composition with Bernard Rands and piano
with Robert Levin. Last summer he studied at the American
Conservatory in Fontainebleau, and in July he will attend the Centre
Acanthes festival, where he will work with Jonathan Harvey, Philippe
Manoury, and the Ensemble InterContemporain. His orchestral works
have been performed by the Haddonfield Symphony, Marin Symphony, New
York Youth Symphony, and San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. Last
year he received a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters and a Morton Gould award from ASCAP. He continues
his studies at Columbia University in the fall.
Ralf
Gawlick studied composition at the University of California in Santa
Barbara, University of Texas at Austin, and the New England
Conservatory of Music, where he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts
degree. Principal teachers include Carolyn Bremer, Dan Welcher, and
Malcom Peyton. He has received grants and awards from the American
Music Center and ASCAP among others. Mr. Gawlick’s music
has been performed by the Slovak State Philharmonic, Boston Modern
Orchestra Project, Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston, New England
Conservatory Classical Orchestra, Music at the Anthology, and
Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, among others. Recently, Mr.
Gawlick’s At the still point of the turning world
for cello was chosen to represent the U.S. at the 2005 ISCM World
Music Days in Zagreb. His work “captures the
listener’s ear and imagination… melodic,
romantic, grand, and exuberant.”
Composer
Kristin Kuster collaborates with instrumentalists, vocalists, poets,
and visual artists. Her current pieces are influenced by the
architectural relationships between public and private spaces. She
recently completed Rorate caeli for mixed chorus, The Narrows
for orchestra, and Ando: light against shade for chamber
ensemble. She is the composer-in-residence for the 12-voice Vox Early
Music Ensemble, and has recently received commissions from Quorum and
the Colby College Chorale. Dr. Kuster is a recipient of a 2004
Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. She is currently an Adjunct Lecturer of Composition, Theory,
and Performing Arts Technology at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor. Ms. Kuster has been praised as a “wonderfully
ambitious” composer “reaching deep for meaning
and expressive breadth.”
Jonathan
Newman’s recent performances his first string quartet, Wapwallopen,
premiered in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and written on
commission from the New York Youth Symphony, and Ohanashi
for chamber orchestra, written for the New Juilliard Ensemble and
premiered in Alice Tully Hall. His works for winds have been
performed and recorded by the UNLV Wind Orchestra, the UNC Greensboro
Wind Ensemble, Rutgers Wind Ensemble, AND the Tokyo Symphonic Band.
His dance compositions have enjoyed multiple performances at The
Juilliard Theater, Alice Tully Hall, and P.S. 122 in NY. In 2003 he
won the biannual NBA/Merrill Jones Composition Award for Moon by Night,
and in 2001 he received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. Newman holds degrees from The
Juilliard School and Boston University's School for the Arts. His
principal teachers have been John Corigliano, Richard Cornell, David
Del Tredici, and George Tsontakis. Mr. Newman has been described as
“an outstanding composer… with a quirky and
intellectually provocative bent.”
Thomas
Osborne received a BM degree in composition from Indiana University
and an MM degree in composition from Rice University. He is currently
pursuing a DMA degree in composition at the University of Southern
California. His primary composition teachers have been Don Freund,
Claude Baker, Edward Applebaum, Stephen Hartke, and Donald Crockett.
Osborne’s music has been performed by the Cabrillo Festival
Orchestra, the USC Thornton Symphony Orchestra and Contemporary Music
Ensemble, and Rice University’s Shepherd School Symphony
Orchestra, and featured at the American Composer Alliance’s
Festival of American Music, the Music03 festival, the Chamber Music
Festival of the East, and the Imagine Festival. His music has
received awards from BMI and the Indiana Music Teacher’s
Association. He has recently received commissions from
Singapore’s T’ang Quartet and the New York Youth
Symphony. The Burning Music has been selected for its
“brilliantly colored score… showing exemplary
skill and artistry.”
Robert
Paterson’s music has been performed by the New York New
Music Ensemble, The Chicago Ensemble, Ensemble Aleph (Paris), the
Intergalactic Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and at the June in Buffalo
New Music Festival. His awards include two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards,
the Minnesota Orchestra Reading Session, the Brian M. Israel Prize,
the Tampa Bay Composers’ Forum First Prize and the 2001
Minnesota Music Teachers Association’s Composer of the
Year. He has received additional grants and awards from Meet the
Composer, ASCAP, the American Music Center and the National
Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts. In 2003 he was a fellow
at the MacDowell Colony and has also been a fellow at the Aspen Music
Festival and an associate composer at the Atlantic Center for the
Arts. Paterson studied at Indiana University and the Eastman School
of Music before earning a DMA degree from Cornell University. Mr.
Paterson has been called “a highly gifted
composer,” who is “one of the major contenders in
American music.”
Christopher
Trapani was born in New Orleans in 1980. He holds a Bachelors degree
in Music and English and American Literature and Language from
Harvard College, where he studied composition with Bernard Rands. In
2002 he traveled to London to pursue a Masters of Music degree at the
Royal College of Music with Julian Anderson. Christopher’s
recent works include Songs from the Plays, a cycle for
singers and chamber orchestra on poems by Kenneth Koch; and The
Sea is Awash with Roses for men’s choir, a staple in
the Harvard Glee Club performing repertoire. His recent Sunflower Suite
for sextet, was written in response to an invitation from the
Philharmonia Orchestra’s Music of Today series, and
premiered in London at the Royal Festival Hall and National Gallery
in June 2003. Mr. Trapani is now in residence at Paris’s
Citi Internationale des Arts. North has been praised as both
“striking and imaginative,” and
“especially beautiful writing.”