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American
Composers Orchestra
Five
Premieres to be Presented
The proceedings commence with a free public reading Friday, April 13th from 1:30pm to 4:30pm, providing a glimpse at a working rehearsal and the collaborative process between composer, conductor and instrumentalists required to prepare new music. The following evening, Saturday, April 14th at 7:30pm, the new works will be premiered by ACO in a Laboratory-Performance with commentary from the composers. All events take place at the Prince Theater at University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The Readings & Lab are under the direction of ACO Artistic Director Robert Beaser, Music Alive Composer-in-Residence Derek Bermel, conductor Jeffrey Milarsky, ACO musicians, and an esteemed panel of Philadelphia-area mentor composers, including Jennifer Higdon, Gerald Levinson, and Jay Reise. The Readings and Lab continue ACO's emphasis on launching up-and-coming composers' careers, providing invaluable professional-development programs, experience with an ensemble whose expertise in new music is unparalleled, and high-profile public performances of their music. Orchestra Underground is ACO's groundbreaking small orchestra ensemble that challenges conventional notions about orchestra music with a focus on new music with a wide gamut of aesthetics, unusual instrumentations, technological innovation, and multimedia and interdisciplinary collaborations. Since its launch in 2004, Orchestra Underground has commissioned and premiered fifteen cutting-edge new works at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall in New York and the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia. The ACO/Penn Presents New Music Readings & Lab round out an extended two-year residency for ACO at the Annenberg Center, made possible by The Philadelphia Music Project, an Artistic Initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts, administered by The University of the Arts.
Composers Selected & Works to be Performed
John B. Hedges: Scirocco Dances
David Laganella: Under Ethereal
Alan Tormey: Cleveland is a State of Mind
Mr. Milarsky received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School. Upon graduation, he was awarded the Peter Mennin Prize for outstanding leadership and achievement in the arts. He regularly conducts The Juilliard Orchestra, with whom he has premiered over 70 works of Juilliard student composers over the past fifteen years. He is also on the Faculty at Juilliard, where has been, until recently, Director of the Composition Forum and of the Pre-College Percussion Ensemble.
Tickets & Info The ACO/Penn Presents New Music Readings & Lab commences Friday, April 13th at 1:30pm with a new music reading that is free and open to the public. The following day, Saturday, April 14th at 7:30pm, the winning musical works will be premiered in a culminating Laboratory-Performance that includes discussion with the composers. All events take place at the Harold Prince Theater at University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The Prince Theater is located at 3680 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. Tickets for the Lab-Performance on Saturday are $30 and available by telephone at 215-898-3900, or online at www.pennpresents.org. The ACO/Penn Presents New Music Readings & Lab have been made possible by The Philadelphia Music Project, an Artistic Initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts, administered by The University of the Arts. ACO's emerging composers program is supported by The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, The Greenwall Foundation, The Henfield Foundation, Jerome Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and ACO's Inner Circle. The residency of Derek Bermel is made possible through Music Alive, a program of the American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet the Composer. This program is designed to provide orchestras with resources to support their presentation of new music to the public and build support for new music within their institutions. Funding for Music Alive is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Aaron Copland Fund for Music. Major support of American Composers Orchestra is provided by ACO Inner Circle, American Symphony Orchestra League, Amphion Foundation, Anncox Foundation, The Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, Arlington Associates, ASCAP, ASCAP Foundation, The Bagby Foundation for the Musical Arts, Bodman Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, BMI, BMI Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Citigroup Foundation, Edward T. Cone Foundation, Consolidated Edison, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Eleanor Naylor Dana Charitable Trust, The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Fidelity Foundation, Fromm Music Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, The Estate of Francis Goelet, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Irving Harris Foundation, Henfield Foundation, Victor Herbert Foundation, Christian Humann Foundation, Jephson Educational Trust, John and Evelyn Kossak Foundation, Helen Sperry Lea Foundation, Neil Family Fund, The New York Community Trust, Bay and Paul Foundations, PricewaterhouseCoopers, The Rodgers Family Foundation, The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Susan and Ford Schumann Foundation, Smith Barney, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, The Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation, Paul Underwood Charitable Trust, The Watchdog and Sonata Charitable Trust and The Helen F. Whitaker Fund. ACO programs are also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. |
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American
Composers Orchestra and the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
announce the winners of the first annual ACO/Penn Presents New
Music Readings & Lab, an unparalleled performance and
professional development opportunity for Philadelphia-area emerging
composers, featuring ACO's groundbreaking Orchestra Underground
ensemble. Five promising composers in the early stages of their
professional careers have been selected on the basis of a competitive
regional search that encompassed the Pennsylvania, Delaware and New
Jersey tri-state area. The participating composers are 
Michael
Djupstrom was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1980 and began music
studies at the age of eight. He began formal composition study at the
University of Michigan, where he received his undergraduate and
graduate degrees. Other training included fellowships at the
Tanglewood Music Center and the Aspen Music Festival, as well as
postgraduate studies in Paris with composer Betsy Jolas. He currently
lives in Philadelphia, where he teaches piano and theory at
Settlement Music School, is a member of the Phoenix Trio, and works
as an accompanist and vocal coach at the Little Lyric Opera Theater.
Djupstrom has been recognized through honors and awards from
institutions such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters,
American Composers Forum, the Chinese Fine Arts Society, the ASCAP
and BMI Foundations, and the Lotte Lehmann Foundation. His music has
been performed by the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, Tanglewood Festival
Chorus, Haddonfield Symphony Orchestra, and the new music ensembles
Brave New Works, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and the New Fromm
Players at Tanglewood.
John
B. Hedges was born in 1974 in Wilmington, Delaware. The son of a
rock musician, he began studying classical music at the University of
Pennsylvania with post-graduate degrees from Westminster Choir
College and the Curtis Institute of Music. In his summers, Hedges
attended the Aspen Music Festival and the Britten-Pears School (as
both composer and conductor). He subsequently served as assistant to
composer/conductor Oliver Knussen in the U.K. He has participated in
the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra's Composition and Conducting
Institute, and assisted composer Tan Dun in the Metropolitan Opera
premiere of The First Emperor. His music has been performed in
the U.S., Canada, France and England. Hedges has worked with the
Ensemble Modern, New Jersey Symphony, Shanghai Symphony, Curtis
Symphony Orchestra, and Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. He received a
2006 Independence Foundation Fellowship as well as a fellowship from
the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and residencies at the artist's
colony Yaddo. In his spare time, Hedges loves to play and sing lots
of funk music.
David
Laganella was born in the suburbs of Philadelphia in 1974, and grew
up playing guitar and cello. Today, as a composer and electric
guitarist, he has had music performed by such new music artists and
ensembles as Flexible Music, Avian Music, the Haddonfield Symphony
(where he was selected as the winner of the orchestra's composers
competition), the Serafin Quartet, Kevin Gallagher's Electric Kompany
and Marilyn Nonken. He has received honors from ASCAP, The
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer and American
Composers Forum. He holds degrees in music composition from New York
University and the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a
Performance Certificate in electric guitar from Berklee College of
Music. Laganella is the author of "The Composer's Guide to the
Electric Guitar" (Mel Bay Publications), a manual addressing all
performance practice and notational issues for the instrument.
Laganella is Artistic Director of Chamber Music Now, a contemporary
music concert series in Philadelphia.
Gregory
Spears was born in 1977 and grew up in Virginia Beach receiving his
first musical recognition at age 16 as the soloist in his own Piano
Concerto. Since then Spears' music has been played by the Yale
Philharmonia, NOW Ensemble, So Percussion, the vocal group Ars Nova,
the Zapolsky Quartet and his own group, the Owen Quartet. Spears was
selected as a participant in the 2001 American Composers Orchestra
Whitaker New Music Readings. Eighth blackbird's performance of his
piece Soar-Stop was described by The New York Times as
"scintillating." In 1999, Spears was awarded a First Music
Commission to write a piece for the New York Youth Symphony, which
was given its premiere in Carnegie Hall. His music has won prizes
from ASCAP and BMI as well as grants and honors from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and
Yaddo. Recent commissions have come from the Greater Princeton Youth
Orchestra, the Present Music Ensemble in Milwaukee, and
Brooklyn-based choreographer Christopher Williams. Spears studied
composition at the Eastman School of Music, Yale University and the
Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen as a Fulbright Scholar.
He is currently finishing his Ph.D. at Princeton University where he
teaches a writing seminar called Music and Madness.
Alan
Tormey was born in 1974 and currently resides in New Jersey
where he is a doctoral candidate in music composition at Princeton
University. His previous studies were at the Univ. of California at
Berkeley, and Oberlin Conservatory. Tormey's compositions have been
performed by So Percussion, the Tarab Cello Ensemble, Synergy Vocals,
Ensemble Surplus, and eighth blackbird. The 2002 Sonic Circuits
Festival presented his multimedia work Interior of the New York
Subway at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Upcoming
events include a solo recital of live electronic music as a part of
the Princeton Terrace Club's acclaimed Free Form Mash-Up concert
series, performances by the Catch Guitar Quartet, marimbist Doug
Perkins, the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, and pianist Marilyn
Nonken. Alan is a also member of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra
(PLORK), an ensemble comprising 15 laptop computers, 90 loudspeakers
and a variety of performance interfaces. This spring, the orchestra
will premiere his work &ldots;To Shining Sea.
Jeffrey
Milarsky is one of the leading conductors of contemporary music in
New York City. In the United States and abroad, he has premiered and
recorded works contemporary composers, including Charles Wuorinen,
Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Lasse Thoresen, Gerard Grisey, Ralph
Shapey, Luigi Nono, Mario Davidovsky and Wolfgang Rihm. His
wide-ranging repertoire, which spans from Bach to Xenakis, has
brought him to lead such accomplished groups as the New York New
Music Ensemble, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Columbia
Sinfonietta, Speculum Musicae, Cygnus Ensemble, The Fromm Players at
Harvard University, the Composers' Ensemble at Princeton University,
the New York Philharmonic chamber music series, and ACO, where he has
served as Assistant Conductor. Increasingly in demand as a Music
Director, he has been named to that position for New Jersey's Musica
Viva Festival. Most recently, he has joined the faculty of The
Manhattan School of Music as Artistic Director and Conductor of the
Percussion Ensemble. Mr. Milarsky is Professor in Music at Columbia
University, where he is the Music Director/Conductor of the Columbia
University Orchestra.