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ACO
2009-10 Season American Composers Orchestra (ACO) is proud to announce its 33rd concert season, which includes three Orchestra Underground centerpiece concerts presented by Carnegie Hall in Zankel Hall (November 30, January 29, April 9), the 19th annual Underwood New Music Readings at Miller Theatre at Columbia University (May 21 and 22), the Composers OutFront! series featuring composer-performers at informal venues throughout New York City, plus a performance at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia (January 30). ACO continues championing inventive new American orchestral music during its 2009–10 season, which includes seven commissions, eight world premieres, and several U.S., New York, and Philadelphia premieres. Composers featured this season include Curt Cacioppo, Sebastian Currier, Paquito D’Rivera, Michael Fiday, Donal Fox, Erin Gee, John Korsrud, Missy Mazzoli, Huang Ruo, Roger Zare, Charles Ives, and Louis Andriessen. The season’s conductors will be Stefan Lano, Anne Manson, and Jeffrey Milarsky. ACO’s 2009–10 concert season continues the ensemble’s exploration of the orchestra as the fulcrum of multimedia performance with the premiere of rising-star composer Erin Gee’s Mouthpiece XIII: Mathilde of Loci, Part 1, with video by Colin Gee, featuring electronically processed voice and live actor; and the premiere of the orchestral version of Sebastian Currier’s New Orleans-inspired Next Atlantis, with video by Pawel Wojtasik. The season also features several premieres of works by composers reacting to or inspired by specific people and events in the world around them – in addition to Currier’s Next Atlantis, notably Michael Fiday’s HST: In memoriam Hunter S. Thompson, Paquito D’Rivera’s Conversations with Cachao, and a new work by Curt Cacioppo lamenting the destruction caused by Native American relocation policies. Finally, ACO will showcase orchestral music by composers who have incorporated diverse influences in their work ranging from jazz and Americana, to Chinese musical styles and Cuban folk traditions. As always, the ensemble continues its mission of commissioning both young emerging composers and those deserving of their first “big break” who have not yet had the opportunity to compose in such a large format. ACO's Orchestra Underground
Orchestra
Underground: Monday,
Nov. 30, 2009, at 7:30pm. On Monday, November 30 at 7:30pm, ACO will present "Traditions and Transmigrations" at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. The concert celebrates the blending and juxtaposition of traditions, and the journey involves in any exploration of new musical territory. The program includes the world premiere of new works commissioned by ACO from Curt Cacioppo, Erin Gee, and Donal Fox; the New York premiere of Huang Ruo's Leaving Sao; and a performance of Charles Ives' Tone Raods Nos. 1 and 3. Stefan Lano makes his Carnegie Hall debut as guest conductor. ACO's
performance of Charles Ives' Tone Roads
Nos. 1 and 3 in this concert provide a touchstone of iconic Americana.
Optimistic, idealistic, fiercely democratic, Ives unified the voice of
the American people with the forms and traditions of European classical
music. Conductor Stefan
Lano makes his ACO and Carnegie Hall debut with this concert.
He served as the music director of the Teatro Colón from 2005 to 2008.
He began conducting through his work as composer and after an extensive
tenure on the music staff of the Vienna State Opera. Orchestra Underground: Conversations Friday,
January 29, 2010 at 7:30PM. Orchestra Underground's "Conversations" is an exploration of the new muical dialogues possible when multimedia and electronics are combined with a live, vibrant orchestra. The concert includes the world premiere of Time-Lapse by Roger Zare, commissioned by ACO through its Underwood New Muisc Readings program: the world premiere of Sebastian Currier's Next Atlantis for orchestra, electronics, and video; and the New York premiere of Paquito D'Rivera's Conversations with Cachao. Anne Manson will be the conductor. Sebastian
Currier, whose work Microsymph was commissioned and
premiered by ACO in 1997, will realize the orchestral version of Next
Atlantis, a multimedia piece with video by Pawel Wojtasik, that the
composer originally envisioned for string quartet. Paquito
D'Rivera Conversations with Cachao (2007)
is an homage to the Cuban mambo star and bassist Israel “Cachao” López,
and is built on elements of Cuban traditional music. Conceived as a
double concerto for contrabass, clarinet/alto sax & orchestra,
it comprises three movements: Israel (Cachao’s first name), Guajira (a
Cuban folk form) and The Return (a fantasy on the mind of every
exiled). Conductor
Anne
Manson is recognized throughout the world for her conducting
achievements and is a passionate advocate of music of the present.
Orchestra
Underground: Friday,
April 9, 2010, at 7:30pm. "Louis & the Young Americans" illustrates composer Louis Andriessen's influence on the next generation of North American composers by showcasing the music of three of his recent students – Missy Mazzoli, Michael Fiday, and John Korsrud – in world premieres commissioned by ACO. The concert, a rare look at the American impact of this Dutch composer, will also include Andriessen's Symphony for Open Strings and will be conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky. The concert kicks off a month-long celbration of Andriessen's music at Carnegie Hall. Missy
Mazzoli's These Worlds In Us was
originally composed in 2006 and was selected for the Minnesota
Orchestra Composers Institute and Readings that same year. Michael
Fiday's music has been described as “clearly structured,
colorful and unflaggingly compelling work” (Philadelphia Inquirer). His
new work for ACO, HST: In Memoriam Hunter S. Thompson,
will be a portrayal of the “full-spectrum” of the journalist and
author, taking into account the contradictions inherent in this fabled
American iconoclast and embedding musical elements into the work that
reflect the times that affected and shaped the man.
John
Korsrud hails from Vancouver, BC, and is a composer and
trumpet player. His new work will be informed by his experimental music and jazz.
Jeffrey Milarsky, a
former ACO percussionist and frequent conductor, is a leading conductor
of contemporary music in New York City. In the U.S. and abroad, he has
premiered and recorded works by contemporary composers, including
Charles Wuorinen, Fred Lerdahl, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Lasse
Thoresen, Gerard Grisey, Jonathan Dawe, Tristan Murail, Ralph Shapey,
Luigi Nono, Mario Davidovsky, and Wolfgang Rihm.
Underwood New Music Readings in NYC Friday
& Saturday, May 21 & 22, 2010 The proceedings are open to the public free of charge, and will take in a new schedule format so as to be more convenient for the general public: The first day of Readings will be presented from 10 am to 12:30pm on Friday, May 21; and the second day of Readings will take place on Saturday evening, May 22, at 8pm, during which all selected pieces will be performed in their entirety. ACO’s artistic director, Robert Beaser, directs the readings. George Manahan and José Serebrier are guest conductors. Mentor composers are Derek Bermel and George Tsontakis. The deadline for composers interested in applying to the Underwood New Music Readings is Friday, December 4, 2009. Application guidelines and other information are available at www.americancomposers.org/nmr/. Composers OutFront! puts
composers on the stage and gives audiences context for their music
prior to upcoming p
Subscriptions for the Orchestra Underground concerts in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall are currently available for $105 or $135 and can be purchased at CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800, www.carnegiehall.org, or at the Carnegie Hall Box Office. Single tickets are priced at $38 or $48, and go on sale to the public September 10. For ACO's concert at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, subscriptions and tickets are available by calling 215-898-3900 or online at www.pennpresents.org. Major support of American Composers Orchestra is provided by The Achelis Foundation, Amphion Foundation, Arlington Associates, ASCAP, ASCAP Foundation, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, BMI, BMI Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Edward T. Cone Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Fromm Music Foundation, GAP Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, The Irving Harris Foundation, Jephson Educational Trust, John and Evelyn Kossak Foundation, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc, Meet The Composer, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Virgil Thomson Foundation, Paul Underwood Charitable Trust, The Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation and The Helen F. Whitaker Fund. ACO programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. ACO programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. |
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Orchestra
Underground is ACO’s subversive and
entrepreneurial exploration of the orchestra as an elastic ensemble
that can respond to composers’ unhindered creativity in experimental
and innovative ways. The ensemble has embraced new technology, eclectic
instruments and influences, spatial orientation, new experiments in
concert format, and multimedia and multi-disciplinary
collaborations. Since the
opening of Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall’s subterranean state-of-the-art
auditorium, Orchestra Underground has played to sold-out audiences,
with 50 world premieres and newly commissioned works.
The result, in his most far-reaching work, is like nothing ever
imagined before him: music at once unique and as familiar as a tune
whistled in childhood, music that can conjure up the pandemonium of a
small-town Fourth of July or the quiet of a New England church, music
of visionary spirituality built from the humblest materials – an old
gospel hymn, a patriotic tune, a sentimental parlor song. For more
information, visit 
The 1976
premiere of his Sinfonie Nr. 1 (Yuval) at the Newport Music Festival
afforded him his initial experience in the symphonic genre, both as
composer and conductor. After completing degrees in composition at
Oberlin College, he was awarded a full scholarship for study at Harvard
University, from which he holds a Ph.D. in composition. Following the
first South American performances of the complete version of Alban
Berg’s Lulu, Lano was invited to inaugurate the 1993 season of the
Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. In 1988, he was appointed Associate
Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, a position he held for
three seasons prior to returning to Europe. He has won critical and
public acclaim with a diverse repertoire at major musical centers in
Europe, Japan, Canada, South America and the United States of America.
For more information, visit 
Inspired by
New Orleans, 
ACO’s
performance will feature the composer on alto saxophone and clarinet,
and Robert Black on double bass. D’Rivera is the
winner of nine GRAMMY Awards, and is celebrated for his artistry in
Latin jazz and his achievements as a classical composer. Born in
Havana, Cuba, he performed at age ten with the National Theater
Orchestra, studied at the Havana Conservatory of Music and, at
seventeen, became a featured soloist with the Cuban National Symphony.
As a founding member of the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, he
directed that group for two years, while at the same time playing the
clarinet and saxophone with the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra.
Additionally, he was a founding member and co-director of the
innovative musical ensemble Irakere. With its explosive mixture of
jazz, rock, classical, and traditional Cuban music never before heard,
Irakere toured extensively throughout America and Europe. For more
information, visit 
She was
the first woman to conduct at the Salzburg Festival, where she led the
Vienna Philharmonic and a cast that included Samuel Ramey and Philip
Langridge in a production of 
It was chosen for a second
performance by the
Minnesota Orchestra the following year. Aaron Jay Kernis, Minnesota
Orchestra’s composer-in-residence, says, “
Fiday began his musical
training as a violinist
at age eleven, turning his attention to composing a few years later. He
studied composition at Univ. of Colorado and the Univ. of Pennsylvania,
and with Andriessen in Amsterdam under the auspices of a Fulbright
Grant. Fiday is the recipient of numerous awards, grants and
residencies from, among others, BMI, ASCAP, American Composers Forum,
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo,
Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Ohio Arts Council. He is
currently Assistant Professor of Composition at the
College-Conservatory of Music at University of Cincinnati. For more
information, visit 
Milarsky is
professor in music at Columbia
University, where he is the music director/conductor of the Columbia
University Orchestra. Also at Columbia University, Mr. Milarsky is the
music director and conductor of the Manhattan Sinfonietta, which
concentrates on 20th- and 21st-century scores. He is also on the
faculty of The Manhattan School of Music as artistic director and
conductor of the percussion ensemble and directs AXIOM, Juilliard’s
newest contemporary music ensemble.
ACO will hold its 19th Annual
Underwood New Music Readings for emerging composers Friday and
Saturday, May 21–22, 2010, in Miller Theatre at Columbia University. In
what has become a rite of passage for aspiring orchestral composers, up
to six composers from throughout the United States will be selected to
receive a reading of a new work, and one composer will be selected to
receive a $15,000 commission for a work to be performed by ACO during
an upcoming season. Each participating composer receives a rehearsal,
reading, and a digital recording of his or her work. Review and
feedback sessions with ACO principal players, mentor-composers, guest
conductors, and industry representatives provide crucial artistic,
technical, and conceptual assistance. To date, more than 100 composers
have participated in the New Music Readings, including such
award-winning composers as Melinda Wagner, Derek Bermel, Randall Woolf,
Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Jennifer Higdon. 
remieres with ACO. Four
Composers OutFront! events will be presented at venues throughout New
York City during the 2009-10 season. The featured composer-performers
will be Donal Fox in a solo piano performance, Erin Gee in a concert
demonstrating her innovative work as a vocalist, John Korsrud in a jazz
performance, and Missy Mazzoli with her band Victoire. Dates and
locations will be announced in September at