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Orchestra Underground: Dreams & Dances Oct. 26, 2012 Orchestra Underground: Time Travels Jan18, 2013 coLABoratory: Playing it UNsafe April 5, 2013 Underwood New Music Readings April 8-9, 2013 Jazz Composers Orchestra Readings June 3-4, 2013   Subscription & Ticket Info For Carnegie Hall performances call CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800 or visit www.carnegiehall.org   home concert schedule top          Orchestra Underground: Dreams & Dances Oct. 26, 2012 Orchestra Underground: Time Travels Jan18, 2013 coLABoratory: Playing it UNsafe April 5, 2013 Underwood New Music Readings April 8-9, 2013 Jazz Composers Orchestra Readings June 3-4, 2013   Subscription & Ticket Info For Carnegie Hall performances call CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800 or visit www.carnegiehall.org   home concert schedule top            Orchestra Underground: Dreams & Dances Oct. 26, 2012 Orchestra Underground: Time Travels Jan18, 2013 coLABoratory: Playing it UNsafe April 5, 2013 Underwood New Music Readings April 8-9, 2013 Jazz Composers Orchestra Readings June 3-4, 2013   Subscription & Ticket Info For Carnegie Hall performances call CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800 or visit www.carnegiehall.org   home concert schedule top        Orchestra Underground: Dreams & Dances Oct. 26, 2012 Orchestra Underground: Time Travels Jan18, 2013 coLABoratory: Playing it UNsafe April 5, 2013 Underwood New Music Readings April 8-9, 2013 Jazz Composers Orchestra Readings June 3-4, 2013   Subscription & Ticket Info For Carnegie Hall performances call CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800 or visit www.carnegiehall.org   home concert schedule top        Orchestra Underground: Dreams & Dances Oct. 26, 2012 Orchestra Underground: Time Travels Jan18, 2013 coLABoratory: Playing it UNsafe April 5, 2013 Underwood New Music Readings April 8-9, 2013 Jazz Composers Orchestra Readings June 3-4, 2013   Subscription & Ticket Info For Carnegie Hall performances call CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800 or visit www.carnegiehall.org   home concert schedule top        Orchestra Underground: Dreams & Dances Oct. 26, 2012 Orchestra Underground: Time Travels Jan18, 2013 coLABoratory: Playing it UNsafe April 5, 2013 Underwood New Music Readings April 8-9, 2013 Jazz Composers Orchestra Readings June 3-4, 2013   Subscription & Ticket Info For Carnegie Hall performances call CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800 or visit www.carnegiehall.org   home concert schedule top        Orchestra Underground: Dreams & Dances Oct. 26, 2012 Orchestra Underground: Time Travels Jan18, 2013 coLABoratory: Playing it UNsafe April 5, 2013 Underwood New Music Readings April 8-9, 2011 Jazz Composers Orchestra Readings June 3-4, 2013   Subscription & Ticket Info For Carnegie Hall performances call CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800 or visit www.carnegiehall.org   home concert schedule top

ACO's 2012-13 Season Highlights “the two ways to really get to an audience are through its heart or its gut... we’re increasing, hugely, the repertory of works that will have an afterlife.” – George Manahan in The New York Times ACO’s 2012-13 concert season is a banner year for the orchestra, marked by unprecedented opportunities for composers through three initiatives that illustrate ACO’s role as a catalyst for the creation of new orchestral music: CoLABoratory: Playing It UNsafe, ACO’s groundbreaking composition and performance laboratory; the 22nd annual Underwood New Music Readings, one of the country’s most sought-after programs for emerging composers; and the nationwide expansion of the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Readings in partnership with The Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. The season is anchored by three Orchestra Underground concerts at Carnegie Hall, “underground” in Zankel Hall, which will include at least eight world premieres commissioned by ACO, two US premieres, and one New York premiere. Orchestra Underground 3 Concerts at Zankel Hall ACO’s Orchestra Underground concerts at Zankel Hall bring newly commissioned pieces and seldom herd iconic American works to the stage. Orchestra Underground is ACO’s entrepreneurial exploration of the orchestra as an elastic ensemble that can respond to composers’ unhindered creativity in experimental and innovative ways, embracing new technology, eclectic instruments and influences, new experiments in concert format, and multimedia and multi-disciplinary collaborations. Among the diverse influences found in the upcoming season premieres are: the aural environment of a temple in Thailand (Narong Prangcharoen’s The Migration of Lost Souls), a bestselling political-fantasy novel (Milica Paranosic’s The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue), an ancient timekeeping ritual of China (Zhou Long’s Bell Drum Tower), and a set of poems about the myth of Orpheus (Kate Soper’s now is forever he whispered: Orpheus and Eurydice for Voice & Orchestra). Orchestra Underground: Dreams & Dances Friday, Oct. 26, 2012, at 7:30pm Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall Dreams & Dances features music inspired by the surreal and the fantastic. The program includes the world premieres of Milica Paranosic’s The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue (inspired by the novel of the same title by Téa Obreht), as well as ACO’s 2011 Underwood New Music Readings commission winner Narong Prangcharoen’s The Migration of Lost Souls. The concert also includes the US premiere of José Serebrier’s Flute Concerto with Tango featuring soloist Sharon Bezaly. Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 3 (Camp Meeting) from 1910 completes the program. José Serebrier will be ACO’s guest conductor. Conductor and composer José Serebrier (b. 1938), who has frequently guest conducted ACO and has led ACO’s Underwood New Music Readings in years past, is one of the most recorded classical artists. He has received 37 Grammy nominations in recent years. Serebrier has composed more than 100 works, and has won numerous awards including two Guggenheims, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts. Flute Concerto with Tango was commissioned for flutist Sharon Bezaly, who performed and recorded it with the Austalian Chamber Orchestra for the BIS label. Serebrier explains the title, saying, “The fourth movement justifies the title of the work. Traditionally, tangos end with a strong dominant chord followed by a brief, barely audible tonic chord. I take this idea further, leaving my tango up in the air in the middle of a phrase, so that the listener can make his own conclusion.” For more information, visit www.joseserebrier.com.   Sharon Bezaly and the Australian Chamber Orchestra   Narong Prangcharoen (b. 1973) studied with Chen Yi and received his doctoral degree from University of Missouri-Kansas City. His music has been called “absolutely captivating” by the Chicago Sun Times and has been performed in Asia, Australia, Europe and the US. Prangcharoen is the 2011 winner of ACO’s Underwood Emerging Composer Commission. Of Prangcharoen’s winning piece Pubbanimitta (“Foreboding”), Underwood mentor composer Paul Chihara said, “Mr. Prangcharoen writes music that reaches and moves his listeners with soaring melodies and intense rhythmic dance patterns.” His works have been heard at the Beijing Modern Music, MoMA Music and Grant Park Festivals, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and at the Library of Congress. In 2007, the Thai government named Prangcharoen a Contemporary National Artist and awarded him the Silapathorn Award. Prangcharoen’s piece for ACO, The Migration of Lost Souls, takes as its inspiration a temple in Thailand and the soul’s journey into the after life. For more information, visit www.narongmusic.com. Charles Ives (1874-1954) is one of the most remarkable composers America has produced. Ives studied the organ and was a composition pupil of Horatio Parker at Yale University, from which he graduated in 1898. At an early age, he decided that he would not make music the means of earning his livelihood; he realized that it might be too difficult not to compromise his artistic ideals if his livelihood depended on his music. Accordingly, he entered the insurance business and made a fortune. His Yankee refusal to accept the usual way of combining sounds left him to explore many novel and often descriptive ways of putting sounds together, placing him far ahead of his time. Many of Ives’ explorations into new harmonic and contrapuntal possibilities antedated the work of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. A long list of compositions, most written before 1920, includes four symphonies, chamber music, two piano sonatas, five violin and piano sonatas, and many songs and choral pieces, as well as a number of other orchestral works. Ives described his Symphony No. 3 in his autobiographical notes: “The themes are mostly based around hymns and from organ pieces played in Central Presbyterian Church around 1901.” Symphony No. 3 was performed for the first time on April 5, 1946, in New York by the New York Little Symphony with Lou Harrison conducting. The score was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1947.     (photo credit, Henrik Olund) Lori Cotler will be the featured soloist in Milica Paranosic’s World premiere of ”The Tiger’s Wife (prologue)” at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall. Described by the The New Yorker as “Using her voice in mystically percussive ways” and by The New York Times as “Explosive…exuberent” Lori Cotler is quickly gaining an international reputation as one of the most captivating and original vocalists of our time. Lori’s combination of World and Jazz stylings has propelled her to performances in venues around the World. Lori has just released the first drum language ringtone of its kind for iPhone called TAKA MOSHI available on iTunes. Lori is currently in the studio recording her solo album featuring repertoire from her new project RHYTHM VOICE. Learn more about Lori here.     (photo credit, Gorazd Poposki) Milica Paranosic (b. 1968) has established herself as one of New York’s finest and most daring performance artists, producers, and technologists. The New York Times described her music as: “Amazing…astonishing,” and, “Like liquor-filled pralines,” by Germany’s Morgenpost; “A painter, a musical Jackson Pollack,” by SEAMUS.  Milica’s works range from one-woman multimedia shows and sound installations to operatic and symphonic works.  Her theatre and film soundtracks have appeared in award winning movies, released on Bridge, Electroshock, Albany and The New Sound record labels. Inspired by her travels and international collaborations, Milica ingeniously incorporates music of her Serbian homeland in addition to cross-continental muses such as Brazil and Ghana.  Milica strives to create new sound worlds in which contrasting concepts vividly coexist in unique textures. Paranosic’s new work, The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue for Electronics, Projections & Orchestra, takes as its inspiration a bestselling novel of the same title by Téa Obreht, who, like Paranosic, was born in Belgrade. Paranosic says, “Apart from obvious cultural and geographical connection between Obreht and myself, there are numerous parallels in our aesthetics, including mixing real and imagined, old and new, fantasy and history, folk and pop, Serbian and English languages, and the use of symbols.” Milica Paranosic: Zvrk for Violin, Cello and Electronics Zentripital Duo: Lynn Bechtold, violin; Jennifer DeVore, Cello For more information, visit www.milicaparanosic.com. Sharon Bezaly was chosen as Instrumentalist of the Year by the prestigious Klassik Echo in Germany in 2002 and as Young Artist of the Year at the Cannes Classical Awards in 2003. Classics Today has hailed her as “a flutist virtually without peer in the world today.” Bezaly appears as soloist with leading orchestras and in the most prestigious concerts halls worldwide. Recent highlights include solo appearances at the London Proms and the Welsh Proms with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as appearances with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Spanish National Orchestra, recitals at Wigmore Hall and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and concerts at the Musikverein Vienna. To date, Sharon Bezaly has seventeen dedicated concertos by renowned composers, which she performs all over the world. For more information, visit www.sharonbezaly.com.  Orchestra Underground: Time Travels Friday, January 18, 2013 at 7:30pm Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall Time Travels features music that explores the past, present, and future – both real and imagined. Lukas Foss’ 1960 masterwork, Time Cycle, is the centerpiece for the concert, with soprano Jennifer Zetlan. The evening also includes the world premieres of composer and soprano Kate Soper’s “now is forever” he whispered for Voice and Orchestra and Kyle Blaha’s Sinfonietta, and the US premiere of Zhou Long’s Bell Drum Tower. ACO Music Director George Manahan conducts. A true Renaissance man, Lukas Foss (1922-2009) was a rare musician, equally renowned as a composer, conductor, pianist, and educator. As a composer, Foss eagerly embraced the musical languages of his time, producing a body of over one hundred works that Aaron Copland described as including “among the most original and stimulating compositions in American Music.” Time Cycle marked a turning point in Foss’ compositional approach. He said, “I was professor of composition, and I wanted to get my students away from the tyranny of the printed note. So I invented a form of non-jazz ensemble improvisation. It was meant to change my students; well, it changed me.” Time Cycle is written for soprano and orchestra, and was premiered by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein in 1960. It sets four texts, two in English and two in German, each of which has some reference to time or clocks. Kyle Blaha (b. 1981) received his D.M.A. in May 2011 from Juilliard and his B.M. from Eastman School of Music. He has studied composition with Darrell Handel, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Samuel Adler, Philip Lasser, and Robert Beaser. The artistic director of the Making Score composition program with the New York Youth Symphony, Blaha is also on the faculty at the European American Musical Alliance Program in Paris. He has received multiple ASCAP Young Composer Awards and awards for study in Germany, including a Fulbright grant and a D.A.A.D. grant. His work has been premiered by the Juilliard Orchestra and the New York City Ballet Choreographic Institute, and he has received commissions from the New York Youth Symphony, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, and the New Juilliard Ensemble. His new work in three movements, Triptych, is commissioned with support from The Jerome Foundation. Each movement explores a different aspect of composition – harmony, melody, and texture.   Kyle Blaha:  Light (dark) excerpt Eastman Symphony Orchestra   Zhou Long (b. 1953) is internationally recognized for creating a unique body of music that brings together the aesthetic concepts and musical elements of East and West. Deeply grounded in the entire spectrum of his Chinese heritage, including folk, philosophical, and spiritual ideals, he is a pioneer in transferring the idiomatic sounds and techniques of ancient Chinese musical traditions to modern Western instruments and ensembles. In 2011 Zhou Long was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his first opera, Madame White Snake. Zhou Long’s Bell Drum Tower is inspired by the bells and drums used during the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China to tell time. Zhou Long says of the new piece, “In Bell Drum Towers, I am exploring my fantasy, the pulse of the drums beating. Gradually, new patterns develop, each time in a faster tempo, building to a climax that brings the presto wind-like section. Finally, the hazy wind rang the lingering bells.” For more information about Zhou Long, click here. Kate Soper (b. 1981) is an Ann Arbor-born, New York-based composer with a diverse background. She was a composer participant in the 2011 Underwood New Music Readings, and was also a featured performer during SONiC, ACO’s massive 2011 new music festival. Currently pursuing a doctorate in composition at Columbia University, where she focuses primarily on concert music, Soper has written music for dance, film, theatre and electronics and has worked extensively as a piano-based singer-songwriter. As a singer with experience in Western Classical, Indian Carnatik, pop and folk singing, she performs frequently in her own works as well as those of her colleagues. Her piece for ACO, “now is forever” he whispered for Voice and Orchestra, features Soper as the soprano soloist and sets poetry by Jorie Graham exploring the instant in which Orpheus turns back to look at Eurydice in that familiar myth. Soper describes her piece as, “expanding a moment out into a universe of speculation about the nature of time and the unreliability of desire . . . In dealing with this text I'm trying to find a way to paint the still core at the center of both the poem and the moment it describes – the single slice of time in which the chain of events (Orpheus turning to look at Eurydice and her consequent banishment back to Hades) has just flickered into possibility but is not quite inevitable.” For more information, visit www.katesoper.com. Soprano Jennifer Zetlan is swiftly garnering recognition for her artistry and captivating stage presence.  She has debuted on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Seattle Opera, and Florida Grand Opera. She received critical acclaim for her portrayal of Emily Webb in Our Town at Aspen Music Festival and with Juilliard Opera Center; The New York Times reported, “Jennifer Zetlan . . . sings beautifully and affectingly. The part could not be in better hands.” Committed to performing new works, she sang at the 2007 Opera America New Works Showcase, participated in New York City Opera’s VOX Showcase of American Composers in 2008 and 2009 and is frequently involved with the new works initiative co-sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theater. For more information, visit www.jenniferzetlan.com. ACO Brings Unprecedented Opportunities for Composers: coLABoratory: Playing It UNsafe A Groundbreaking R&D Lab for New Music Runs Throughout Season Friday, April 5, 2013, at 7:30pm Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall Laboratory Workshops: November 13 & December 11, 2012; January 22; March 5; & April 2, 2013 ACO’s Orchestra Underground will present the culminating public performance of CoLABoratory: Playing It UNsafe at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, conducted by ACO Music Director George Manahan.  ACO’s season-long CoLABoratory initiative is the first and only professional research and development laboratory to support the creation of cutting-edge new American orchestral music through no-holds-barred experimentation. CoLABoratory alters the landscape by treating the creation of a new orchestral work as an interactive and collaborative process, rather than just the delivery of a musical “product.” This year, CoLABoratory will include a unique incubation process of workshops, public readings, collaborative feedback, and laboratory performances of music, open to the public, taking place from November 2012 through April 2013. A nationwide call for proposals was submitted last spring for music that challenges conventional notions about orchestral music. The composers selected to participate in the 2012-13 CoLABoratory program will be chosen for their willingness to experiment and stretch their own musical sensibilities, and their ability to test and stretch the possibilities for the orchestra itself. Past participants have created a concerto for junked car and orchestra (Sean Friar’s Clunker Concerto), collaborations with lighting designers (Laura Schwendinger’s Shadings), new levels of orchestral improvisation (Henry Threadgill’s No Gate, No White Trenches, Butterfly Effect), hybrid orchestration of laptop computers and acoustic instruments (Dan Trueman, silicon/carbon (an anti-Concerto Grosso)), and sound paintings for unorthodox spatial arrangements of the orchestra (Joan La Barbara’s In solitude this fear is lived). Participating composers will be announced in September 2012. 22nd Annual Underwood New Music Readings April 8-9, 2013 ACO will hold its 22nd Annual Underwood New Music Readings for emerging composers on Monday and Tuesday, April 8 and 9, 2013 at the DiMenna Center. In what has become a rite of passage for aspiring orchestral composers, up to eight 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 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, Sebastian Currier, and Jennifer Higdon. The proceedings are open to the public free of charge. The first day of Readings, a working rehearsal, will be presented from 10am to 12:30pm on Monday, April 8th; the second day of Readings will take place on Tuesday evening, April 9th, at 7:30pm, during which all selected pieces will be polished and performed in their entirety. ACO’s artistic director, Robert Beaser, directs the readings. The deadline for composers interested in applying to the Underwood New Music Readings is Monday, December 10, 2012. Application guidelines and other information will be available in September. Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute & Readings August 7-11, 2012 at UCLA June 3-4, 2013 Readings in NYC On Monday and Tuesday, June 3 and 4, 2013, The Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and ACO will present the second Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Readings, the culmination of a process that begins with a weeklong Intensive held at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in August 2012, which brings together 35 jazz composers, chosen from a national pool of applicants, to explore the challenges of writing for the symphony orchestra. The Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Readings are the practical extension of the Intensive. Selected composers from the Intensive will have the opportunity to apply to the JCOI Readings, to be held from April through June 2013 with orchestras in California and New York. The composers chosen to participate in the Readings will write a new work for symphony orchestra, which will be work-shopped, rehearsed and performed by one of four host orchestras – ACO, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, La Jolla Symphony, and one additional orchestra – in partnership with EarShot, the National Orchestra Composition Discovery Network. ACO’s JCOI Readings will take place at Miller Theatre, Columbia University on June 3 and 4, 2013. This innovative program is a new development in the jazz field. While many jazz composers seek to write for the symphony orchestra, opportunities for hands-on experience are few. JCOI aims to provide new resources for both jazz and classical music, promoting the emergence of composers trained in both jazz and new orchestral techniques. Ticket Info Subscriptions for the Orchestra Underground concerts in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall are available for $111 or $141 and can be purchased at CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800, www.carnegiehall.org, or at the Carnegie Hall Box Office. Single tickets are priced at $40 or $50, and go on sale to the public September 10, 2010. The Underwood New Music Readings and Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Readings are open to the public, free of charge. Reservations required. 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.