home | eligibility & guidelines
eligibility and guidelines 2006 2006 readings participants 2005 readings participants 2004 radings participants 2003 readings participants 2002 readings participants readings by other orchestras home concert schedule	Composer Mandy Fang Wins 2006 Underwood Commission Composer Fang Man has been named the winner of American Composers Orchestra's 2006 Underwood Emerging Composers Commission, bringing her a $15,000 commission for a work to be premiered by American Composers Orchestra. Chosen from seven finalists, in one of the most coveted opportunities for emerging composers in America, Ms. Fang-who goes by her Americanized name, Mandy Fang-won the top prize at ACO's annual Underwood New Music Readings with her work, Black and White, Movement No. 1. In awarding Ms. Fang the Underwood Commission, ACO has singled her out as "a major force in orchestral music over the next few years," said ACO artistic director Robert Beaser. George Manahan, who conducted Fang's music at the Readings, called her music "a delight," noting that, "Mandy has a strong musical voice with a lot to say in the future." Born in China, Fang Man began to study the piano at the age of five and composition at twelve. She entered Xinghai Conservatory of Music at the age of 14, where she studied composition with professor Cao Guang-Ping. In 1995, she won entry into the prestigious Central Conservatory of Music Beijing, where she studied composition with professors Du Ming-Xi and Ye Xiao-Gang, and received a Bachelor of Music Degree in 2000. Thanks to generous fellowship awards from the Cecil Effinger Foundation, she came to the United States in 2000, studying with Richard Toensing and Michael Theodore at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In fall 2002, she began pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Cornell University, where she studies composition with Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra, piano with Xak Bjerken, and digital/computer music with David Borden. Her performances and awards include invitations to the Gaudeamus Music week in Amsterdam in 1996 and the Centre Acanthes in Avignon in 1997, where she studied with Qigang Chen, Marc-André Dalbavie, and Marco Stroppa. Her String Quartet No. 1 was chosen for the June in Buffalo Festival 2001, and performed by the Cassatt String Quartet. In the same summer, a full scholarship to the Bowdoin Summer Festival enabled her to study with George Crumb and Samuel Adler. Her first commission was from Bank of America for an art opening in Seattle, WA. Composition awards include the Yan Huang Cup Composition Prize, the Music From China Award, the Ishii Maki Composition Competition, and the Sumner Redstone/Viacom Scholarship. Ms. Fang has also received the Bao Steel National Fellowship, the Sage and Olin Fellowships from Cornell University, the Frank Huntington Beebe Fellowship and Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, as well as grants from the American Music Center. In the fall of 2004, she participated in the Composers Institute of the Minnesota Orchestra, where her work Aqua: In Memoriam Toru Takemitsu was read. In the summer of 2005, she attended the composition workshop at Centre Acanthes in Metz, France, where she studied with Wolfgang Rihm and Pascal Dusapin, and where her Noir for Orchestra was premiered by the Orchestre National de Lorraine. Beginning this fall, Ms. Fang will attend a one-year composition and computer music program at IRCAM, where she will compose a piece employing new technology, to be premiered at Centre Pompidou Paris in October 2007. About the New Music Readings The 15th annual Underwood New Music Readings, held in New York on May 18 and 19, 2006 under the direction of ACO's artistic director, composer Robert Beaser, with mentor-composers Stephen Paulus and Paul Moravec, and guest conductors George Manahan and Jeffrey Milarsky, attracted more than 200 submissions from emerging composers around the country. This year's finalists were: Anna Clyne, who received her Bachelor of Music with Honors from Edinburgh University and a Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music. Her principal teachers include Julia Wolfe, Marina Adamia and Marjan Mozetich; Robert Gates, who received a Masters Degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with John Corigliano, and a Bachelors Degree from UCLA, where he studied with Ian Krouse; Jeff Myers, who is pursuing his Doctorate at University of Michigan, where his teachers have included Bright Sheng, William Bolcom, and Michael Daugherty; Paul Richards, who holds degrees from the Univ. of Texas at Austin and the Univ. of Arizona, where his teachers included Dan Welcher, Don Grantham and Dan Asia. He is currently Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of Florida; Andrea Reinkemeyer, who earned Doctorate and Masters degrees in composition from the University of Michigan. Her teachers included Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng, Susan Botti, James Aikman, and Harold Owen; Matthew Tommasini, who studied at UCLA with composers Paul Chihara, Ian Krouse, and Jerry Goldsmith, and received Masters and Doctorate degrees from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty, William Bolcom, Bright Sheng, Leslie Bassett, and Evan Chambers. Since 1991, ACO's New Music Readings have provided invaluable career-development opportunities for emerging composers, and served as a vital resource to the music field by identifying a new generation of important American composers. To date, over 80 composers have participated in the Reading Sessions, hearing a full orchestral rendering of their work, receiving critical professional feedback and mentoring from conductors, composers and performers, and obtaining a professional quality recording to assist in their advancement. Past participants have included such award-winning composers as Melinda Wagner, Derek Bermel, Pierre Jalbert, Randall Woolf, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Jennifer Higdon. Since its inception in 1977, ACO has helped launch the careers of many of today's top composers, including Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Joseph Schwantner, who both received Pulitzer Prizes for ACO commissions; Robert Beaser, Ingram Marshall, Joan Tower, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Rouse, and Tobias Picker were all championed by the orchestra when they were beginning their careers. Last year's winner, Michael Gatonska, won the top prize with his work An Expedition Aboard the Third Mind. Mr. Gatonska's texture-oriented work has been described as "highly original&ldots; with a unique ability to thread together finely-carved, diverse 'glimpses' of music into a convincing, organic whole-a kind of temporal kaleidoscope of style and color." His newly commissioned work, After the Wings of Migratory Birds, will be premiered by ACO on October 13, 2006 at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. The 2004 winner, Kristin Kuster, praised as a "wonderfully ambitious" composer, "reaching deep for meaning and expressive breadth," heard her Underwood-commissioned work, Myrrha, premiered by ACO at Carnegie Hall on May 3, 2006. The 16th annual New Music Readings are scheduled for May 8 and 9, 2007 at the Skirball Center for Performing Arts in New York City. The submission deadline for composers interested in applying is Friday, November 17, 2006. Complete submission guidelines and application will be available in print and online this August by contacting www.americancomposers.org/nmr.htm, email readings@americancomposers.org, or telephone 212-977-8495. Lead support for the Underwood New Music Readings comes from Mr. Paul Underwood, the Fromm Music Foundation and The Helen F. Whitaker Fund. ACO's emerging composers programs are made possible with the support of Jerome Foundation, The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University and with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. 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.