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American Composers
Orchestra
240 West 35th Street,
Suite 405
New York, NY 10001-2506
Tel 212 977 8495
Fax 212 977 8995
home
concert schedule
aco mission & history
top
American
Composers
Orchestra
240 West 35th Street,
Suite 405
New York, NY 10001-2506
Tel 212 977 8495
Fax 212 977 8995
home
concert schedule
aco mission & history
top
American
Composers
Orchestra
240 West 35th Street,
Suite 405
New York, NY 10001-2506
Tel 212 977 8495
Fax 212 977 8995
home
concert schedule
aco mission & history
top
American
Composers
Orchestra
240 West 35th Street,
Suite 405
New York, NY 10001-2506
Tel 212 977 8495
Fax 212 977 8995
home
concert schedule
aco mission & history
top
American
Composers
Orchestra
240 West 35th Street,
Suite 405
New York, NY 10001-2506
Tel 212 977 8495
Fax 212 977 8995
home
concert schedule
aco mission & history
top
American
Composers
Orchestra
240 West 35th Street,
Suite 405
New York, NY 10001-2506
Tel 212 977 8495
Fax 212 977 8995
home
concert schedule
aco mission & history
top
American
Composers
Orchestra
240 West 35th Street,
Suite 405
New York, NY 10001-2506
Tel 212 977 8495
Fax 212 977 8995
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ACO
Scope of Activites
Carnegie Hall
Subscription Series
Carnegie Hall serves as the
home of ACO. Performing at one of the world's foremost concert halls
increases national and international recognition not only for ACO, but
for the diverse and talented pool of American composers served by the
orchestra. ACO programs explore the full range and diversity of
American music, often focusing on a specific composer, trend, idea, or
musical issue. Concerts often include lesser-known works by renowned
composers, significant pieces by established composers at the forefront
of present creativity, with a special emphasis on new music by young
composers. A performance by ACO at Carnegie Hall is viewed by many in
the industry as a rite-of-passage for an emerging composer, and
orchestras around the country look to ACO's concerts as a source for
the best in new American music.
more
about this season's series
Commissions
ACO commissions an average of
eight new works per season; 200 commissions to date. Composers
commissioned include Aaron Jay Kernis, Sheila Silver, Hannibal
Peterson, Philip Glass, David Lang, Bun-ching Lam, Anthony Advise, John
Cage, John Adams, Morton Subotnick, Olly Wilson, Louis Ballard, Joan
Tower, Julia Wolfe, and Charles Wuorinen. Both Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and
Joseph Schwantner received their first orchestral commissions from the
ACO; each work was subsequently awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Among ACO's
recent commissions are the Koussevitsky Award-winning Desde by Tania
León; Clouds (from out
of the past...) by Hollywood composer Paul Chihara; Harlem Essay by
composer/hip-hop artist Daniel Bernard Roumain; Jennifer Higdon's Fanfare Ritmico; Tomorrow's Song as Yesterday
Sings Today, by the experimental
improviser/pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams; Sparkler by
composer and technologist Tod Machover; Falling Dream by
emerging composer Kevin Puts; The
Book of Five, a collaborative work for orchestra and
amplified ensemble by Stewart Wallace; and the Symphony No. 6 "Plutonian Ode"
by Philip Glass. Commissions premiered in recent seasons include new
works by Dan Coleman, Milton Babbitt, Shulamit Ran, David Lang, Lisa
Bielawa, Alvin Singleton, George Lewis, Michael Gordon, Terry Riley,
Sebastian Currier, Fred Ho, and Uri Caine. Current commissions place
emphasis on emerging composers.
New Music
Readings Sessions & Commissions
Initiated in June 1993, the
ACO holds annual reading sessions of works by young composers. Up to
eight composers from throughout the United States are selected to
receive a reading of a new work. Each composer selected receives
rehearsal, reading and a digital recording of his or her work. Review
and feedback sessions with ACO principal players and mentor-composers
provide crucial artistic, technical and conceptual assistance.
Following the readings, one composer each year is awarded a $15,000
commission for a performance by ACO, providing an all-important
career-building Carnegie Hall debut. The ACO's reading sessions have
become respected as the industry proving-ground for many of today's
most talented orchestral composers
more about composer
opportunities with aco
Orchestra
Underground
Launched in February 2004,
Orchestra
Underground is a new experimental series designed for the
state-of-the-art Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. The series challenges
conventional notions about symphonic music, embracing multidisciplinary
and collaborative work, novel instrumental and spatial orientations of
musicians, new technologies and multimedia. The series develops new
repertoire, and provides fertile working ground for artists who have
not traditionally had access to the orchestral ensemble. The debut
Orchestra Underground concert featured world premieres by Lisa Bielawa,
and Gotham, a collaborative work created by composer Michael Gordon and
Ridge Theater. Since then, ACO has collaborated with many composers,
performers, technologists, video artists, including Bill T. Jones and
Pilobolus Dance Company. Orchestra Underground has reached new diverse
audiences, playing to sold-out houses during its first four seasons,
and bringing the orchestra into new unchartered territory.
EarShot
EarShot is the
first-ever
national partnership created to strengthen and support orchestras in
their commitment to up-and-coming American composers and their music.
The program identifies emerging American orchestral composers, provides
composers with professional-level working experience with orchestras
from every region of the country, and increases awareness of these
composers and access to their music throughout the industry. A key
priority of EarShot
is to build partnerships with orchestras around the
country to establish and promote a national network of New Music
Readings that will introduce audiences to and provide professional
advancement for American composers and their work. Among the EarShot
partners are the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the New York Youth
Symphony, and Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Other EarShot projects
include workshops, residency design, commissioning consortia,
consulting, and related composer development programs. EarShot is
administered by American Composers Orchestra, American Composers Forum,
American Music Center, the League of American Orchestras, and Meet The
Composer.
more about the earshot network
Improvise!
Improvise! was
ACO's spring
2004 festival exploring improvisation and the orchestra. The festival
devoted itself to exploring improvisation in orchestral music in all
its diversity, including jazz, graphic notation, technological
innovation, and other influences. Through the festival, ACO explored
the dynamic relationships that develop between composer, conductor,
ensemble, improviser(s), soloist(s), and audiences in music that
embraces improvisation, and examined how improvisation has been and
might be utilized in orchestral music being written by American
composers today. Composers Anthony Davis and Alvin Singleton served as
Music Alive Composers in Residence and artistic advisors for Improvise!
ACO's interest in improvisation continued with commissions by
composer-improvisors such as Uri Caine, Vijay Iyer, Fred Ho, and Donal
Fox, as well as collaborative concerts with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at
Lincoln Center.
Orchestra Tech
Orchestra
Tech is a multi-year initiative to explore and encourage
the creation,
performance, and development of music that unites orchestral forces
with new technology. The initiative has been conceived as a way to
examine the possibilities that computers and multimedia technologies
have been, and might in the future be, applied to orchestral music; and
to encourage the future development and performance of innovative music
that integrates technology into the orchestra. The initiative is
national in scope, and includes performance, educational, research and
professional development, dissemination and commissioning activities.
Through Orchestra Tech,
ACO bridges the digital divide that exists
between composers and other musical and multimedia artists working in
technology, and those writing for symphony orchestra. Renowned composer
and music-technology innovator Tod Machover serves as artistic advisor.
The initiative commenced in fall 2001 with a National Conference on the
Orchestra and Technology that brought together composers, scientists,
music professionals, orchestra administrators, academics and students
for symposia, artistic exchanges and concert performances. Current and
future activities include commissions and co-commissions, performances
at Carnegie Hall and as part of ACO's newly created Orchestra
Underground series, educational workshops, and the
creation of a
consortium of interested orchestra professionals to advance the
creation and performance of such music. Recent Orchestra Tech
commissions include: the Virtual Concerto by composer-technologist
George Lewis; Neil Rolnick's
iFiddle Concerto; Dan Trueman's
Silicon/Carbon: an
anti-Concerto-Grosso; Glimmer,
an
audience-interactive work by composer Jason Freeman; Anna Clyne's
TENDER HOOKS,
a multimedia concerto for theremin, laptop &
orchestra; Rand Steiger's Cryosphere,
for live electronics and
orchestra; and Mouthpiece
XIII: Mathilde of Loci, Part 1, by Erin Gee,
for computer-processed voice, film, actor, and orchestra.
Composers
OutFront!
Composers OutFront!
is a
concert series that puts composers on stage, making connections between
their musical roots as performers and their works for the concert hall.
Launched in 1999, the series has featured composers whose experiences
include concert music as well as jazz, rock, funk, hip-hop,
improvisation and world music. Performances have been held at Joe's Pub
at the Public Theatre and The Knitting Factory, as well as at BAMCafé
in Brooklyn and Harlem School of the Arts. Composers OutFront! has
featured composer/multi-instrumentalist Derek Bermel, Korean-American
composer/komungo soloist and improviser Jin Hi Kim, pianist-composer
Muhal Richard Abrams, Hollywood composing legend David Raksin, and
composer/jazz saxophonist Fred Ho. By featuring primarily young
composers who are also performers in a casual downtown setting, the
series expands and diversifies ACO's audiences, and provides
connections with ACO's performances at Carnegie Hall.
Coming to
America: immigrant sounds, immigrant voices
Coming to America: Immigrant
Sounds/Immigrant Voices explores the continual evolution
of American
music through the work of immigrant composers. Coming to America
links
the music of these composers to questions central to immigration and
cultural absorption in American society. In 2000-01, Coming to America
featured composers Jin Hi Kim (Korea), P.Q. Phan (Vietnam), Chinary Ung
(Cambodia), Melissa Hui (China), Tania León (Cuba) and Lukas Foss
(Germany). Together these composers span several generations and three
continents. Each composer was represented by recent or newly premiered
work; additional performances, in-school educational activities,
forums, and community dialogues took place around New York City. The
program was selected as a model by Americans for the Arts for its
Animating Democracy Initiative and was awarded a prestigious MetLife
Award for Community Engagement. Since its launch, featured composers
included Shulamit Ran (Israel), Hsueh-Yung Shen (China), Carlos
Carrillo (Puerto Rico), Behzad Ranjbaran (Iran), and Alla Borzova
(Belarus).
20th Century
Snapshot Series
From January 1999 to April
2001, ACO undertook a landmark 11-concert project based on American
themes of the past century in commemoration of the Millennium. The
programs were based on evocative and provocative ideas that together
made up a scatter-gun document of some of the things that happened in
America in the last century and that could lead the way to the next.
Working with collaborative and educational partners, this series
included special themed performances and satellite events focused on:
"Walt Whitman," "The Gershwin Circle," "Protest," "Roots,"
"Copland-Sessions," "Ellis Island to JFK," "Hollywood," "Pacifica," and
more.
Sonidos de las
Américas
In February 1994, ACO launched
Sonidos de las
Américas, the first of a series of six annual festivals
devoted to the music of Latin America. Each week-long festival included
a visiting delegation of Latin American composers and performers;
chamber music concerts in Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall and in Latino
community venues; symposia and master classes at area colleges; and an
orchestral concert at Carnegie Hall. The festivals focused on Mexico,
Brazil, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Argentina, and Cuba.
Emerging
Composer Fellowships
As part of its efforts to
provide extended professional development opportunities to emerging
American composers, ACO commenced its Emerging Composer Fellowships in
1999. Through this program, young composers have had the opportunity to
work with ACO artistic and administrative leadership to hone their
professional skills, participate in planning educational activities and
performances, serve as a liaison with student composers, and enhance
their professional careers by immersing themselves in the professional
environment of ACO.
Academic Ticket
Program
Up to 100 tickets to each
Carnegie Hall performance are made available at no cost to high school
and college music students throughout the Tri-state area. Students also
attend pre-concert discussions and have an opportunity to meet with
composers.
Education
Programs
In 1999, ACO launched Music
Factory, bringing composers into elementary and high
school classrooms
to involve New York City public high school students in the process of
creating music and to improve their understanding how composers work
and write for orchestra. Since its inception, Music Factory has
brought
more than fifty composers to work on an extended basis with each school
in the program. ACO documents Music
Factory curricula in order to share
this material with other music organizations, with the goal of
integrating American composers into music education programs
nationwide. ACO has also presented educational and family concerts in
collboration with Carnegie Hall and the Weill Institute.
Audience
Development/Dissemination Initiatives
ACO is committed to developing
new and diverse audiences for American music, not only for its own
concerts, but for musical organizations throughout the country and the
world. ACO considers a fine performance of a newly commissioned work
the beginning rather than the end of the creative process. Toward that
end, ACO undertakes important activities such as radio broadcasts and
recordings (see below). In addition, ACO has launched SoundAdvice,
a
mechanism for generating thought and discussion among audiences. A
combination audience survey, interactive website, and blog, SoundAdvice
encourages listeners to express an opinion about music they have heard.
By creating a dialogue about music, ACO hopes to generate interest in
and break down inhibitions listeners often feel about new works.
view
aco's blog soundadvice here
Radio/Internet
Broadcasts/Recordings
In 1989, ACO
launched its first series of nationally distributed radio broadcasts,
Music in the Present Tense—The ACO at Carnegie Hall, over the American
Public Radio network. A new annual series was begun in October, 1994,
when Sonidos de las
Américas was heard nationwide on the National
Public Radio network. Beginning with the 1997-98 season, ACO began
recording several of its Carnegie Hall subscription concerts for
broadcast. These concerts are heard internationally in more than 50
countries through WGBH's Art
of the States.
ACO entered into
the internet age with its first streamed
performances in 2001 as part of the Orchestra Tech
initiative. In 2009,
ACO entered into a partnership with InstantEncore.com, through which
recordings of ACO's Orchestra Underground performances are made
available for free to the public, reachings thousands of listeners
around the globe.
ACO's discography
numbers 22 albums. Recent
releases include ACO's album of orchestral works by John Cage on the
ECM label, which has garnered international awards and praise. In July
2001, Ingram Marshall's Kingdom
Come, commissioned by ACO, was released
on Nonesuch. ACO's first recording on the Point label, Philip Glass's
Heroes Symphony,
was released in 1998. In 1999 John Zorn's
Aporias–Requia
for Piano and Orchestra was released, as was the Philip
Glass/Robert Wilson collaboration: the CIVIL warS: a tree is best
measured when it is down, ACT V. Other ACO
recordings
include albums
for London/ARGO, Composers Recordings Inc., MusicMasters, New World
Records, and Phoenix USA.
visit out instant encore page to hear aco
live recordings
see aco's discography and purchase recordings
Touring
& Special Concerts
Internationally
acclaimed for commitment to and expertise in contemporary American
music, ACO often undertakes special performances in conjunction with
artistic or presenting partners. Recent examples include a memorial
concert for Aaron Copland; the opening concert of the American Symphony
Orchestra League's National Conference in New York; a program of
Spanish composers exiled in the Americas held in conjunction with the
King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center of New York University; and the U.S.
premiere of the Philip Glass/Robert Wilson opera White Raven in
conjunction with the Lincoln Center Festival in July 2001. In 2005, ACO
established a new multi-year residency at the Annenberg Center for the
Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania that continues
through 2010. The residency brings ACO outside of New York City for the
first time in two decades, with a series of concerts, new music
readings, and educational and outreach activities. In fall 2006, ACO
initiated its first collaborative concerts with Wynton Marsalis and
Jazz at Lincoln Center, extending its interest in improvisation and
playing to three sold-out houses. In addition, ACO participates in
Immigrant Heritage Week each year, presenting Coming to America
performances around New York City.
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