American Composers Orchestra Announces Slate of Virtual and In-Person Programming for the 2020-2021 Season

American Composers Orchestra has announced a slate of virtual and in-person programming for the 2020-2021 season in response to these challenging times for the performing arts. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Derek Bermel, Music Director George Manahan, and President Edward Yim, ACO confirms its commitment this season to the creation, performance, preservation, and promotion of music by American composers with programming that sparks curiosity and reflects geographic, stylistic, racial, and gender diversity.

"At this time of great uncertainty but unlimited potential, ACO continues to champion the music of our time," says Edward Yim. "This season features premiere performances and readings that offer our audience a chance to share in the excitement, reflection, and catharsis of this modern age of anxiety and - hopefully - positive transformation."

ACO's ongoing online programming includes Connecting ACO Community, a commissioning initiative created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Between April 2020 and October 2020, ACO has commissioned 19 new works premiered online on Sundays at 5pm for a ticketed audience on ACO's YouTube channel. Each session includes a world premiere performance, along with a live conversation with the featured composer and performer(s), hosted by Derek Bermel or Edward Yim. Composers who have been commissioned include Ethan Iverson, Shara Nova, Vicente Hansen Atria, Sakari Dixon Vanderveer, Gity Razaz, and more. Four remaining premieres are scheduled on the following Sundays at 5pm: August 23, August 30, September 13, and October 4, 2020.

In addition, ACO will launch two new offerings in September 2020. Professional Development Webinars, a new platform for emerging composers, will feature leading industry professionals in panel discussions. Composer-to-Composer Talks feature major American composers in talks about their work and leading a creative life. ACO's education programs, Sonic Spark Lab and Compose Yourself!, will continue with distance learning programs that use composition as a platform to unlock middle and high school students' creativity.

Also launching this fall is ACO's pilot program for Pathways, a four-year fellowship that provides training, mentorship, and a sequence of commissions for composers who seek training in composing for orchestra. The program is designed for creative artists who come from diverse musical backgrounds and seek individualized study and mentorship. Anjna Swaminathan, a versatile artist in the field of South Indian Carnatic violin, has been selected as the pilot Pathways Fellow.

In 2021, ACO currently plans to return to the concert hall for two spring performances at Carnegie Hall and the Apollo Theater, as well as for the 30th ACO EarShot New Music Readings (formerly the Underwood New Music Readings) in June. ACO and its partners and co-producing organizations will work together to present these performances following all state and local guidelines, to ensure the health and well-being of the performers and audience.

As previously announced, ACO's concert at Carnegie Hall on April 20, 2021 includes a world premiere by 2019 Underwood Commission Winner Carlos Bandera as well as New York premieres of two violin concertos by Christopher Cerrone and Lisa Bielawa for soloist Jennifer Koh. Cerrone's Violin Concerto "Breaks and Breaks" features intense dialogues between solo violin and orchestra as they comment on current affairs. Bielawa's Sanctuary meditates on the concept of sanctuary and its significance in the American consciousness. It is a deeply personal composition with moving quotations of Chopin and Bach - music in which Bielawa finds her own sanctuary. Carlos Bandera's Materia Prima is commissioned by ACO as a result of his 2019 Underwood New Music Readings Commission win. The work considers the origin story of the universe shared across many cultures, and is described by Bandera as, "a contemplation of our fundamental sameness." Bielawa's Sanctuary is supported by ACO's Commission Club.

In late spring 2021, ACO will partner with the Apollo Theater to co-present An Evening of Sound, Voice, Poetry, and Healing, showcasing three musical works written to create space for remembrance, mourning, celebration, and reflection. Directed and co-curated by National Black Theatre Artistic Director Jonathan McCrory, with musical co-curation by ACO's Derek Bermel, the evening will include the New York premieres of Seven Last Words of the Unarmed by Joel Thompson and AMEN! by Carlos Simon, as well as Reflections by Tania León, a setting of poems by Rita Dove. Featuring ACO with additional instrumentalists from Black-led musical organizations and members of community and church choirs from the New York Area, the performance will combine music with spoken word and other rituals. Additional details, including workshops and audience conversation events, will be announced at a later date.

"The opportunity to collaborate with the historic Apollo Theater allows ACO to project our core values - artistic excellence, community engagement, and showcasing vibrant American voices," said Derek Bermel. "Our partnership on this project - which features three new and vibrant orchestral works by Tania León, Carlos Simon and Joel Thompson - has been a year in the making, but unfortunately, the themes resonate today more urgently than ever throughout our city, country, and beyond."

The ACO EarShot New Music Readings will take place Thursday, June 17 and Friday, June 18, 2021 in New York City. Now in its 30th year, several composers from throughout the United States will be selected to receive a reading of a new work, led by ACO's Music Director George Manahan. As in the past, commission opportunities will be available to the participants.

FALL 2020 - ONLINE OFFERINGS:

Connecting ACO Community

In April 2020, ACO launched Connecting ACO Community, a commissioning initiative in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the 19 total works commissioned across Volumes 1, 2, and 3, ACO has supported artists financially; created new work that will live beyond this crisis; and provided virtual, interactive performances to ACO's supporters and the general public. Commissioned composers include Ethan Iverson, Shara Nova, Vicente Hansen Atria, Sakari Dixon Vanderveer, Gity Razaz, Yuan-Chen Li, Joseph Pereira, Karena Ingram, Krists Auznieks, Lembit Beecher, Alejandro Basulto Martinez, Tanner Porter, Vincent Calianno, and Wynton Guess. All of the performances are available on ACO's YouTube Channel.

Remaining commissionees in the series include Amina Figarova composing duo for ACO flutists Susan Palma Nidel and Laura Conwesser on August 23; Dawn Norfleet composing for vocalist/pianist Clarice Assad on August 30; Guy Mintus composing for violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins on September 13; and Brian Nabors composing for a sextet of ACO musicians (violinist Deborah Wong; violist Sandra Robbins; cellist Eugene Moye; bassoonist Harry Searing; flutist Diva Goodfriend Koven; and harpist Susan Jolles) on October 4. More information: http://bit.ly/ACOConnectVol3

Professional Development Webinars & Composer-to-Composer Talks

Beginning in October, ACO will present a series of Professional Development Webinars with the American Composers Forum, featuring panel discussions by esteemed professionals in the industry about topics including Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Entrepreneurship and Creating an Ensemble; Film Composition; Fundraising via Supportive Individuals; Programming and Digital Curation; Publishing, Self-Publishing, and Management; Recording Law and Practice; Project Production and Recording; and more. ACO will also launch a series of Composer-to-Composer Talks, featuring major American composers in conversation with each other about their work and leading a creative life. All Professional Development Webinars will be free of charge, with registration required. The Composer-to-Composer Talks will be $10 per session or all ten for $75. Registration and a full schedule of events will be available starting on September 8 at www.americancomposers.org.

Pathways - Pilot Program

In 2020, ACO launched a pilot program of Pathways, a four-year fellowship that provides training, mentorship, and a sequence of commissions for composers who have not had orchestral training. Pathways was created in response to research revealing that many composers from underrepresented groups and/or whose work is grounded in non-Western European musical traditions have an interest, but not opportunities, to write for orchestra. Pathways is a partnership between ACO, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy for Musicians (GLFCAM).

Anjna Swaminathan, a versatile artist in the field of South Indian Carnatic violin, has been selected as the pilot Pathways Fellow. In the 2020-21 season, she will complete the second year of her four-year fellowship. The Pathways program will accept its first full cohort of composers (four maximum) in 2022.

ACO Pathways is supported by a grant from the American Orchestras' Futures Fund. Created by the League of American Orchestras to support a variety of forward-thinking and experimental projects, the two-year American Orchestras' Futures Fund grants, made possible by the generous support of the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, focus on artistic vibrancy, civic engagement, and organizational vitality. ACO is one of eighteen orchestras and youth orchestras to receive grants of $30,000 each to spark a culture of innovation and learning in U.S. orchestras.

Education

ACO's education classes will continue with distance learning programs that use composition as a platform to unlock students' creativity. Sonic Spark Lab, in partnership with Harlem School of the Arts, will be offered for middle and high school students. These eight-week courses teach students to engage with their creativity, harness their curiosity, and collaborate to complete original musical works. Compose Yourself! enters its 8th year teaching high school age musicians to compose their own music. Classes help young composers develop their musical voice and learn professional notation and production standards. Both programs will be available for individual students and schools; registration will open in September 2020. More information at www.americancomposers.org/educational-programs

SPRING 2021 ONLINE AND LIVE EVENTS

ACO's Commission Club

Now in its fourth year, ACO's Commission Club invites individuals to follow the creative process from start to finish, from discussing the composer's first creative spark, through the process of composing, and finally to the premiere at Carnegie Hall. Membership fees support expenses related to composer commission fee, printing, rehearsal, and performance costs. In return, members are invited to exclusive events to interact with the artists. This season, the Club will support Lisa Bielawa's new work Sanctuary, written for violin and string orchestra featuring Jennifer Koh.

Preview events will be planned virtually online for March and April 2021 before the New York performance at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall on April 20, 2021. Membership levels include $500 Member; $300 Young Professional (40 years and younger); and $300 to Sponsor an ACO Student Composer (the tax-deductible portion of memberships are $398 and $198, respectively). More info: https://bit.ly/ACOClub

ACO and Jennifer Koh at Carnegie Hall
Tuesday, April 20, 2021 at 7:30 PM
Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall | 57th St. & 7th Ave. | NYC
George Manahan, Music Director & Conductor
Jennifer Koh, Violin
Tickets & Information: www.americancomposers.org/events/aco-jennifer-koh-at-carnegie-hall

CHRISTOPHER CERRONE: Violin Concerto, "Breaks and Breaks" (New York Premiere)
CARLOS BANDERA: Materia Prima (World Premiere, ACO Underwood New Music Readings Commission)
LISA BIELAWA: Sanctuary (New York Premiere, co-commissioned by ACO)

About the Program

Violinist Jennifer Koh's ongoing exploration of "The New American Concerto" provides the impetus for works by Christopher Cerrone and Lisa Bielawa. Koh's initiative encourages composers to engage with the issues of the day and respond to them with a violin concerto. Cerrone's Violin Concerto, "Breaks and Breaks," features intense dialogues between solo violin and orchestra as they comment on current affairs. Bielawa's work meditates on the word Sanctuary and its significance in the American consciousness. It is a deeply personal work with moving quotations of Chopin and Bach - music where Bielawa finds her own sanctuary. Carlos Bandera's Materia Prima is commissioned by ACO as a result of his 2019 Underwood New Music Readings Commission. The work considers the origin story of the universe shared across many cultures, and is described by Bandera as, "a contemplation of our fundamental sameness."

Christopher Cerrone's Violin Concerto, "Breaks and Breaks," takes its title from Stanley Kunitz's poem "The Testing Tree," which includes the lines, "In a murderous time / the heart breaks and breaks / and lives by breaking." Cerrone often found himself walking the streets of Brooklyn, repeating the line as a kind of mantra. He writes, "Everything in 2017 - personally, physically, politically - felt harder than usual. And while I am not a political artist by disposition, my work is both inherently and intentionally autobiographical, meaning: that personal is political."

Lisa Bielawa's Sanctuary explores the meaning of the word sanctuary in various contexts in the writings Bielawa discovered during her time as the 2018 William Randolph Hearst Artist Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society. She writes, "The word 'sanctuary' has new prominence and resonance in our current cultural climate. My task was simple: find instances of the use of 'sanctuary' in a broad range of American writings, in order to reach a greater understanding of its layered meaning within American consciousness. In all cases, 'sanctuary' carries a sense of the inviolable. It is used to appeal to a sense of the absolute. It appears in the rhetoric of both sides of every important American struggle: Abolition, Suffrage, Secession, Manifest Destiny, Temperance, Marriage Rights, and Civil Rights."

Carlos Bandera's Materia Prima is inspired by both the scientific and mythological explanations of our origins. Bandera writes, "When I begin working on a new piece, I often associate certain musical material with some aspect of nature, such as light or air. My aim is not to programmatically depict these aspects in the music; it is just a personal association that helps guide my creative process. When I started working on my new piece, Materia Prima, I felt that the musical materials I was coming up with had a strong association with water, and this led me to explore the mythological motif of the cosmic ocean. This motif, which appears in the creation stories of a strikingly wide variety of cultures and religions, describes a cosmic ocean of primordial, often chaotic waters from which the universe was created."

An Evening of Sound, Voice, Poetry, and Healing
Late Spring 2021
Apollo Theater | 253 W 125th St. | NYC
Co-presented by American Composers Orchestra & the Apollo Theater
George Manahan, conductor and music director
Tania León, conductor
Jonathan McCrory, co-curator and director

Program to include:
TANIA LEÓN (text by Rita Dove): Reflections for soprano and chamber ensemble
CARLOS SIMON: AMEN! (New York Premiere; orchestra version co-commissioned by ACO)
JOEL THOMPSON: Seven Last Words of the Unarmed (New York Premiere)

About the Program

ACO will partner with the Apollo Theater to co-present An Evening of Sound, Voice, Poetry, and Healing in late spring 2021, showcasing three musical works written to create space for remembrance, mourning, celebration, and reflection. Directed and co-curated by National Black Theatre Artistic Director Jonathan McCrory, with musical curation by ACO's Derek Bermel, the evening will include the New York premieres of Seven Last Words of the Unarmed by Joel Thompson and AMEN! by Carlos Simon as well as Reflections by Tania León, which sets the poetry of Rita Dove. Featuring ACO with additional instrumentalists from Black-led musical organizations and members of community and church choirs from the New York Area, the performance will combine music with spoken word and other rituals.

Joel Thompson began composing Seven Last Words of the Unarmed in 2014 after the killing of Eric Garner in Staten Island. Thompson writes, "Seven Last Words of the Unarmed wasn't written to be heard. It was essentially a sonic diary entry expressing my fear, anger, and grief in the wake of this tragedy. . . Finishing this work in early January 2015 was a much-needed catharsis; I felt exorcised of the emotions that had drained my spirit. However, Freddie Gray's death the following April urged me to try to bring Seven Last Words of the Unarmed to life. . . Liturgical settings of the Seven Last Words of Christ are not attempting to demonize the Roman soldiers that orchestrated the crucifixion, but they are designed to stir within the listener an empathy towards the suffering of Jesus. Similarly, this piece is not an anti-police protest work; it is really a meditation on the lives of these black men and an effort to focus on their humanity, which is often eradicated in the media to justify their deaths." Seven Last Words of the Unarmed was premiered in 2017 for the 20th anniversary of the Sphinx Organization.

Carlos Simon's AMEN! was commissioned by the University of Michigan Symphony Band and is an homage to Simon's family's four-generational affiliation with the Pentecostal church. Simon says of the work, "My intent is to recreate the musical experience of an African American Pentecostal church service that I enjoyed being a part of while growing up in this denomination. The title refers to the plagal cadence or 'Amen' cadence (IV-I), which is the focal point of the climax in the final movement. Along with heavily syncopated rhythms and interjecting contrapuntal lines, this cadence modulates up by half step until we reach a frenzied state, emulating a spiritually heightened state of worship." The orchestral arrangement of AMEN! was co-commissioned by ACO, the Reno Philharmonic, and Gateways Music Festival.

Tania León's Reflections is a song cycle setting the poems of Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate. León says, "The set of songs, written for female voice and mixed ensemble, is a work that weaves in and out of influences of American Music genres. Each song in the cycle portrays a different mood."

ACO EarShot New Music Readings

Thursday, June 17 and Friday, June 18, 2021 | NYC
George Manahan, music director and conductor

ACO will hold its 30th Annual New Music Readings for emerging composers in New York City in June. In what has become a rite of passage for aspiring orchestral composers, several composers from throughout the United States will be selected to receive a reading of a new work. The Readings are open to the public for a nominal admission price. A working rehearsal will be presented on Thursday, June 17, 2021; on Friday, June 18, 2021, all selected pieces will be polished and performed in their entirety, led by ACO's Music Director George Manahan. ACO's Artistic Director Derek Bermel directs the Readings.

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 career assistance. As usual, commission opportunities will be available to this year's participants.

For over a generation, ACO's New Music Readings have been providing all-important career development and public exposure to the country's most promising emerging composers, with over 150 composers participating. Readings composers have gone on to win every major composition award, including the Pulitzer, Grammy, Grawemeyer, Guggenheim, American Academy of Arts & Letters, and Rome Prizes. Orchestras around the globe have commissioned and performed hundreds of works by ACO Readings alumni. The New Music Readings have, for 30 years, served as a launch pad for composers' careers, a tradition that includes many of today's top composers, such as Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Joseph Schwantner, both of whom received Pulitzer Prizes for ACO commissions; and ACO's own Artistic Director Derek Bermel, as well as composers Lisa Bielawa, Anthony Cheung, Anna Clyne, Cindy Cox, Sebastian Currier, Jennifer Higdon, Pierre Jalbert, Aaron Jay Kernis, Hannah Lash, Ingram Marshall, Carter Pann, P.Q. Phan, Tobias Picker, Narong Prangcharoen, Paola Prestini, David Rakowski, Daniel Bernard Roumain, Christopher Rouse, Huang Ruo, Eric Samuelson, Carlos Sanchez-Guiterrez, Kate Soper, Gregory Spears, Joan Tower, Ken Ueno, Dan Visconti, Melinda Wagner, Wang Jie, Dalit Warshaw, Anthony R. Green, Randall Woolf, Nina Young, and Roger Zare.