American Composers Orchestra Opens Season at Carnegie Hall With THE NATURAL ORDER

American Composers Orchestra (ACO) opens its 2022-2023 season, under the leadership of Artistic Director Derek Bermel and President Melissa Ngan, at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall with The Natural Order, on Thursday, October 20, 2022 at 7:30pm. The Natural Order explores humankind's relationship to the Earth in an age of climate anxiety. The performance will be conducted by Mei-Ann Chen and features the Attacca Quartet, Sandbox Percussion, and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler.

 

The Natural Order includes the New York premiere of Mark Adamo's Last Year, a dystopian reflection on Vivaldi's Four Seasons co-commissioned by ACO for cello soloist Jeffrey Zeigler and the American Composers Orchestra, including ACO musicians Miho Saegusa (Aizuri Quartet), Edward W. Hardy (The Woodsman), Monica Ellis and Brandon Patrick George (Imani Winds). Viet Cuong's highly charged re(new)al is a concerto for Sandbox Percussion, inspired by the power of hydro, wind, and solar energies. inti figgis-vizueta's Seven Sides of Fire, written for the Attacca Quartet and ACO, explores the current wildfire crisis through the lens of American Indigenous fire ecology and traditions. Yvette Janine Jackson's Hello, Tomorrow! for orchestra and electronics builds on her previous electroacoustic radio operas and invites listeners to draw upon their own experiences to construct a narrative. The Natural Order grapples with the centuries-long struggle to harmonize with Mother Nature sharing both apocalyptic and aspirational visions of humanity's future. Read more background about the program and composers >

 

ACO Artistic Director Derek Bermel says of the program, "As our climate continues to shift unpredictably and the whole world grapples with 'weird weather,' creative artists have turned their attention to the power, abstraction, and ritual inherent in humanity's relationship with nature. This concert asks: in this moment, what are the stories we can tell-the questions we can ask-through music?"

 

Both inti figgis-vizueta and Yvette Janine Jackson's works that will be premiered on October 20 are being developed in ACO's newly re-launched EarShot CoLABoratory program (which previously ran from 2007-2016). Fellows in the program participate in collaborative sessions with ACO musicians to workshop musical ideas and facilitate co-learning and engage in ACO's artistic curation and educational and community-focused programming. This season's Fellows also include Trevor New and Mendi & Keith Obadike, whose works will be premiered on concerts later in ACO's season. EarShot CoLABoratory advances the work of composers whose work is experimental or rooted in musical traditions underrepresented in orchestral repertoire. The program addresses systemic barriers within orchestral commissioning, providing a gateway to the field and a generative environment for composers from diverse musical backgrounds to create definition-expanding work for orchestra. The public will have the opportunity to hear the Fellow's works-in-progress at an EarShot CoLABoratory Open Workshop with ACO musicians on October 4, 2022 at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music. Glenn Alexander II will conduct this CoLABoratory Workshop, and will also be the cover conductor for ACO's October 20 concert at Carnegie Hall. Read more about ACO's EarShot CoLABoratory program >

 

ACO is dedicated to the creation, celebration, performance, and promotion of orchestral music by American composers, with a commitment to diversity, disruption, and discovery. This season's slate of performances includes eight premieres of new works by American composers, as well as the re-launch of ACO's EarShot CoLABoratory workshop program; the continuation of ACO's national EarShot Readings program for emerging composers with orchestras across the country; and its Sonic Spark Education program reaching at least 500 students in New York City schools.

 

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