American Composers Orchestra Presents DREAMSCAPES at Carnegie Hall This April

American Composers Orchestra (ACO) continues its 2017-2018 season, under the leadership of Artistic Director Derek Bermel, Music Director George Manahan, and President Edward Yim, with Dreamscapes, on Friday, April 6, 2018 at 7:30pm at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall (57th St. and 7th Ave.).

Dreamscapes is a global celebration of musical dreams, fusing jazz, world, and classical music. It features the world premieres of The Bad Plus founding member Ethan Iverson's first orchestral work, Concerto to Scale with the composer as the piano soloist, and Steve Lehman's Ten Threshold Studies, both commissioned by ACO; and the New York premieres of Clarice Assad's Dreamscapes featuring violinist Elena Urioste, TJ Anderson's Bahia Bahia, andHitomi Oba's September Coming, which was first read at the Buffalo Philharmonic EarShot Readings led by ACO after Oba's participation in ACO's 2015 Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute.

This season ACO launched its Commission Club, through which members invest in the lifespan of a commission: from the composer's first kernel of artistic inspiration to the realization of the music as a printed score, the early rehearsals, and through the premiere performance. In 2017-2018, ACO's Commission Club has supported Ethan Iverson as he created Concerto to Scale.

Dreamscapes Concert Program:

CLARICE ASSAD: Dreamscapes for violin and chamber orchestra (New York Premiere)

STEVE LEHMAN: Ten Threshold Studies (2018, World Premiere, ACO Commission)

ETHAN IVERSON: Concerto to Scale for piano and orchestra (2018, World Premiere, ACO Commission)

TJ ANDERSON: Bahia Bahia (1991, New York Premiere)

HITOMI OBA: September Coming (2016, New York Premiere)

ACO's 2017-2018 season, titled Dreamscapes, has featured ten world, U.S., and New York premieres by a diverse set of composers. ACO has continued its concerts at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall (December 8, 2017 and April 6, 2018) while expanding its presence in New York to include a 40th Birthday Concert atJazz at Lincoln Center (November 7, 2017) and as part of the 2018 PROTOTYPE Festival (January 12-14, 2018) in Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce's Fellow Travelers. ACO continues to take its commitment to fostering new work beyond the stage in its annual Underwood New Music Readings (June 21 and 22, 2018) for emerging composers, now in its 27th year, and through EarShot, the National Orchestra Composition Discovery Network, which brings the Readings experience to orchestras across the country

In 2018-2019, ACO continues its commitment to the creation, performance, preservation, and promotion of music by American composers, with programming that reflects the infinite ways American orchestral music illustrates geographic, stylistic, gender, and racial diversity. ACO's concert at Zankel Hall on November 2, 2018 features the world premiere of Valerie Coleman's Phenomenal Women, inspired by Maya Angelou's poem and book, Phenomenal Woman. The concerto for wind quintet and orchestra will be performed by the Imani Winds with ACO, with each member featured in a solo interlude influenced by a different phenomenal woman - activist Malala Yousefai (oboe serenade), Brazilian Olympic Gold medalist Rafaela Silva (clarinet in choro style), athlete Serena Williams (bassoon virtuoso cadenza), Michelle Obama (flute with urban/jazz elements) and Hillary Clinton (horn fanfare). The concert also features the world premiere ofAlex Temple's Three Principles of Noir with singer Meaghan Burke, a piece with a time-traveling science fiction narrative centered around a Chicago historian who travels back in time to the 1893 World's Fair. This is ACO's second commission from Alex Temple. The orchestra premiered her Liebeslied in 2011 during the opening concert of its SONiC festival that year. Joan Tower's Chamber Dance, written in 2006 for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, completes the program. Chamber Dance treats the orchestra like a chamber music ensemble, and weaves together solos, duos, and other combinations of instrumentalists, creating, as Tower puts it, "an ensemble that has to 'dance' well together." On April 11, 2019 at Zankel Hall, ACO will give the U.S. premiere of Du Yun's Where We Lost Our Shadows, a new multidisciplinary work for orchestra, film, and vocalists, co-commissioned by ACO, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Southbank Centre, and Cal Performances. This is ACO's second commission from Du Yun, who created her piece Slow Portraits during ACO's coLABoratory research and development program in 2013. Du Yun is composing Where We Lost Our Shadows in response to film captured by Ramallah-based Palestinian visual artist Khaled Jarrar, which documents the refugee crisis in Europe. The piece will be performed by ACO with singer Helga Davis, Pakistani Qawwali singer Ali Sethi, and percussionist Shayna Dunkleman, with visuals by Jarrar. The concert also includes Gloria Coates' Symphony No. 1, "Music on Open Strings," from 1973, and Morton Feldman's 1980 work Turfan Fragments, inspired by a series of fragments of knotted carpets from the third and sixth centuries which were discovered in the Silk Road region.

To date, ACO has performed music by 800 American composers, including 350 world premieres and newly commissioned works. This season explores the overarching theme of dreams as an inspiration for both music itself and community created through music - celebrating ACO co-founder Francis Thorne's dream of an orchestra to champion the American composer; iconic composer Philip Glass' dream for the next generation; and the American dream of inclusiveness reflected in the infinite ways American orchestral music illustrates geographic, stylistic, gender, and racial diversity.

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