Commissioning Music/USA 2003
Chen Yi · Kansas City, MO
Commissioning Organizations:
*Virginia Arts Festival - Norfolk, VA
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center - New York, NY
Chamber Music Northwest - Portland, OR
LaJolla Chamber Music Society - LaJolla, CA
 Chen Yi |
Composer Chen Yi will compose a 15 minute duet, Chinese Ancient Dance Suite, for clarinet and piano, as well as a 10-12 minute mixed trio, Night Thoughts, for flute, cello and piano. Both pieces are to be completed at the end of 2003, for premieres in early 2004. The duet will consist of three movements based on the music of the Tang Dynasty, and the quartet will be a lyrical tone poem inspired by the ancient Chinese poet Li Po.
The Virginia Arts Festival was established in 1997 as a cultural tourism initiative by the city of Norfolk. Since then, it has presented internationally acclaimed artists from around the world for the enjoyment of visitors, residents, and students. Festival events now take place in eight different cities, and the festival has established itself as one of the premier cultural events in the Hampton Roads area and the entire Mid-Atlantic region.
Jon Deak · New York, NY
Commissioning Organization:
Tales & Scales, Inc. - Evansville, IN
Composer Jon Deak will work with writer Robert Sandberg and theater director Gary Race to create an original 45-minute score based on Homer's Odyssey. The piece, commissioned by the performing group Tales & Scales, will be told through music, voice, and movement, and is intended specifically for a family audience. Scheduled for completion in June 2003, the piece will go on tour in September for an estimated 120 performances at schools and other venues.
 Jon Deak |
Tales and Scales, Inc., founded in 1986, aims to bring new music of the highest quality to children and family audiences throughout the country. A quartet consisting of flute, clarinet, bass trombone/euphonium and percussion, Tales and Scales commissions and produces works that combine music, theater, and dance. They have performed full concert versions of these works with a number of major orchestras including the Chicago, Boston, Indianapolis, Atlanta and St. Louis Symphony Orchestras.
Anna Dembska · New York, NY
Commissioning Organization:
Opera House Arts - Stonington, ME
 Anna Dembska |
Composer Anna Dembska has been commissioned to write an hour-long chamber opera entitled The Singing Bridge with librettist Beatrix Gates. The opera, performed by four soloists and a small chorus, is due to be completed by Spring 2005. Its style reflects how stories are told and how history is shaped in the telling, and will evoke the human and natural sounds of coastal Maine.
Opera House Arts was founded in 1999 to restore the historic 1912 Stonington Opera House to its original purpose as a professional and community arts venue offering a full schedule of film, professional theater, concert, and community events. The organization produces more than 20 shows annually between Memorial Day and September 30, under the artistic direction of Judith Jerome and Carol Estey.
Paul Dresher · Berkeley, CA
Commissioning Organizations:
*Seattle Chamber Players - Seattle, WA
California EAR Unit - Castaic, CA
Present Music - Milwaukee, WI
Paul Dresher Ensemble/Musical Traditions - San Francisco, CA
 Paul Dresher |
Paul Dresher, Artistic Director of The Paul Dresher Ensemble, will create a 30-45 minute musical theater chamber work based on the Italo Calvino short story A King Listens, intended as a companion piece to the classic Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies.
Scored for solo tenor (John Duykers) and small ensemble, the Calvino story will be inspired by "the broad outlines of the narrative and the focus on experiencing the world through the medium of sound," according to the composer. Due for completion in September 2004, the theatrical work will be performed by the consortium members during the 2004-2005 season.
Seattle Chamber Players has developed a strong local following and a growing reputation for the advancement of chamber music over the past 13 years. Past and present programming includes a focus on the music of Shostakovich, the Jewish Diaspora, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Copland, and Schubert. The ensemble's four core players are dedicated to championing new works by living American composers, and invite collaborations with a variety of composers and performers.
Michael Gordon · New York, NY
Commissioning Organization:
California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) - Valencia, CA
 Michael Gordon |
What to Wear?, to be composed by Michael Gordon with a libretto by Richard Foreman, is a 26 scene non-narrative music-theater piece presented as a pageant-like fashion show. Ensemble Modern of Frankfurt, Germany, will perform the piece with four singers, eight actor/singers, and 12-14 musicians.
Mr. Gordon, founder of the Bang on a Can Festival in New York, and Mr. Foreman, founding director of New York's Ontological-Hysteric Theater, will complete a draft of the work in December 2003 for a premiere in 2004. Following the Los Angeles premiere, What to Wear? will be performed at The Kitchen in New York City.
The Center for New Theater at California Institute for the Arts (CalArts), which will produce Michael Gordon's new work, was conceived to provide a home for the creation of alternative theater and cross-disciplinary work. The Center's recent site-specific production of King Lear, produced during the summer of 2002, received international acclaim and is under consideration by several European festivals.
As CalArts prepares for the opening of their new theater in downtown Los Angeles, the Center is expanding its activities and has launched a music-theater program in partnership with A.S.K. Theater Projects.
Fred Ho · Brooklyn, NY
Commissioning Organization:
Imani Winds - New York, NY
 Fred Ho photo: Jack Mitchell |
Composer and musician Fred Ho has been commissioned by Imani Winds, the first all African-American wind quintet, to write a 15-20 minute multi-movement suite: Josephine Baker's Angels from the Rainbow. The piece, scored for flute, oboe/English horn, bassoon, French horn, and clarinet, aims to evoke the "bold, colorful, and passionate spirit of Josephine Baker." Due to premiere in early 2004, the suite will be performed at a variety of venues.
Featuring five outstanding musicians of African-American and Latin heritage, the members of Imani Winds joined forces in 1996. The quintet bridges European and African musical traditions, exploring a repertoire from extremely diverse cultural backgrounds.
Imani Winds enjoyed their second international tour with saxophonist Steve Coleman in the summer of 2001, and have won the Artists International Annual New York Debut Prize and a position in the roster of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Kamran Ince · Memphis, TN
Commissioning Organization:
Relâche, Inc. - Philadelphia, PA
 Kamran Ince |
Composer Kamran Ince will write a 15 minute piece for the eight member Relâche Ensemble. The piece will be featured on the ensemble's 2003-2004 main concert series Future Sounds, which focuses on different approaches to inter-cultural exchange with Western "art" music.
Mr. Ince, whose music reflects both his Western classical training and a connection to the traditional music of his native Turkey, is interested in creating a piece which exploits the varied textures of the Relâche Ensemble.
Since its founding in 1979, the 8-member Relâche Ensemble has defined its image and aesthetic around the "downtown" new music repertoire. Through commissioning new work and seeking extant works by living composers, the classically-trained ensemble supports an annual season of public concerts, educational programs, touring, residencies, and recording projects. Their repertoire embraces the breadth of contemporary music culture, incorporating aspects of jazz, rock, popular and world music, electronic and avant garde idioms.
Phil Kline · New York, NY
Commissioning Organization:
Talujon Percussion Quartet - New York, NY
 Phil Kline |
Violinist Todd Reynolds and the Talujon Percussion Quartet will premiere composer Phil Kline's new 30 minute work Locus Solus. With a title taken from Raymond Roussel's surrealist novel, the work will feature amplification and electronic effects which allow the performers to record lines they have just played and immediately play them back. The projected premiere will take place at Symphony Space in New York City in October 2004, with subsequent performances in Philadelphia, Chicago, San Diego, and other cities.
Talujon Percussion Quartet, founded in 1990, is committed to the expansion of the contemporary percussion repertoire as well as the education and diversification of its worldwide audience.
Based in New York City, Talujon performs regularly at Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, The Kitchen, and the Knitting Factory. For the Carnegie Hall/Fleet Bank Neighborhood Concerts series, Talujon developed the program "A World of Influences," which incorporates Talujon group compositions featuring homemade instruments and traditional instruments from six continents.
David Lang · New York, NY
Commissioning Organizations:
*Carnegie Hall - New York, NY
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts - Washington, DC
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts - Urbana, IL
On the Boards - Behnke Center for Contemporary Performance - Seattle, WA
 David Lang photo: Robert Lewis |
Composer David Lang's World to Come is a post-apocalyptic spiritual environment for solo cello, electronics, video monitors, and theatrical lighting, to be written specifically for cellist Maya Beiser. The 30-minute piece will be based in part on Jewish mystical texts about the afterlife, and addresses Mr. Lang's experiences of the deaths of those close to him. Scheduled for premiere in October 2003, the performance of this new work is a key component to the opening of Carnegie Hall's new Zankel Hall.
Carnegie Hall, built by Andrew Carnegie in 1891, attracts almost 300,000 attendees annually from around the world. Each season, it presents a range of series including the International Festival of Orchestras, Great American Orchestras, Violin Virtuosos, Keyboard Virtuosos, Great Singers, and the artist-driven Perspectives series. A focus on music education and outreach gives individuals access to Carnegie Hall's diverse resources through comprehensive educational programs.
With the opening of Judy and Arthur Zankel Hall in 2003, Carnegie Hall will assume an even greater role for artistic innovation and program development.
Alvin Lucier · Middletown, CT
Commissioning Organization:
Engine 27 - New York, NY
 Alvin Lucier photo: Amanda Lucier |
Alvin Lucier's new composition for Engine 27 will be a 21-minute work for violin, viola, cello, flute, clarinet, french horn, bassoon, and soprano, in conjunction with a 16-channel digital delay and reverberation system. Mr. Lucier will work closely with the NY-based Ensemble Sospeso on this site-specific recording, as well as an Engine 27 programmer and engineer. Throughout May 2004, the piece will be presented in the Engine 27 gallery.
Engine 27 is a non-profit sound art gallery founded by Jack Weisberg in 2000. The space functions as a research laboratory, an artists' studio, and a public venue for installations, lectures, performances and presentations. Artists, either commissioned or selected by jury, compose multi-channel sound works for public presentation in the gallery. Engine 27 invites artists from a wide range of musical genres, either emerging or masters in their field, to participate in their Artist-in-Residence program and create new sound work.
Harold Meltzer · New York, NY
Commissioning Organization:
The Peabody Trio - Louisville, CO
 Harold Meltzer |
Based on a short story by Donald Barthelme, composer Harold Meltzer's new 20-minute work Sinbad will feature a narrated text, with music performed by the Peabody Trio (piano, violin, and cello). The Trio intends to use several different actors for the narrator role, including British actor Walter van Dyk. The premiere is scheduled for October 2003 as part of the Lively Arts Series at Stanford University. Additional performances are scheduled for San Francisco Performances, the Yellow Barn Music Festival in Putney, Vermont, and the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.
The Peabody Trio, violinist Violaine Melancon, cellist Natasha Brofsky, and pianist Seth Knopp, stands out for being dedicated to new music. In recent seasons, its members have premiered new works not only by leading composers such as Shulamit Ran and Zhou Long, but also by emerging composers like Matthew Burtner, Steven Burke, and Stephen Coxe.
In the last several years, the trio has gravitated toward integrating music theater into its performances, pursuing projects with Aaron Jay Kernis, Osvaldo Golijov, and David Henry Hwang.
Todd Reynolds · Sunnyside, NY
Commissioning Organization:
Ethel's Foundation for the Arts - New York, NY
 Todd Reynolds photo: Gerard Barnier |
Composer Todd Reynolds will create a four-movement, 20-minute piece entitled doh.... A recorded track composed of various elements from Ethel rehearsals-including conversations, laughter, speech, and ambient noise-will run consistently throughout the entire work, behind the music of the Ethel string quartet. A theatrical element of the work will articulate the individual personalities of each of the players. A premiere is planned for October 2003 at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, as part of the "Fresh Ink" series.
Ethel is a 21st-century incarnation of the classical string quartet model featuring uptown and downtown performing artists Ralph Farris (viola), Dorothy Lawson (cello), Todd Reynolds (violin), and Mary Rowell (violin).
Formed in 1998, Ethel explores new possibilities in string quartet performance and forges a repertoire unencumbered by convention, genre, or style. Ethel has worked with some of the most exciting composers of today, including John King, Evan Ziporyn, Joe Jackson, Steve Coleman, Mel Graves, and Benny Wallace.
Terry Riley · Richmond, CA
Commissioning Organization:
Kronos Performing Arts Association/Kronos Quartet - San Francisco, CA
 Terry Riley |
On the occasion of his 70th birthday, Kronos Quartet has commissioned composer Terry Riley to write a commemorative sextet which features the members of Kronos, acclaimed pipa virtuoso Wu Man, and Mr. Riley himself as vocalist/keyboardist.
The piece represents Mr. Riley's 15th collaboration with Kronos, but will be the first time he performs on stage with the group. The new composition will premiere in June 2005 at the University of California at Berkeley, presented by Cal Performances.
Kronos Quartet, founded in 1973, has assembled a body of work unparalleled in its range and scope of expression, and in the process has captured the attention of audiences worldwide. Kronos has been commissioning new work since its earliest days, and more than 450 pieces have been written or arranged for the group. The group's members, Jennifer Culp (cello), Hank Dutt (viola), David Harrington (violin), and John Sherpa (violin), perform together in many cities and tour extensively with more than 80 concerts each year in concert halls, clubs, and at jazz festivals throughout the world.
Matthew Rosenblum · Pittsburgh, PA
Commissioning Organizations:
* Sequitur New Music Ensemble - New York, NY
Opera Theater of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh, PA
Miller Theatre - New York, NY
 Matthew Rosenblum |
Composer Matthew Rosenblum will write a 60 minute music theater piece blending recorded audio and video with the live performance of three singers, a dancer, and 18 musicians. Spoken and sung words will be mixed with electronic and acoustic instrumentation. Primary texts for the piece are drawn from the writings of Gertrude Stein, Tang xian-tzu, and various DaDa authors. The premiere will take place in Fall 2005 at NYC's Miller Theatre.
In just six seasons, Sequitur New Music Ensemble has grown from a small ensemble to a group with a core of 12 members. The ensemble has given more than 30 world premieres by such composers as Tania León, Frederic Rzewski, Martin Bresnick, Anne LeBaron, David Del Tredeci, Eve Beglarian, Lewis Spratlan, David Lang, and Randy Woolf. The group's performance venues include Alice Tully Hall, Miller Theatre, Merkin Concert Hall, Theater 80 St. Marks, and the Kaye Playhouse.
Joan Tower · Red Hook, NY
Commissioning Organization:
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra - New York, NY
 Joan Tower |
Composer Joan Tower will write a new piece for chamber orchestra, to be completed in October 2005. The 15-20 minute work will, as is customary with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, be performed without a conductor. Ms. Tower will utilize the strengths of Orpheus as an orchestra essentially made up of soloists. The premiere is tentatively scheduled for February 2006, and the New York premiere will take place at Carnegie Hall shortly thereafter.
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is celebrating its 30th season of concert activity spanning three continents. Founded in 1972 by cellist Julian Fifer and a group of fellow musicians, Orpheus performs orchestral repertoire as chamber music through their own close collaborative efforts, and without a conductor.
Individual Orpheus musicians have received recognition for solo, chamber music, and orchestral performances, and each of the 18 string and 10 wind players brings a diversity of musical experience to the orchestra. The centerpiece of the Orpheus performance season is its five concert series at Carnegie Hall, the orchestra's official New York home.
Melinda Wagner · Ridgewood, NJ
Commissioning Organization:
Network for New Music - Philadelphia, PA
 Melinda Wagner Photo: Steve Singer |
The Network for New Music has commissioned composer Melinda Wagner to write a 15-20 minute chamber work for violin, cello, piano, and clarinet. After the premiere of the composition in April 2004, it will receive further performances at Princeton University, and two Pennsylvania high schools as part of an ongoing educational program presented by Network for New Music. Ms. Wagner has worked with Network for New Music on several occasions in the past, and the organization plans to record this new work upon its completion.
In its almost 20-year history, Network for New Music has performed, presented, or commissioned more than 450 new works. Unique among contemporary music organizations in Philadelphia, Network for New Music programs serious music of all styles, the sole criteria being high artistic standards. The organization recently received the prestigious 2001 ASCAP First Prize Award for Adventurous Programming.
Carolyn Yarnell · Laguna Hills, CA
Commissioning Organization:
Margaret Lancaster - New York, NY
Flutist Margaret Lancaster has commissioned composer Carolyn Yarnell to write a multidisciplinary piece for solo performer, accompanied by multi-tracked flute, piccolo, alto and bass flute. The 15-20 minute work includes a theatrical aspect, incorporating text, acting, vocals, and dance. It will be completed by December 2003 and premiere in Spring 2004.
 Carolyn Yarnell |
Margaret Lancaster has built a large repertoire of new works that employ extended techniques, dance, drama, multi-media, and electronics. Composers she has worked with include Milton Babbitt, Larry Polansky, Jon Appleton, Steve Mackey, Gerhard Stabler, Christian Wolff, and Jo Kondo.
Ms. Lancaster is a member of Essential Music and the DownTown Ensemble, and is a recurring performer at the Spoleto Festival USA, BONK Festival of New Music, Three Two Festival, and Santa Fe New Music. Current collaborations include the Common Sense Composers Collaborative and The Bilitis Project with composers Eve Beglarian and Phil Kline.
* denotes lead organization
