Michael Abels: Los Angeles, CA

Composer Michael Abels will serve the Los Angeles Watts community with the Watts Towers Arts Center serving as the lead organization. He will produce works for the Watts Towers Day of the Drum and Jazz Festivals, as well as for Cornerstone Theater Company’s community-based productions. He will also compose music for the USC Symphony at the University of Southern California, under the musical direction of Jung-Ho Pak, and will work with the USC Department of Music and the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles to develop a music recording program for talented youth living in some of Watts’ public housing projects.

New York City Opera composer-in-residence Deborah Drattell will compose a one-act opera, set in New York City’s Central Park, with libretto by renowned playwright Wendy Wasserstein. The work will premiere in the Fall of 1999 and will be nationally televised on PBS’s Great Performances. Drattell will be initiating activities with young people at the F.H. La Guardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts; the Martin Luther King, Jr. High School; and the Third Street Music School Settlement. Drattell’s work with these schools will result in a number of new chamber and vocal works, as well as an opera that will be written by tenth graders at La Guardia and Martin Luther King, Jr. high Schools under her supervision. Another major feature of the residency will be a large-scale choral work that Drattell will write for a chorus comprised of students from La Guardia, Martin Luther King, Jr., Third Street Settlement, selected parents and faculty members, and City Opera singers. During the summer months, when the City Opera and the schools are closed, Drattell will be in residence at Glimmerglass Opera, where a performance of her recently completed opera, Lilith, will take place.

Gang Situ: San Francisco, CA

Composer Gang Situ will create at least five new compositions to be performed in a wide variety of settings, including concert halls, public high schools, and after-school programs serving at-risk youth. Gang will create Common Ground II, a work for the Lily Cai Chinese American Dance Company and Dimensions Dance Theater, bringing together African- and Asian-American music and dance traditions in a contemporary idiom. He will create several new pieces for the Alexander String Quartet which is Quartet-in-Residence with San Francisco Performances and San Francisco State University, and will participate with the quartet in performance and demonstrations in San Francisco public schools and at the Consortium of Community Cultural Centers. In addition, Gang will re-orchestrate his "San Francisco Suite," a synthesis and celebration of the diverse musical cultures represented by San Francisco’s Asian-American, Latino, and African- American communities. At the residency’s conclusion in the year 2000, a full-length concert featuring his new major compositions will be staged at a major San Francisco performing arts venue.

Janice Giteck: Seattle, WA

With the Jack Straw Foundation serving as the lead organization, Janice Giteck, composer, educator, and community activist, will work with new music ensemble Sonora, the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra, state correctional facility Echo Glen Children’s Center and SouthEast Effective Development (an organization supporting cultural/arts projects in Seattle’s most ethnically diverse community). Giteck’s four new compositions will include one for chamber orchestra and vocal soloists informed by creative music/word workshops with teenage girls; a full orchestra piece; a film score and performance collage on the life of visionary "outsider" artist Achilles Rizzoli; and a chamber piece featuring an ethnic string player with Sonora. Giteck and the Jack Straw Foundation, Seattle’s audio arts center, will facilitate multi-media workshops with children, regional symposiums, composer’s readings, and the creation of a compact disc with music from the residency.

Jason Kao Hwang: New York City, NY

With Asia Society serving as the lead organization, composer Jason Kao Hwang will be working in Manhattan’s Chinatown, home to the largest community of Chinese-Americans in the United States. Hwang will engage different segments of community life in Chinatown--Asian-American, Latino, African-American--and will interact with people who speak different languages and dialects, practice different religions, and represent a full range of socioeconomic backgrounds and age groups. Hwang will launch the residency by composing a body of chorale works with libretto inspired by the oral histories of community residents and archives from the Museum of  Chinese in the Americas. These works will be sung in English, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Spanish, and will be performed in outdoor venues, community centers--including the University Settlement House--and area churches which serve as primary centers for community activities. Hwang will also write compositions for his own group, The Far East Side Band, and the ensemble Music from China. Other residency activities include the creation of a book of children’s songs, as part of a music-integrated ESL (English as a Second Language) curriculum for area school children, as well as dance collaborations and radio programs.

J. Mark Scearce: Hickory, NC

Composer J. Mark Scearce, recently relocated from Honolulu to Hickory, will work with the Western Piedmont Symphony, the Hickory Public Library, the Hickory Art Museum, and the music department of Lenoir-Rhyne College to bring new music to the residents of Hickory and its outlying communities. As part of his residency, Scearce will compose works for the Symphony and for its subsidiaries--the Youth Symphony and the Western Piedmont String Quartet--including a major work for the Symphony’s In-School Concert Series. A work for the Quartet will be premiered at the Art Museum. In addition, he will work in the local school system, teaching basic composition classes. With the college, Scearce will provide support for the music and theater faculties, writing incidental music for a theater production, and works for various instrumental and vocal ensembles.