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For
Carnegie Hall performances,
call CarnegieCharge at
212-247-7800
or
visit www.carnegiehall.org
For
Philadelphia performances, call Penn Presents at
215-898-3900
or
visit www.pennpresents.org
home
concert
schedule
Hybridity
Oct.
19 & 21, 2007
Culture
Shock
Feb.
8 & 10, 2008
Playing
it UNsafe
April
25 & 27, 2008
New
Music Readings
Orchestra
Underground Tour
For
Carnegie Hall performances,
call CarnegieCharge at
212-247-7800
or
visit www.carnegiehall.org
For
Philadelphia performances, call Penn Presents at
215-898-3900
or
visit www.pennpresents.org
home
concert
schedule
top
Hybridity
Oct.
19 & 21, 2007
Culture
Shock
Feb.
8 & 10, 2008
Playing
it UNsafe
April
25 & 27, 2008
New
Music Readings
Orchestra
Underground Tour
For
Carnegie Hall performances,
call CarnegieCharge at
212-247-7800
or
visit www.carnegiehall.org
For
Philadelphia performances, call Penn Presents at
215-898-3900
or
visit www.pennpresents.org
home
concert
schedule
top
Hybridity
Oct.
19 & 21, 2007
Culture
Shock
Feb.
8 & 10, 2008
Playing
it UNsafe
April
25 & 27, 2008
New
Music Readings
Orchestra
Underground Tour
For
Carnegie Hall performances,
call CarnegieCharge at
212-247-7800
or
visit www.carnegiehall.org
For
Philadelphia performances, call Penn Presents at
215-898-3900
or
visit www.pennpresents.org
home
concert
schedule
top
Hybridity
Oct.
19 & 21, 2007
Culture
Shock
Feb.
8 & 10, 2008
Playing
it UNsafe
April
25 & 27, 2008
New
Music Readings
Orchestra
Underground Tour
For
Carnegie Hall performances,
call CarnegieCharge at
212-247-7800
or
visit www.carnegiehall.org
For
Philadelphia performances, call Penn Presents at
215-898-3900
or
visit www.pennpresents.org
home
concert
schedule
top
Hybridity
Oct.
19 & 21, 2007
Culture
Shock
Feb.
8 & 10, 2008
Playing
it UNsafe
April
25 & 27, 2008
New
Music Readings
Orchestra
Underground Tour
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ACO
'Underground & UNsafe'
in 2007-2008
Season
Focuses on Pioneering Composer-Performers with Seven World Premieres
and Laboratory
for Experimental New Works by American Composers
 American
Composers Orchestra announces its 2007-08 concert season, its 31st
year as the nation's most unwavering champion of inventive new
American orchestral music. The new season, devoted to works for ACO's
groundbreaking Orchestra Underground, expands on a composer-performer
focus, mixing solo and orchestral material with the full range of
cultural and artistic influences available to today's composing minds
and ears.
ACO's 2007-08
season will include three concerts, presented by Carnegie Hall, in
Zankel Hall, with three repeat performances at the Annenberg Center
for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, and the orchestra's 17th
annual Underwood New Music Readings for Emerging Composers. Seven
commissions and world premieres, as well as several New York and
Philadelphia premieres will be heard on programs titled Hybridity,
Culture Shock, and Playing
it UNsafe, with works by composer-percussionist Susie
Ibarra and painter Makoto Fujimura,
composer-saxophonist Steve Coleman,
composer-guitarist Scott Johnson, and
composer-saxophonist Ken Thomson with the
notorious Brooklyn-born punk-jazz band Gutbucket,
composer-pianist Uri Caine, composer-Irish
fiddler Evan Chambers, composer-gamelanist Michael
Tenzer, composer-keyboard/vocalist Terry Riley,
and composer-bassist Charles Mingus.
ACO's newest
program, Playing it UNsafe, is a
laboratory for the creation, development and performance of
experimental new works by American composers. The program addresses
the pressures often encountered by composers writing new works for
orchestra that inhibit risk-taking and encourage a "play it
safe" approach. "With Playing it UNsafe, composers are
being encouraged try-out new ideas, extend working methods conceived
in other musical settings to the orchestra, establish new
collaborations with artistic partners, or showcase a new piece in
development," says ACO artistic director Robert Beaser. The
program includes several days of rehearsal, public workshop/readings
and a culminating performance. Since, ACO launched Orchestra
Underground in 2004, the series has played to sold-out houses and
attracted new listeners, stretching the definition of the symphony
orchestra through non-traditional instrumentation and spatial
orientations, technological innovation, and multimedia collaborations.
"This ACO
season, more than any in our history, pushes ACO further in its role
as catalyst," says ACO executive director Michael Geller.
"Each of ACO's programs is focused on innovation, and creating
new opportunities for American composers -- fulfilling an important
'research and development' role for orchestral music field."
Orchestra
Underground: Hybridity
Friday,
Oct. 19, 2007 at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, NYC
Sunday,
Oct. 21, 2007 at Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia
Friday, October
19, 2007 at 7:30pm in Zankel Hall, ACO kicks-off its season with its
first Orchestra Underground concert. Four newly commissioned world
premieres by composer-percussionist Susie Ibarra,
composer-saxophonist Steve Coleman, composer-guitarist
Scott Johnson, and composer-saxophonist Ken
Thomson, as well as rarely-performed music by Charles
Mingus, display Orchestra Underground's capacity for flexibility
and fusion. Continuing ACO's forays into multidisciplinary
collaboration, the concert includes projections designed by painter Makoto
Fujimura and Brooklyn's notorious punk-jazz band Gutbucket,
performing as special guest ensemble. ACO's Principal Guest
conductor Steven Sloane will conduct.
 After
her critically-acclaimed solo performance on ACO's Orchestra
Underground's 2006-2007 season at Carnegie Hall and the Annenberg
Center, Susie Ibarra returns with a concerto for drums and
orchestra entitled Pintados Dream (The Painted's Dream), which
she describes as "an homage to the indigenous people of Japan
and the Philippine Islands," that tells the story of "their
ancestral heritage as warriors, spiritualists, humanists and
artists." Created in collaboration with painter Makoto Fujimura,
Pintados Dream will feature projections that have the
capacity to interact with the performance, and sometimes play center
stage, while other times contributing to the narrative. Ms. Ibarra
has been nominated "Best Drummer" by Village Voice,
Downbeat, Jazziz and The Wire. She currently performs solo
works and with the Susie Ibarra Trio, with Jennifer Choi and Craig
Taborn; Mephista, collective electro-acoustic trio with Sylvie
Courvoisier and Ikue Mori; Shapechanger with poet Yusef Komunyakaa;
Mark Dresser and the Susie Ibarra Duo; and Filipino trance music,
with Roberto Rodriguez, Electric Kulintang. Educated bi-culturally
between the US and Japan, Makoto Fujimura's paintings have been
exhibited all over the world. He was honored in 1992 as the youngest
artist ever to have had a piece acquired by Museum of Contemporary
Art, Tokyo. His paintings address the creative process and what it
means to see.
 ACO
has commissioned Steve Coleman to write a work for Alto
Saxophone and Orchestra, entitled The Illusion of Body. In
this piece, he continues to explore the concepts of M-BASE, a musical
philosophy that "expresses our experiences through music that
uses improvisation and structure as two of its main ingredients."
Early in his career -- after hearing groups from New York led by
masters like Max Roach, Art Blakey, Woody Shaw, The Thad Jones-Mel
Lewis Orchestra and Sonny Rollins come through his native Chicago --
Mr. Coleman knew where he wanted to go next. He soon hitchhiked
cross-country to New York, where he has since built a legacy of
projects involving creative expression and the exchange of
information from international artists. In 1999, Steve Coleman was
commissioned by IRCAM to write a piece featuring his band, Steve
Coleman and Five Elements, interacting with his own computer software
program. In 2000-2001 he withdrew from performing/recording and began
a study sabbatical. During this time he traveled extensively to
India, Indonesia, Cuba and Brazil, and continued much of his research
as a music professor at the University of California at Berkeley's
Center for New Music and Technology.
 Pioneering
postmodernist Scott Johnson, known for blending the DNA of
chamber music and rock bands in scores for mixed electro-acoustic
ensembles, will appear as electric guitar soloist in his first work
for orchestra, Stalking Horse. Based on Rent Party, a
1994 chamber work, the guitar and orchestra will meet on a syncopated
terrain of transformed popular dance rhythms. Trained in both music
and visual arts at the University of Wisconsin, Johnson has sought to
forge a new relationship between classical tradition and the popular
culture that surrounds it. Since the early 1980's, he has played an
influential role in the trend towards incorporating rock-derived
instrumentation into traditionally scored compositions, and has often
used taped, sampled and MIDI-controlled electronic elements within
instrumental ensembles. His music has been heard in performances by
the Kronos Quartet and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and his own
ensembles; in dance works performed by the Boston Ballet, the London
Contemporary Dance Theater, and the Ballets de Monte Carlo; in Paul
Schrader's film Patty Hearst; and in recordings on the Nonesuch, CRI,
and Point labels.
 Brooklyn-based
clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer Ken Thomson plays
saxophone and writes for the NY-based punk/jazz band Gutbucket, with
whom he has toured internationally to eighteen countries and 32
states in seven years. Mr. Thomson's ACO-commission will present a
world premiere for Gutbucket and ACO. Thomson is a founding member of
Anti-Social Music, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting
the work of emerging composers. His compositions have been performed
at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival/Institute, Anti-Social Music
concerts, at the Saalfelden Jazz Festival. As an instrumentalist, he
has also performed in a variety of jazz, rock, classical chamber
music and other settings, including with the chamber orchestra Alarm
Will Sound, Bang on a Can, and So Percussion, and is a member of the
punk/cabaret band World/Inferno Friendship Society and klezmer duo,
Bop Kaballah. Flitting from hard rock to Latin to thrash to klezmer
and back, often within the space of a few bars, Gutbucket veritably
attacks their music with the kind of ferocity usually reserved for
punk, despite having earned their jazz bona fides. In seven years,
they have engaged in numerous projects -- many of them more akin to
the art-rock stage antics of The Flaming Lips or Phish than the
somber-minded blowing of the downtown atonalists. Gutbucket is Ty
Citerman (guitar), Ken Thomson (saxophone), Eric Rockwin (bass) and
Paul Chuffo (drums).
 One
of the most important figures in 20th-century American music, Charles
Mingus was a virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist,
bandleader and composer. He played and recorded with the leading
musicians of the 1950's -- Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell,
Art Tatum and Duke Ellington. It was the presentation of Revelations,
which combined jazz and classical idioms, at the 1955 Brandeis
Festival of the Creative Arts that established him as a seminal
figure in the development of the Third Stream. From the 1960's until
his death in 1979 at age 56, Mingus remained in the forefront of
American music.
Orchestra
Underground: Culture Shock
Friday,
February 8, 2008 at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, NYC
Sunday,
February 10, 2008 at Annenberg Center, Philadelphia
ACO's Orchestra
Underground returns to Zankel Hall on Friday, February 8, 2008 at
7:30pm, with a line-up of visionary composers known to follow their
inspirations far and wide around the globe. This installment of
Orchestra Underground, aptly entitled "Culture Shock",
features world premieres by composer-pianist Uri Caine,
composer-saxophonist Fred Ho and composer-gamelanist
Michael Tenzer. Terry Riley joins
ACO for the New York premiere of his Remember This O Mind.
 Uri
Caine's new work for improvised piano and orchestra will feature
him "playing with the group, playing against the group, playing
in two parallel universes, darting in and out — to take
advantage of the ideas, colors, and spontaneity of being an
improvising composer." This multi-movement, improvised mini-concerto
for improvised piano will showcase Caine's eclectic array of
disciplines and influences, which rest firmly on the bedrock of his
classical and jazz training. Caine was born in Philadelphia and began
studying piano with Bernard Peiffer. He played in bands led by Philly
Joe Jones, Johnny Coles, Mickey Roker, Odean Pope, Bootsie Barnes and
Grover Washington. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and
studied music composition with George Rochberg and George Crumb. In
2006 he was named composer-in-residence with the Los Angeles Chamber
Orchestra. He has received grants from the Pennsylvania Council on
the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pew Foundation.
He has performed at jazz festivals including The North Sea Jazz
Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, JVC
Festival, San Sebastian Jazz Festival, Vittoria Jazz Festival,
Newport Jazz Festival, as well as classical festivals including The
Salzburg Festival, Munich Opera, Holland Festival, Israel Festival,
IRCAM, and Great Performers at Lincoln Center.
Evan
Chambers' Concerto for Fiddle and Violin features two soloists
playing the violin in two very different styles: Irish fiddle and
classical violin. Rather than pitting the two against each other as
in a traditional double concerto, Chambers sets the fiddle player and
violinist as two complementary halves of a personality-the soloists
and the orchestra support each other and take the lead, in turn,
without conflict. At the center of the piece, however, lies an
essential tension between the two brands of virtuosity. The work is
founded on the contrasts in inflection, timbre, rhythm, and
articulation that exist between traditional folk and classical styles
at the same time that it strives to integrate them. In this
performance, the composer will play the Irish fiddle half of the
personality with ACO concertmaster Eva Gruesser as the classical half.
 Complex
interlocking rhythms played on two lap-held, double-skinned hand
drums are the inner motor driving the precision compositions of the
Balinese gamelan. What happens when a composer transplants them
intact to the soil of a Western orchestra? In Resolution/Tabuh Gari,
composer Michael Tenzer -- a performer and gamelan scholar
for nearly three decades -- aims for a deep fusion of concept and
sound that celebrates the music of both traditions. Performing
together with Balinese musician Wayan Sudirana, Tenzer creates
a meticulous music that compromises neither of its sources but also
stands its own ground. Tenzer studied music at Yale University and
University of California, Berkeley. Tenzer's compositions for
chamber, solo and orchestral media have been performed in North
America, Europe, and Asia, featuring performers such as Pandit Swapan
Chaudhuri, Alex Klein and Evan Ziporyn. In 1979, Tenzer co-founded
the Sekar Jaya gamelan ensemble in Berkeley, California.
 Remember
This O Mind, written in 1980, represents Terry Riley's
singular fusion of Western improvisational techniques for voice and
keyboard with the traditional art of classical Indian raga. Born in
Colfax, California, Riley studied at Shasta College, San Francisco
State University, and the San Francisco Conservatory, before earning
an MA in composition at the University of California, Berkeley,
studying with Seymour Shifrin and Robert Erickson. His most
influential teacher, however, was Pandit Pran Nath, a master of
Indian classical voice. Riley launched what is now known as the
Minimalist movement with his revolutionary classic In C in
1964, the influence of which has been heard in the works of prominent
composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams as well
as in the music of rock groups such as The Who, The Soft Machine,
Tangerine Dream, and Curved Air. He wrote his first orchestral piece,
Jade Palace, in 1991, and has continued to pursue that avenue, with
several commissioned orchestral compositions following. ACO performs
the New York premiere of Remember This O Mind, in an updated
version for strings, with the composer as keyboard and vocal soloist.
Orchestra
Underground: Playing it UNsafe
Friday,
April 25, 2008 at Zankel Hall, NYC
Sunday
April 27, 2008 at Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia
 ACO's
newest program, Playing it UNsafe, is a laboratory for the
creation, reading and performance of experimental new works by
American composers. Expanding upon ACO's new music readings and
Orchestra Underground performances, the program has been created to
encourage composers to experiment and stretch their own musical
sensibilities by developing new works (or works-in-progress) that
expand the range of possibilities for -- and challenge conventional
notions about -- orchestral music.
The program will
include several days of rehearsal and public workshop/readings with
ACO's Orchestra Underground April 22 - 27, 2008 with conductor
Jeffrey Milarsky, culminating in workshop performances at the
Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia and at
Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.
Up to six
composers will be selected for participation in Playing it UNsafe.
Composers at any stage of their careers have been invited to apply
(deadline, Aug. 1), and ACO's artistic staff will select the
participating composers this Fall. More information is available at www.americancomposers.org/unsafe/.
Orchestra
Underground Tour & Philadelphia Residency
ACO enters into
the third year of its residency at the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, bringing its Orchestra Underground concerts to the
Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The residency
represents ACO's first performances outside of New York City in over
22 years, and includes master classes, outreach activities, new music
readings and special laboratory performances. The residency is made
possible by The Philadelphia Music Project, an Artistic Initiative of
The Pew Charitable Trusts, administered by The University of the Arts.
Underwood
New Music Readings
Tuesday,
May 6 & Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at Skirball Center for Performing
Arts at NYU
 ACO
will hold its 17th Annual Underwood New Music Readings for
emerging composers May 6 & 7, 2008 at the Skirball Center for
Performing Arts at NYU. In what has become a rite-of-passage for
aspiring orchestral composers, up to ten composers from throughout
the United States will be selected to receive a reading of a new
work, and one composer will be selected to receive a $15,000
commission for a work to be performed by ACO during an upcoming
season. Each participating composer receives a rehearsal, reading and
a digital recording of his or her work. Review and feedback sessions
with ACO principal players, mentor-composers and guest conductors
provide crucial artistic, technical and conceptual assistance. To
date, over 100 composers have participated in the New Music Readings,
including such award-winning composers as Melinda Wagner, Derek
Bermel, Randall Woolf, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Jennifer Higdon.
The Underwood New
Music Readings are made possible with a leadership grant from Paul
Underwood, with additional support from the Helen F. Whitaker Fund,
the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the Fromm Foundation. The
proceedings are open to the public free of charge. ACO's artistic
director, Robert Beaser, directs the readings. The deadline for
composers interested in applying to the Underwood New Music Readings
is November 16, 2007. Application guidelines and other information
are available at www.americancomposers.org/nmr/.
Tickets
& Info
Tickets for
performances at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall are $36 and $46.
Subscriptions are also available. For tickets, call CarnegieCharge at
212-247-7800, go online at www.carnegiehall.org,
or visit the Carnegie Hall box office at 154 West 57th Street at 7th Ave.
For ACO's series
at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia,
subscriptions and tickets are available by calling 215-898-3900 or
online at www.pennpresents.org.
Major support of
American Composers Orchestra is provided by ACO's Inner Circle,
American Symphony Orchestra League, Amphion Foundation, Argosy
Contemporary Music Fund, Arlington Associates, ASCAP, ASCAP
Foundation, Bay and Paul Foundations, BMI, BMI Foundation, NY City
Council Member Gale A. Brewer, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust,
Citigroup Foundation, Edward T. Cone Foundation, Consolidated Edison,
Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia
University, Fidelity Foundation, Fromm Music Foundation, Ann and
Gordon Getty Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts,
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, The Irving
Harris Foundation, The Henfield Foundation, Victor Herbert
Foundation, Jephson Educational Trust, Jerome Foundation, The J.M.
Kaplan Fund, John and Evelyn Kossak Foundation, Manhattan Borough
President Scott Stringer, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Neil
Family Fund, The New York Community Trust, The New York State Music
Fund established by the New York State Attorney General at
Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, The
Rodgers Family Foundation, Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels
Foundation, The Susan and Ford Schumann Foundation, Emma A. Sheafer
Charitable Trust, Virgil Thomson Foundation, Paul Underwood, The
Sonata and Watchdog Charitable Trusts, The Isak and Rose Weinman
Foundation and The Helen F. Whitaker Fund.
ACO programs are
also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for
the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and New York City
Department of Cultural Affairs.
Derek Bermel is
the Music Alive Composer-in-Residence with American Composers
Orchestra. Music Alive is a national program of the American Symphony
Orchestra League and Meet the Composer.
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