Performances & Events

Underwood New Music ReadingsIn ACO’s 40-year history, 26 of those years have included a New Music Reading program, first known as the Whitaker New Music Readings and subsequently as the Underwood New Music Readings. They have become one of this country’s most coveted opportunities for emerging composers. This year, six of the nation’s most promising composers in the early stages of their professional careers have been selected from over 200[LW1] submissions received from around the country.Writing for symphony orchestra remains one of the supreme challenges for the aspiring composer. Learning the subtleties of instrumental balance and timbre, effective part preparation, and how to effectively communicate with the conductor and musicians are critical skills, but openings for composers to gain hands-on experience working with a professional orchestra are few. The Underwood New Music Readings give emerging composers the opportunity to work with an orchestra singular in its commitment to the development of the American composer, and to hear their work performed by the country’s premier contemporary music ensembles.This year’s participants are composers with diverse backgrounds and stylistic approaches. Each meets with the conductor, key orchestra members, a publishing consultant and mentor composers in preparation for two sessions with the orchestra. Following the sessions with the orchestra, the composers will meet with ACO staff, orchestra members, the conductor and mentor composers to receive critical commentary and feedback. The Readings are professionally recorded to assist each composer in analysis and professional development. Additionally, ACO provides a Career Development Workshop with sessions and panel discussions on publishing, copyright law and promotional strategies with industry leaders. After the conclusion of the Readings, one composer will be awarded a $15,000 commission to write a new work to be performed by ACO in a future season. The audience is invited to vote for an audience choice award. The winner will also be asked to write a new piece for ACOTo date, the New Music Readings have offered a vital resource to the industry by providing essential career development opportunities to over 150 composers, including such award-winning composers as Derek Bermel, Daniel Bernard Roumain, Sebastian Currier, Pierre Jalbert, Randall Woolf, Jennifer Higdon, and Augusta Read Thomas. Since participating in ACO’s readings, these composers have held important residencies and had scores of works commissioned, premiered, and performed by many of the country’s most prominent symphony orchestras.Composer ParticipantsRYAN LINDVEIT Like an Altar with Nine Thousand Robot AttendantsAn American composer of chamber, orchestral, vocal, choral, and electronic music, Ryan’s works have been performed across the United States and abroad by Alarm Will Sound, “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, Orkest de Ereprijs, the USC Thornton Symphony, numerous university wind ensembles, the Donald Sinta Quartet, FearNoMusic, and the City of Tomorrow, among others. His music has received recognition from BMI, ASCAP, SCI, the American Modern Ensemble, the National Band Association, Tribeca New Music, and the Texas Music Educators Association. Ryan grew up in Texas and is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where he was selected as Salutatorian for the class of 2016 and named the Thornton School of Music's Outstanding Graduate. He is currently a master’s student at the Yale School of Music. His past teachers include Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Theofanidis, Andrew Norman, Ted Hearne, Frank Ticheli, and Donald Crockett. Recent and upcoming projects include Mysterious Butterflies ​for chamber ensemble and eight voices, a wind ensemble version of Like an Altar with 9,000 Robot Attendants commissioned by a consortium of 30 university wind ensembles organized by conductor H. Robert Reynolds, a commission for the Big 12 Band Directors Association, and pieces for chamber ensemble and orchestra to be premiered at the Aspen Music Festival in the summer of 2018. IN THE COMPOSER’S OWN WORDSLike an Altar with 9,000 Robot Attendants was inspired by Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950). The futuristic story describes a computer-controlled house, in which robots perform a myriad of tasks such as cooking breakfast, cleaning house, and telling time. In Bradbury’s future, all humans have been destroyed by a nuclear bomb, and this house is the only building that still stands amidst the rubble. Nonetheless, the house’s robots remain dedicated to their duties, even in the absence of the house’s human occupants. As the author puts it, “...inside, the house was like an altar with nine thousand robot attendants, big and small, servicing, attending, singing in choirs, even though the gods had gone away and the ritual was ¬meaningless.” Despite this tragedy, Bradbury’s futurist prose remains characteristically exuberant in describing these household robots—a tension which calls to mind the satirical ebullience of Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove. My piece lives in the same brazenly ecstatic spirit as Bradbury’s story and Kubrick’s film. Sometimes the only response to misfortune is a wild, full-teeth smile. LILY CHEN A Leaf Falls AfterLily Chen (b. 1985), born in Taiwan, is a composer exploring timbral materials with subtle theatrical potentials in both acoustic and electronic music, which shape evocative atmospheres that point towards poetic commentary on her observations on literary, emotional, or social aspects of the contemporary condition. Recently she received her Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied with Ken Ueno, Franck Bedrossian, Edmund Campion, and Cindy Cox. Lily’s music has been performed at several international festivals in USA and Asia, including June in Buffalo, Miseen Festival, International Computer Music Conference, SEAMUS National Conference, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and Asian Composers League Conference and Festival. Lily has also collaborated with several ensembles and orchestras, such as St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Eco Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, Mivos Quartet, Splinter Reeds, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Ensemble Mise-en, Ensemble Exceptet, Ensemble Cairn, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, and Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra. For more information, please visit - http://chenlily.com IN THE COMPOSER’S OWN WORDSA Leaf Falls After is inspired by my recent memories of living in Europe. In 2015, I had a great opportunity to live in Paris for ten months. I experienced intimate incidents of fragile beauty that touched me, but also shocking and terrifying ones during my residence. I was impressed by the most colorful fall I’d ever seen when autumn leaves fell to the ground, sizzling as if drizzling; I was terrified by the terrorist attack but touched by the toughness of the Parisians that winter; on a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, I was fascinated to hear twelve bells constantly ringing, intertwining as a huge chaotic whirl; I was stunned when visiting the installation ‘Fallen Leaves’ at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, watching thousands of open mouthed steel faces on the ground create harshly grating sounds like the victims’ screams. Inspired by mixed emotions and diverse sounds, this piece traces the journey of a leaf: a solitary leaf falling with loneliness as described in an e. e. cumming’s poem; a light leaf falling with other leaves in autumn; a heavy metal leaf fallen on the ground. However, no matter what vibrations it has undergone during its falling and fallen time, it will eventually be reincarnated into a rising butterfly, flapping its wings to cause a tornado in spring until the next falling comes. Based on such images, I create a constantly flowing process of vibrations along with air sounds to represent falling leaves, fallen leaves, and the flapping of rising butterflies’ wings. Besides this, metallic sounds with pure resonances or with intense pressure make up another important element, which is associated with my memories of the ringing bells and the metal “fallen leaves.” CARLOS BANDERA Lux in TenebrisCarlos Bandera is a composer who is fascinated by musical architecture and by the music of the past. His recent music explores these fascinations, often by placing a musical quotation, be it a phrase, scale, or sonority, within dense microtonal textures.Carlos’s music has been performed in the Faroe Islands, Scotland, Uzbekistan, China, and several spaces in the US, including Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall. In 2016, he organized and participated in a workshop between Peabody composers and the Uzbekistan-based contemporary music ensemble, Omnibus Ensemble. In the summer of 2015, Carlos attended the Fresh Inc Music Festival, where he worked with the Fifth-House Ensemble and studied composition with Dan Visconti. He also attended the 2015 Wintergreen Summer Music Academy. There he studied with Daron Hagen and Gylda Lyons and had his Florestan premiered by members of the Wintergreen Festival Orchestra.In 2015 Carlos earned his Bachelor of Music degree in Music Theory and Composition from the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University, where he studied with Elizabeth Brown, Dean Drummond, and Marcos Balter. Carlos recently received his Master of Music degree in Composition from The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he participated in masterclasses with Christopher Rouse and Georg Friedrich Haas and studied privately with Kevin Puts.IN THE COMPOSER’S OWN WORDSUpon first hearing the music of Anton Bruckner, I felt deeply connected to the composer and his work. His Eighth Symphony in particular, with its immense harmonic landscapes, devastating silences, and profound “darkness-to-light” narrative, continues to be one of my greatest influences – no doubt, in more ways than I am even aware of. Lux in Tenebris explores these elements of the Eighth Symphony by allowing Brucknerian light to pierce through a dense micropolyphonic fabric.The work is constructed in three large sections: the first features the main theme of the first movement of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, the second focuses on harmonies that are built from the pitches of that theme, and the third section features a fragmented quotation of the last iteration of the theme (found in the coda of that same movement), which Bruckner described as “how it is when one is on his deathbed, and opposite hangs a clock, which, while his life comes to an end, beats on ever steadily: tick, tock, tick, tock.”While Lux in Tenebris features quotations from only the first movement of the Eighth, it also features the C-major sonority from the coda of the Finale, which represents light in Bruckner’s darkness-to-light narrative. The title Lux in Tenebris is an allusion to this narrative and comes from “et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt” (John 1:5), meaning “and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” TOMAS PEIRE SERRATE RauxaTomas Peire Serrate was born in Barcelona. He studied piano at the Sant Cugat del Vallès conservatory, where he grew up, and History at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. After a few years performing and teaching he decided to focus on composition, first studying at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (Barcelona) with Salvador Brotons, and in 2009 at the Sibelius Academy of Helsinki (Finland) with Tapio Tuomela and Risto Väisänen. In 2011 he moved to New York with the La Caixa Fellowship to pursue a Master´s in Scoring for Film and Multimedia at the New York University, where he graduated in 2013 obtaining the Elmer Bernstein Award. That year he moved to Los Angeles to explore the film music industry and participate as a composer in different projects including writing music for the films The Anushree Experiements and Prism, and orchestrating and arranging music for If I Stay, Minions, and Love and Friendship.In the fall of 2015, Tomàs initiated his PhD studies at UCLA, where he is having the privilege to study with Bruce Broughton, Richard Danielpour, Ian Krouse, Mark Carlson, Peter Golub and David S. Lefkowitz. His research at UCLA is about music, space and media, with a particular interest in new technologies and virtual reality. His concert works have been performed in Europe, US and Asia. On June 1, 2018 he premiered Hillary, a monodrama for soprano, cello, piano, electronics and video projection at the Off Liceu series in Barcelona.IN THE COMPOSER’S OWN WORDSRauxa means sudden determination, like the impulse I had to write this piece, or an outburst, which actually is how this work begins. It is a Catalan word that has been used in pair with another one, Seny, meaning balance and sensibleness, to describe or refer to the Catalan people and their character. This duality, like in other cultures and traditions, is essential, indivisible, and necessary to understand the whole and the parts separately. This is what I tried to explore here.I worked on sketches and sections of Rauxa in different moments and places, always away from my home country, Catalonia. I kept coming back to it looking to improve it as well as to learn more about myself and about my music. The present orchestral version of Rauxa was specifically created for the ACO Underwood readings and it has never been read or performed before. LILIYA UGAY Rhapsody in ColorDescribed as "particularly evocative," "fluid and theatrical... the music [that] makes its case with immediacy" (The Arts Fuse) as well as both "assertive and steely," and "lovely, subtle writing" (Wall Street Journal) the music by the award-winning composer and pianist Liliya Ugay has been performed in many countries around the globe. Recipient of a 2016 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a 2017 Horatio Parker Memorial prize from the Yale School of Music, Ugay has collaborated with the Nashville Symphony, Albany Symphony, New England Philharmonic, Yale Philharmonia, Raleigh Civic Symphony, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Molinari Quartet, Music from Copland House ensemble, Antico Moderno, Omnibus ensemble, and Paul Neubauer among others. Her music has been featured at the Aspen, New York Electroacoustic Music, June in Buffalo, and Darmstadt New Music festivals, as well as the 52nd Venice Biennale. During 2017-2018 Ugay is a Resident Composer at the American Lyric Theater working on the development of a new opera. Originally from Uzbekistan, Liliya is currently a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at the Yale School of Music studying with Aaron Kernis, Hannah Lash, and David Lang. Besides new music, Liliya is passionate about the music of the repressed composers from the Soviet era. Annually she presents a series of lecture-recitals on this topic with the guidance of Boris Berman.IN THE COMPOSER’S OWN WORDSMuch of my music is serious and dramatic, so for Rhapsody in Color I desired to write a light, playful, and colorful piece. It consists of a short motive, a capricious rhythmic cell, and a simple harmonic progression that passes through a series of variations. In the middle section I mostly exploit the rhythmic pattern, whereas in the coda I build the ostinato on the original motive in perpetual motion, deriving various other motives from it. The simplicity of the material is often convoluted by lines of counterpoint, which, as I assume, will create a fun challenge to reach clarity and a sense of conversation between voices. SCOTT LEE AnadyrComposer Scott Lee writes concert music infused with the visceral sounds of popular music. Lee has worked with leading orchestras such as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, Winston-Salem Symphony members, Symphony In C, the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, and chamber groups such as Jack Quartet, yMusic, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Deviant Septet, chatterbird, and ShoutHouse, as well as multi-platinum pop artist Ben Folds. He has received commissions from the Aspen Music Festival, the Baltimore Classical Guitar Society, loadbang, the Raleigh Civic Symphony, and the American Craft Council.Notable honors include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, winner of the Symphony In C Young Composer’s Composition, the grand prize in the PARMA Student Composer Competition, and the Gustav Klemm Award in Composition from the Peabody Institute. Lee has also received fellowships to attend the Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals.As a James B. Duke Fellow, Lee recently earned a PhD in Composition at Duke University, mentored by Scott Lindroth and Steve Jaffe. He earned the Master of Music degree at the Peabody institute, where he was the recipient of the Philip D. Glass Endowed Scholarship in Composition and studied with Michael Hersch. He received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, where he studied with Michael Rose, Michael Slayton, Stan Link, and Michael Kurek.IN THE COMPOSER’S OWN WORDSThe name Anadyr refers both to a remote port town in Northeastern Russia and to the secret 1962 operation ("Operation Anadyr") in which Soviets deployed missiles and supporting forces to Cuba, prompting the Cuban missile crisis. The mission involved a complex campaign of deception, and was shrouded in secrecy. The name "Anadyr" itself was chosen in order to suggest anything but a movement of Soviet troops and missiles to the Caribbean. Only five senior officers knew of the actual deployment location, and kept their plans handwritten; the loading of men and material onto the ships occurred under cover of darkness; false structures were built on the ships, placed alongside agricultural equipment, to hide their defenses. Disinformation was fed to associates of President Kennedy and to the Communist Party of Cuba while accurate information was given to the Cuban émigré community in Miami, Florida, since the Soviets knew that American intelligence services perceived them as unreliable. This work aims to evoke the deception and subterfuge that characterized this period in international dealings with Russia. CONDUCTOR & MENTOR COMPOSERSGEORGE MANAHAN, conductorIn his seventh season as Music Director of the American Composers Orchestra, the wide-ranging and versatile George Manahan has had an esteemed career embracing everything from opera to the concert stage, the traditional to the contemporary. In addition to his work with ACO, Manahan continues his commitment to working with young musicians as Director of Orchestral Studies at the Manhattan School of Music as well as guest conductor at the Curtis Institute of Music. He also serves as Music Director of the Portland Opera. Manahan was Music Director at New York City Opera for 14 seasons. There he helped envision the organization’s groundbreaking VOX program, a series of workshops and readings that have provided unique opportunities for numerous composers to hear their new concepts realized, and introduced audiences to exciting new compositional voices. In addition to established composers such as Steve Reith, Mark Adamo, David Del Tredici, Lewis Spratlan, Robert X. Rodriguez, Lou Harrison, Bernard Rands, and Richard Danielpour, through VOX, Manahan has introduced works by composers on the rise including Adam Silverman, Elodie Lauten, Mason Bates, and David T. Little.DEREK BERMEL, Artistic DirectorDerek Bermel has been widely hailed for his creativity, theatricality, and virtuosity. A musical omnivore, he is equally at home at major concert halls, pop music clubs and festivals worldwide; Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle writes, “To listen to his music is to run across a wealth of influences, from Bartók and Stravinsky to big band, and from early-period rap to Bulgarian folk music to West African drumming. Also, it seems, theoretical physics.” Alongside his international studies of composition (with teachers including Louis Andriessen, William Bolcom, and Henri Dutilleux), ethnomusicology, and orchestration, an ongoing engagement with wide-ranging musical traditions has become part of the fabric and force of his compositional language, in which the human voice and its myriad inflections play a primary role. Now in his fourth season as Artistic Director of ACO, Bermel has become recognized as a dynamic and unconventional curator of concert series, via ACO’s concert season, the SONiC Festival, Underwood and Earshot Readings, and Jazz Composers Orchestral Institute. He also regularly directs the CULTIVATE program for emerging composers and Composer-in-Residence at the Bowdoin International Music Festival.ROBERT BEASER, Mentor ComposerRobert Beaser is Artistic Director Laureate of the American Composers Orchestra and was co-music director and conductor of Musical Elements Ensemble from 1978 to 1989. In 1977 he became the youngest composer to win the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. Beaser’s Mountain Songs received a Grammy nomination in 1986. He has received Fellowships from the Guggenheim and Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Goddard Lieberson, an Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Nonesuch Commission Award, and a Barlow Commission. He was to elected to membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2002.Beaser’s commissions include works for the Chicago Symphony (Centennial Commission); the New York Philharmonic; American Composers Orchestra; St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; and the American Brass Quintet. His opera, Central Park: Food of Love, with a libretto by Terence McNally, was commissioned by the New York City Opera and Glimmerglass Opera and was telecast nationally on PBS’s Great Performances series. Beaser’s 9/11 work Ground O, broadcast on the All-Star Orchestra series, received an Emmy Award in 2016. Recordings include Beaser: Guitar Concerto with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on Linn Records; Chorale Variations, The Severn Deadly Sins and Piano Concerto on London/Argo; Song of the Bells on Albany Records, Psalms 119, 150 on New World; and Mountain Songs on Musicmasters.Born in Boston, Beaser holds a BA from Yale College, summa cum laude, and MM, MMA, and DMA degrees from the Yale School of Music. He studied composition with Jacob Druckman, Toru Takemitsu, Yehudi Wyner and Goffredo Petrassi. He has been a member of the Juilliard faculty since 1993 and chair of the Composition department since 1994. JOHN CORIGLIANO, Mentor ComposerJohn Corigliano continues to add to one of the richest, most unusual, and most widely celebrated bodies of work any composer has created over the last forty years. Corigliano's numerous scores—including three symphonies and eight concerti among over one hundred chamber, vocal, choral, and orchestral works—have been performed and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. Recent scores include Conjurer (2008), for percussion and string orchestra, commissioned for and introduced by Dame Evelyn Glennie; Concerto for Violin and Orchestra: The Red Violin (2005), developed from the themes of the score to the François Girard’s film of the same name, which won Corigliano the Oscar in 1999; Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (2000) for orchestra and amplified soprano, the recording which won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Composition in 2008; Symphony No. 3: Circus Maximus (2004), scored simultaneously for wind orchestra and a multitude of wind ensembles; and Symphony No. 2 (2001: Pulitzer Prize in Music.) Other important scores include String Quartet (1995: Grammy Award, Best Contemporary Composition); Symphony No. 1 (1991: Grawemeyer and Grammy Awards); the opera The Ghosts of Versailles (Metropolitan Opera commission, 1991, International Classical Music Award 1992); and the Clarinet Concerto (1977.) One of the few living composers to have a string quartet named for him, Corigliano serves on the composition faculty at the Juilliard School of Music and holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York, which has established a scholarship in his name; for the past fourteen years he and his partner, the composer-librettist Mark Adamo, have divided their time between Manhattan and Kent Cliffs, New York. More information is available at www.johncorigliano.com. GABRIELA ORTIZ, Mentor ComposerTwo Latin Grammy nominated Gabriela Ortiz is one of the foremost composers in Mexico today, and one of the most vibrant musicians emerging in the international scene. Her musical language achieves an extraordinary and expressive synthesis of tradition and the avant-garde; combining high art, folk music and jazz in novel, frequently refined and always personal ways. Her compositions are credited for being both entertaining and immediate as well as profound and sophisticated; she achieves a balance between highly organized structure and improvisatory spontaneity. Although based in Mexico, her music is commissioned and performed all over the world. Her music has been commissioned and played by prestigious ensembles, soloists and orchestras such as Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa Pekka Salonen, Kroumata and Amadinda percussion ensembles, Kronos quartet, Dawn Upshaw, Sarah Leonard, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Pierre Amoyal, Southwest Chamber Music,Tambuco percussion quartet, The Malmo Symphony Orchestra, Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra, Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Venezuela, BBC Scottish Symphony, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic among others. Ortiz has been honored with the National Prize for Arts and Literature, (the most important award for writers and artists given by the government of Mexico), The Mexican Academy of Arts, Civitella Ranieri Artistic Residency; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; the Fulbright Fellowship; the First prize of the Silvestre Revueltas National Chamber Music Competition, the First Prize at the Alicia Urreta Composition Competition; Banff Center for the Arts Residency; the Inroads Commission, a program of Arts International with funds from the Ford Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mozart Medal Award. Born in Mexico City her parents were musicians in the famous folk music ensemble Los Folkloristas founded in 1966 to preserve and record the traditional music of Mexico and Latin America. She currently teaches composition at the Mexican University of Mexico City and as a visiting faculty at Indiana University. Her music is currently published by Schott, Boosey and Hawkes, Arla Music and Ediciones Mexicanas de Música, saxiana presto and tre fontane. [LW1]Is this number accurate?