Category: Ledes

Russell Peck

What’s the only thing better than a performance of a new piece by an American composer? Two performances. And even better – two performances by two different ensembles.

How about up to three performances by forty ensembles?

That’s what’s happening with Russell Peck’s timpani concerto, Harmonic Rhythm, commissioned by a consortium of more than 40 ensembles, first performed in September 2000 by James Rago and the Louisville Orchestra, led by Robert Franz. That same month, Jeffrey Biegel gave the premiere of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Millennium Concerto, commissioned for him by a consortium of 27 orchestras.

And if you think it’s just orchestras who are banding together to commission and perform new works, you’re wrong. Recently the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) and a consortium of 31 schools commissioned Joan Tower’s first-ever band piece, Fascinating Ribbons. The 6-minute work for concert band was given its premiere by the Keystone Wind Ensemble, conducted by Jack Stamp, at the CBDNA National Conference in February 2001. Consortia are even affecting the world of the small ensemble: Judith Sainte Croix is writing Visions III for the Quintet of the Americas, Boston wind quintet Vento Chiaro and a possible third group.

Commissioning consortia seem to be a growing trend. Arts consultant Jeffrey James counted off the numerous consortium projects in which his clients are involved. Pianist Jeffrey Biegel is at it again, putting together a consortium to commission Charles Strouse for a new work for piano and orchestra. A consortium of orchestras has commissioned Dan Locklair’s first symphony. Benjamin Lees is writing a piece for a consortium of small chamber ensembles. And there are others.

The reasons for doing it are many. “Anything that furthers the development of new work is positive,” Sainte Croix commented. “Certainly there are many fewer sources for funding, not less desire on the part of groups to commission! This is a solution to a problem.”

Arts consultant Amy Blum agrees. “People don’t have to pay as much for a commission. A college band may want to commission Joan Tower, but only a major ensemble is going to be able to pay her fee. Together, there is strength in numbers.”

Commissioning consortia are a particular boon to smaller ensembles, not only because they can share the commissioning fee, but also because the premiere brings them good publicity. “Everybody gets their own premiere and gets to make a big deal out of it, which engenders a lot of pride,” Blum explained. In addition, co-commissioning can help ensembles — large and small — get funding from state arts councils and other agencies.

For Savannah Symphony timpanist Jim Brown, a consortium was a way to commission a major composer to write for an under-represented genre: the timpani concerto. When Music Director Philip Greenberg asked Brown to select a timpani concerto to play with the Symphony, Brown was dissatisfied with the currently available literature. “There was nothing that I liked that much – but it had always been my dream to commission Russell Peck.” Brown was familiar with Peck’s writing from previous Savannah Symphony performances of his work, including his percussion concerto The Glory and the Grandeur. “He always writes extremely challenging but fun timpani parts. They are intelligent parts.”

When Brown mentioned to Greenberg that he wanted to commission, however, the latter was worried about the cost. They decided to involve other orchestras. Brown wrote letters to orchestras across the country – wherever he knew a timpanist. Greenberg and Brown finally met with Peck after a Savannah Symphony performance of his Thrill of the Orchestra in November of 1998. “We got him kind of interested in the project, but not really. He was a bit reluctant. But when we got other orchestras on board, he got interested. Philip wrote to some people, and Russell wrote to some people. It started slowly, but then it grew.”

Peck admits that he was “initially resistant” when Brown suggested writing a timpani concerto. “Jim had called a couple of timpanists already. By the time I got home, there was a message on his machine from Gerhardt Zimmerman, conductor of the Canton and North Carolina Symphonies. Four more performances had been arranged before I even got in the driveway.” He eventually accepted the commission with the hope that the nationwide exposure the concerto would receive would increase its chances of being accepted into the repertoire.

Jack Stamp, the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Professor who spearheaded the Tower commission, found in a consortium the weight he needed to add to another repertoire neglected by “mainstream” classical composers: concert band music. “The concert band is a 20^th century genre,” Stamp explained, “and we’re always trying to legitimize our existence, always trying to get established composers to write for us.”

Stamp took some composition lessons from Tower in the early 1990s. During the second lesson, she played him the last movement, “Celebration Fanfare,” from her ballet Stepping Stones. Stamp suggested to her that it would sound much better transcribed for wind band. She told him she “liked it the way it is,” but welcomed him to make an arrangement, which was later premiered by the U.S. Military Academy Band and published by Schirmer.

In the meantime, Stamp suggested to Tower that she write a piece for band, a suggestion that he repeated enough times over the course of the next five years that Tower still refers to him as the “composer’s stalker.” Two years ago, Tower happened to be in New Orleans at the same time as the CBDNA conference. Stamp invited her to the conference, all expenses paid.

“I went there mostly out of guilt,” Tower confesses. Stamp casually mentioned to her that he was hosting a talk on her music, and asked her if she would
mind answering a few simple questions. She agreed. “I walked in and there were 300 college band directors sitting there!” According to Tower, Stamp quickly reneged on his promise to ask only simple questions. After asking her opinion on the future of band music, something she asserted she knew little enough about, he asked her again if she was planning to write a band piece. When she hesitated, he turned to the audience and asked them to stand up if they thought they would perform her new piece. The entire room rose to its feet.

“She was just floored,” Stamp stated. She agreed to write the piece, of course, and Stamp set about putting together the consortium. “I set the price [of joining] the consortium on Thursday, and by the following Tuesday I had enough money to pay for the commission” So many people responded that he was able to lower the joining fee from $1000 to $700 per member.

Composers are also pleased with the consortium commission trend. “With my very first commissions, just out of college,” Peck remembers, “the ensembles were very into limiting performances. They wanted exclusive rights of performance for that crucial period when the piece was new, when it had caché. Commissioning and imposing exclusivity was supposed to give the orchestras more for their money, but it crippled the life of the work.” Consortia are less costly to orchestras and embrace the idea that “more is better,” making it likely that commissioned works will make their way into the repertoire.

Composers and performers alike seem eager to surmount the challenges that commissioning consortia entail. For both Peck and Tower, that meant learning to write for instruments and ensembles with which they had had little or no previous experience. Tower, for instance, had never written for saxophone before Fascinating Ribbons – and this new piece includes a sax cadenza. For help, she consulted sax-playing friends. For assistance on certain concert-band scoring issues, she occasionally called Stamp. “She would ask if she could do certain things,” he related, “but very seldom did I have to say ‘that won’t work.’”

Jim Brown helped Russell Peck tailor the timpani part even though he had signed off on giving the premiere. “We worked on the part to make it less ‘science fiction’ and more playable,” Brown laughed. “There was one spot where I would have needed three feet.” He describes the “2-foot stack” of Xeroxed drafts sitting on his floor, and remembers that each time he learned the piece, he would end up “unlearning it” to learn a new version. However, it was “never his idea” to give the first performance. Savannah starts their season later than many orchestras, and a piano soloist had already been scheduled for the October 7th opener. Brown performed the piece in February.

For all the composers interviewed, there was the challenge of making the piece accessible to more than one performer. Timpani equipment is not uniform, for instance: pedals operate differently, are placed differently, and cover different ranges according to what company made them. Peck needed to make his concerto suitable for a range of equipment.

Judith Sainte Croix’s Vision III is the third piece in a series of pieces that combine Western acoustic classical instruments with indigenous instruments from the Americas. Sainte Croix is unfazed about the challenge of writing for more than one woodwind quintet. “I’m thinking in terms of tailoring it to woodwind quintets in general, of contributing to the literature.” Instead, Sainte Croix’s problem is extramusical: how to get the right equipment to all the groups. The instruments necessary to perform Vision III include the South American pig marona, Guatemalan ocarinas, guiros from Mexico and Peru, conch shells, a pre-Colombian horn, rainsticks, Colombian bamboo finger shakers, the cana and gaitas flutes, reed flutes, drums and deer hoof rattles. Her solution: the performers can rent the equipment from her, and also she provides them with information on where and how it can be purchased.

If the success of the Tower and Peck commissions is any indication, consortium commissioning may increase significantly the amount of new American repertoire that is performed repeatedly. Harmonic Rhythm is the first solo piece that the Savannah Symphony has ever commissioned, and, according to Brown, it elicited “more positive comments than any solo performance that the orchestra has ever done.” People at the Symphony are already talking about extracting the second part of the concerto to do on a children’s concert next year, and Brown hinted at the possibility of a second Peck commission in the not-too-distant future.

Stamp claims that when the Keystone Wind Ensemble first read Joan Tower’s Fascinating Ribbons, they “immediately accepted it into the repertoire.” “Joan’s wind and percussion writing is just tremendous,” he glowed. “We were uniformly knocked out by it.” Stamp continues to be “on the prowl” for commissioning opportunities. He is currently “stalking” Richard Danielpour to transcribe his Vox Populi for concert band, and he recently sent CDs of band music to Philip Ramey.

Sainte Croix thinks that the Internet is helping to foster consortium commissioning. “It is easier to communicate with people by sending an email than by making a long-distance call. There is a sense of being more connected – and that’s a big part of this.”

Immersion DVD

[Author’s note: When I first got my hands on Immersion, the new DVD-Audio from the Colorado-based Starkland, I was disappointed to find that there was no accompanying movie. After I missed the mark in last month’s SoundTracks column, Steve Smith, the classical music columnist at Billboard, was kind enough to drag me over to Strassberg Associates, a professional high-end audio-equipment dealership, to listen to the disc in 5.1 Surround Sound, the way it is supposed to be heard. What a difference!

Of course, I was mistaking DVD-Audio for DVD-Video, a mistake that is easy enough to make, given the newness of the audio standard. The key difference between the two technologies is that DVD-Audio packs in much more audio information than visual information, where for DVD-Video the reverse is true.

My other reason for failing to be electrified by my first hearing had to do with the playback equipment – a laptop with stereo speakers. I was really missing the point – people are excited about DVD-Audio precisely because of its compatibility with 5.1 Surround Sound, which utilizes up to six specially positioned speakers. They are also excited by the overall sound quality of DVD-Audio as compared to the CD: 24-bit resolution rather than 16-bit; 96 kHz sampling rather than 44.1 kHz.]

In 1997, after learning that the DVD-Audio standard would include Surround Sound, Starkland’s producer Tom Steenland hatched the idea of commissioning a group of composers to write new pieces specifically for the new technology. The thirteen pieces, released on a single DVD-Audio disc titled Immersion, would serve as a celebration of the millennium.

Maggi Payne by Nick Bertoni

“When I approached them, I was asking them to work in a format [DVD-Audio] that didn’t exist, with equipment they didn’t have, in a medium they hadn’t heard,” Steenland remembers. “They all grasped the idea, and thought it was wonderful.”

“I approached composers whose music might benefit from surround sound and who seem comfortable with the new technology,” Steenland has written. “Some of the composers have previously recorded in deeply reverberant underground chambers; some have deployed their instrumental forces to use space as a compositional elements. Others have extensive histories of using surround playback in concert.”

One composer who has had extensive experience with composition for a “Quadrophonic” (four-speaker) environment is Maggi Payne. Payne worked with Quad from 1973 to 1985, when she abandoned it to “wait out” the transition into digital technology. White Turbulence is the first piece she has written since 1985 that uses four speakers. (Payne opted not to use the center channel, preferring to use the “broader space” that the Quad set-up offers). During the compositional process, Payne was able to set up a Surround Sound environment, but she did not have access to a DVD encoder or playback equipment.

The thirteen composers took different approaches to working with the new technology. “Some of them had access to old Quad set-ups, and some of them improvised set-ups at home,” Steenland explained. “Some of them set up a multi-track environment on the computer, then took it to a professional studio and mixed it into Surround Sound. Meredith Monk recorded four singers with four microphones in a studio – her piece is ‘straight,’ in a sense.” Carl Stone wrote his Luong Hai Ky Mi Gia using MAX and MSP programs on a Mac. He then mixed the piece using ProTools, generating stereo files and assigning them dynamically to different outputs. Stone went to a recording studio to hear the results played back in 5.1 Surround Sound.

Every composer provided Steenland with a final Surround Sound mix of the piece on either a 20- or 24-bit multi-track A-DAT. The composers also provided him with their own stereo mix. “The goal was that people would hear it in Surround Sound, but we had to include the stereo version because DVD machines have stereo output, and we wanted to make sure that the person who was listening to stereo was listening to the composer’s own stereo mix.” If a special stereo mix is not encoded on the disc, Steenland elaborated, the machine itself will “fold down” the multiple channels into stereo, with somewhat arbitrary results.

Along with four versions of each piece – DVD Audio in stereo and surround sound, DVD Video in stereo and surround sound – the disc also includes slides that accompany each piece. “I didn’t want it to be too distracting,” Steenland stated, “so the slides don’t change very fast, and they relate to the piece directly.” The composers themselves supplied the images, and in some cases they indicated when they wanted the images to change. Maggi Payne, for instance, sent Steenland her own microphotographic slides in TIFF format and outlined several options for how to sequence them. Other composers sent him pictures of themselves or of their music.

Carl Stone courtesy of the composer

The final step in the production of Immersion involved pulling together the visuals, all four versions of each piece, and a menu (allowing users to select the appropriate version) in a process called “authoring.” “The DVD-video release software is more worked-out than the DVD-Audio software,” Steenland elaborated. “That’s why it took over three months to do the authoring, as opposed to five days for video. There were 37,000 lines of code that were written by hand. Gateway’s Brian Lee was “trying to figure out how to make the software do things that the manufacturer didn’t know how to do,” according to Steenland.

Immersion has been available on the Starkland website since December 2000 and was released in stores in February 2001. The fate of Immersio
n has yet to be determined, though, as does the fate of what it represents: new music composed specifically for a high-end audio technology. Because this music was written specifically for DVD-Audio Surround Sound, to listen to it with the wrong kind of equipment is to not fully experience it – like listening to a piano four-hand reduction of an orchestra piece, perhaps.

Payne comments: “I thought of White Turbulence Quadrophonically, and that is clearly the optimum way to listen. The spatialization is worked right into the piece – there’s no panning [from speaker to speaker]. That is hard to squeeze into two channels.” Carl Stone is less adamant. “It is not ideal [to listen to the work in stereo], but the work was created in such a way that the stereo mix would still work musically.”

Purchasing the equipment necessary to enjoy this music properly can be an expensive proposition, however. A DVD-Audio player is no small purchase, with prices ranging from $900 to $5,000, according to a recent Sound and Vision article by Michael Gaughn. Nearly 13 million people own DVD-Video players, however, and most DVD-Audio players also read DVD-Videos and CDs. The fact that the technologies of DVD-Audio and DVD-Video are intertwined may save DVD-Audio from the quick death that befell the Quad LP player.

Morton Subotnick courtesy of the composer

“DVD technology and 5.1 will be here forever,” predicts Morton Subotnick. Columbia commissioned Subotnick to write the first-ever piece for Quad, Touch, in 1969. ”The question is whether people will buy five or six speakers.” Subotnick thinks that people will buy Surround set-ups as the price comes down for DVD movies.

Brian Brandt, Executive Producer of Mode Records, echoes Subotnick’s confidence about DVD – and his skepticism about Surround Sound. “As people’s VCRs break down, as their CD players break down, they will just replace that component with a DVD player. Whether people have a five- or six-speaker set-up is a different matter.”

The next layer of the problem is that to make this kind of a purchase valuable, there needs to be more than one good new music release. Fortunately, Steenland isn’t the only new-music-friendly record producer interested in the possibilities of DVD-Audio. Mode Records issued the first-ever DVD Video “custom-designed for 5.1 Surround-Sound” – of music by Roger Reynolds. Watershed IV features three previously written works by Reynolds, recorded in six or eight channels. “They had to be re-mixed [down to 5.1],” explains Brandt, “but it was still a better representation than stereo.”

Because Watershed IV is a DVD-Video, there are a variety of interesting “extras” that come with the music: a multi-camera performance video of the title track, with user-selectable camera angles; to accompany Eclipse, visuals by the legendary video artist Ed Emshwiller; and video interviews with the composer and others. Also, for user with appropriate computer facilities, portions of the Watershed IV score can be printed out as Acrobat PDF files.

An upcoming project for Mode will include a new work written specifically for DVD-ROM and 5.1 Surround sound: Morton Subotnick’s Gestures. The recording will also include a re-release of Touch, Subotnick’s historic commission for the Quad LP player, and the 1978 work A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur. Sulphur was commissioned by the J.B. Lansing Company for the opening a factory and was originally written for eight playback speakers. Part of it was released in commercial stereo. This will be the first recording of the whole piece, mixed from eight channels down to four. The disc is due out in April 2001.

The Subotnick disc will not only include “extras” like video interviews, but also a program, written by the composer, that will allow you to re-compose Gestures on your home computer. Subotnick has broken down the musical materials into more than 20 identifiable “gestures,” and thinks that at least nine or ten complete pieces of music could be composed out of those materials. “You will be able to reconfigure the piece based on the gestures of the mouse,” he explained. “Violent gestures will give the user the violent part of the music.” In addition, a music “palette” on the screen will allow the user to conduct the music based on mouse position. If the user does nothing at all for a certain length of time, the music fades into the background, and an image of Joan LaBarbara appears to tell a story that is determined by the last gesture made.

Brandt will continue to take advantage of the superior sound available with DVD, with releases planned for later this year of music by Elliott Carter, a new piece for Surround Sound by John Luther Adams, and new music for theremin performed by Lydia Kavina. Steenland is cautiously optimistic about his future involvement with DVD-Audio. “I probably won’t do another project exactly like this, because DVD production is extremely expensive,” he admitted. “DVD-Audio is a brand-new medium, and we don’t know yet what its future will be. Hopefully, as time goes by, the costs will go down.”

Like so much else in today’s market, the Internet will certainly have its effect on whether new music continues to be written for DVD-Audio. “It’s a different world from when Mort did the Quad pieces,” Carl Stone admitted. “There may be a whole new market – and that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Internet is responsible.” Subotnick feels that the power of the Internet to market new music on DVD-Audio is still limited. “When we [finally] get to understand the power of the Web, when it becomes part of your telephone or TV, when finding what you want to buy isn’t [hindered] by lists based on who paid for what, when that happens, maybe the marketing will find the tens of thousands worldwide who will be the consumers for any object that goes out. We’re still [working within the constraints of] major marketing. We don’t know if there is an audience if [the music] isn’t being made available.” One downside of the Internet is that users have become used to the sub-par aural experience of listening to MP3 files.

Will we see other releases of music written specifically for DVD-Audio? For Subotnick, the answer to this question is intimately tied to the fate of electronic music itself. “Until recently, electronic music was only accessible to a handful of people worldwide. There weren’t enough people to make it truly evolve as an art form. Now it can, because [almost] everything [you need]
can [reside] on a laptop. But the fact is, 90 percent of people [still] can’t make a Surround piece because they need a special sound board [for their computer]. Electronic music won’t blossom as an art form until millions of people get their hands on it.”

Music Director Daniel Barenboim announced at a press conference on February 20, 2001, that composer Augusta Read Thomas has renewed her contract as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra‘s Composer-in-Residence through the 2005-2006 concert season. Ms. Thomas has held the position since September 1997.

Augusta Read Thomas Photo by Jerome de Perlinghi

“I am thankful and honored to be asked by the CSO to serve as Composer-in-Residence for another five-year term,” said Ms. Thomas. “This offer clearly illustrates the CSO’s artistic vision and commitment to the music of our time. It is a position that I take very seriously in all its aspects, and, therefore, I am particularly touched by the offer of a long-term extension. Working with Daniel Barenboim, the musicians, and with staff has been an immense joy, and I will continue to carry out the job with passion and devotion.”

No other orchestra has ever awarded a single five-year contract to a composer, and coming as it does on the heels of Thomas’s previous four years with the CSO, will amount to the longest time a composer has ever held such a position.

Augusta Read Thomas is the Orchestra’s third Composer-in-Residence, following predecessors Shulamit Ran (1990-1997) and John Corigliano (1987-1990). The Composer-in-Residence position at the Orchestra was created as part of Meet the Composer’s ten-year Orchestra Residency program (1982-1992). Each residency was set up as a two-year project, with different financial arrangements applying to the third year. Every year, a different group of orchestras started residencies, with the goal that by the end of the ten-year period, the participating orchestras would engage a Composer-in-Residence or composer-advisor on their own. “We hoped to see a turn-around in the number of works by living composers programmed and in the number of composers invited for residencies,” commented MTC founder and former president John Duffy.

Thomas’s contract calls for three new commissions by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The first new work—for chamber ensemble—is slated to premiere during the 2002-2003 Symphony Center Presents MusicNOW concert series. New works for orchestra are scheduled to premiere during the 2003-2004 and 2005-2006 CSO seasons, respectively.

In her capacity as CSO Composer-in-Residence, Ms. Thomas will continue to collaborate with CSO artistic staff in programming MusicNOW, the CSO’s critically-acclaimed contemporary music series. Her responsibilities also include reviewing new scores sent to the Orchestra, making recommendations to Daniel Barenboim regarding future programming considerations, giving pre-concert lectures on a variety of topics, working with visiting composers, and attending rehearsals of new works.

John Duffy photo by Jay K. Hoffman

Duffy called Thomas and the CSO the “shining stars” of the Residency Program. “[The new contract] is certainly a testament to her work as a composer, to her music, and a sign of the splendid work she is doing in Chicago. The Orchestra takes the Composer-In-Residence position very seriously,” Duffy explained, making reference to the position’s many component duties. “It is splendid that they have commissioned her. Hopefully other orchestras will see that as a model to follow and will give [other] young composers a chance to have the experience of writing for a sterling orchestra like Chicago, the experience of working with fellow musicians, working in the community, being a spokesperson for composers.”

In the year 2000 alone, Ms. Thomas had six major premieres worldwide: Aurora, a concerto for piano and orchestra, co-commissioned and premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (with Daniel Barenboim as soloist); Invocations, performed by the Miami String Quartet at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; Fugitive Star, performed by the Avalon String Quartet at the Caramoor Festival; Ring Out Wild Bells to the Wild Sky (with texts by Tennyson) for the Washington Choral Arts Society at the Kennedy Center; Song in Sorrow for soprano, chorus, and orchestra, commissioned and performed by the Cleveland Orchestra; and the orchestral work Ceremonial for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, led by Mr. Barenboim. In January 2001, Ms. Thomas premiered Basho Settings with soprano Barbara Ann Martin at the festival of “The Arts Association of March 1985” in Denmark.

Ms. Thomas’s upcoming premieres include a work for Mariss Jansons and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, to be presented in May; and Daylight Divine for soprano, children’s chorus, and orchestra commissioned by John Nelson and Soli Deo Gloria, which will be premiered at the Festival de Saint Denis in Paris in June. She will also write a new work for Germany’s NDR Orchestra and Christoph Eschenbach for a premiere in November 2002.

In January, Bang On A Can and harmonia mundi usa announced a partnership for the exclusive distribution of Bang On A Can’s new recording project, Cantaloupe Music. Cantaloupe Music represents the culmination of 13 years of ground-breaking concerts and a decade of successful recording projects on multiple major record labels. harmonia mundi will distribute Cantaloupe’s projected six annual releases.

Bang On A Can’s David Lang called the staff at harmonia mundi “unbelievably supportive. For people who were only hoping to sell 10 to 15,000 copies, all of a sudden life is beautiful,” Lang beamed. Though neither party was forthcoming on the details of the distribution agreement, Lang described it as lasting for a set period of time. “We have both done our budgets,” he explained.

Bang On A Can has recorded for major record labels in the past and will continue to do so. Having their own label, however, will allow them to provide a home for music that falls outside the interests of the big record companies.

“The current financial situation in the record industry is that projects that sell fewer than 100,000 copies are loser projects,” according to Lang. “We’re plugging a giant hole in contemporary music, and in the music scene in general – [playing and recording] music that wasn’t being served even before the record companies dried up. This is music by composers who are ‘unclassifiable.’ Music that starts with a disadvantage.”

Each Cantaloupe CD will have extensive background information on the web in the form of individual Internet pages with full details and sound clips. These will replace the program and liner notes that normally accompany CDs. Bang On A Can feels that these materials “can potentially obstruct the path of fresh listening.” The Cantaloupe CDs will be available for purchase at Bang On A Can’s new website store as well as at national record and online stores.

Lang describes the actual record sales as “a byproduct.” Rather, the website and the record company are a way to help like-minded people meet each other. “A record label is a recognition that the people who agree with you may not live next door.” Evidence of their success is the collaborations that have been formed between groups that met at Bang On A Can Festivals.

Lang believes that more groups should consider starting their own labels. He reasons that “[if a group] self-produces their own CD and sells 4,000 copies at their own concerts, they can make a living. And the people who buy the CDs can live and love the music in a more powerful way, better than if they had bought [the CDs] because of an ad generated by a giant publicity [machine].”

For more information on the first three releases, click here.

The twelve semi-finalists have been announced for the second Masterprize international composing competition. Of the twelve semi-finalists, four are American: Carter Pann, Derek Bermel, Anthony Iannaccone, and Pierre Jalbert. [Click on the name of a semi-finalist for more information. For a complete list of semi-finalists, click here.]

Over the coming months, the works of these composers will be recorded by a number of international orchestras, if a recording of broadcast quality does not yet exist. These orchestras will include BBC orchestras and orchestras from selected member stations of the European Broadcasting Union, including the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra, Spain.

Once the semi-finalist works have been recorded the multiple international broadcasts will commence through BBC Radio 3, BBC World Service and participating radio stations from the European Broadcasting Union. The broadcasts will begin in April 2001.

After an initial screening by three jurors, the twelve semi-finalist works were chosen by an international panel of conductors, composers, music writers, and a BBC producer. The twelve members of the panel were: B. Tommy Andersson (Sweden); Andrzej Chlopecki (Poland); Nicholas Cleobury (UK); Mischa Damev (Switzerland); Andrei Golovin (Russia); Andrew Kurowski (UK); Paul Mann (UK); Ryusuke Numajiri, (Japan); Joel Sachs (USA); Alvaro Salazar (Portugal); Ulrich Stranz (Germany); and Rudolf Werthen (Belgium).

The five finalist pieces will be chosen in June 2001 by an international panel of jurors including the initial stage jury, nominees from the participating European Broadcasting Union and a number of celebrity musicians. At the time this article was posted, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, John Harle, and Jon Lord were listed as jury members. Beginning in August 2001, the public will be able to vote using a form included with the September issue of BBC Music Magazine, via phone, or online.

On October 10, 2001, the winner will be decided at the Gala Final at the Barbican Centre, London. The London Symphony Orchestra will perform the five finalist pieces, and the winner will be chosen according to a weighted tally of the following votes: worldwide public (45 percent); gala audience (5 percent); final jury (40 percent); and members of the London Symphony Orchestra (10 percent).

The 2001 Masterprize competition drew a large volume of entries: 1131 composers from 62 countries sent in materials, significantly more than the previous (1998) competition. The US topped the list of entrants with 220 entries with the UK at a close second at 198. There were many entries from Russia, from all across Western and Eastern Europe, and from a wide range of countries including Iceland, Korea, Tadjikistan and Venezuela. And the age range was as broad as the geographical spread, with entries from composers of 15 to 83 years.

First held in 1998, Masterprize is an international competition to promote the composition of music for symphony orchestra. For the 2001 Competition, composers from all countries were invited to enter a work for symphony orchestra between 6 and 15 minutes long. There was no age or geographical limit. Although the pieces had to have been for symphony orchestra, (maximum of 90 players) composers had wide flexibility in scoring down to a minimum of about 50 instruments.

On January 11, the National Endowment for the Arts announced $20,452,500 awarded through 825 grants in the first major funding round of fiscal year 2001. The awards, constituting 24% of the Endowment’s grant funds for the year, will be distributed to nonprofit national, regional, state and local organizations across the country. The Arts Endowment’s FY 2001 budget appropriation is $105 million, an increase of $7 million over last year’s budget and the agency’s first increase since 1992. Of the $105 million, $87 million is designated for grantmaking.

Grants will be distributed through two of the Endowment’s major Grants to Organizations categories, Creativity and Organizational Capacity, as well as through Leadership Initiatives and Literature Fellowships. Creativity awards comprise the largest single element of the Endowment’s direct grantmaking work.

Grant distribution is Creativity with 718 grants totaling $16,335,500; Organizational Capacity with 60 grants totaling $2,272,000; and Leadership Initiatives with seven grants totaling $1,045,000. Within these categories, multi-state projects—those with broad impact reaching audiences in several states—constitute $7,530,500 in grant funds. All grants to organizations must be matched at least dollar for dollar. In addition, the Endowment will award $800,000 through Literature Fellowships, 34 fellowships in poetry and six fellowships for translation of poetry into English from other languages.

Creativity (formerly Creation & Presentation) grants will support all aspects of the creation and presentation of artistic work. Projects funded with these grants will result in the anticipated creation of 170 new works, including 70 commissions; 87 exhibitions; 150 publications; and 500 performances, readings and festivals. 200 artists will participate in residencies and workshops supported by Creativity grants. Among the grant recipients whose projects dealt with new American music, the Albany Symphony received a grant to support Composing the Future; Minnesota Orchestra received a grant to support a series of eleven commissions; Portland Stage Company, in partnership with the Women’s Project and Productions, received a grant to support the development and co-production of Kim D. Sherman and Kate Moira Ryan’s Leaving Queens; and Michigan Opera Theatre received a grant to support the commission of a new opera by Richard Danielpour and Toni Morrison. For a complete list of Creativity grant recipients, click here.

For more information on the Albany Symphony’s $25,000 grant, click here.

For more information on the Minnesota Orchestra’s $75,000 grant, click here.

For more information on the Portland Stage Company’s $22,000 grant, click here.

For more information on the Michigan Opera Theatre’s $25,000 grant, click here.

Organizational Capacity grants will support projects that develop future arts leaders and enhance the skills of those already working in the field. This new grant category is the result of ten colloquia convened in 1999 by the Arts Endowment to discuss strategies for strengthening arts organizations. It refines the goals of the Endowment’s earlier grant category, Planning & Stabilization. For a complete list of Organizational Capacity grant recipients, click here.

Through the Endowment’s Leadership Initiatives, funds will support significant national projects in accessibility, dance creation and touring, and the commissioning of music. An example of projects supported is Adaptive Environments Center in Boston and its Access to Design Professionals program, a first-time effort to increase the number of and support for people with disabilities in design professions. For a complete list of Leadership Initiatives grant recipients, click here.

Karissa Krenz photo by Melissa Richard

Margaret M. Lioi, CEO of Chamber Music America, is pleased to announce the appointment of Karissa Krenz as Editor of Chamber Music magazine, the award-winning bi-monthly magazine published by Chamber Music America. “It is always a sign of an organization’s strength to promote from within. We are delighted to support Ms. Krenz as she grows into her new position,” said Ms. Lioi.

Karissa Krenz replaces Johanna B. Keller, who was Editor for the past three years. Formerly the Associate Editor of Chamber Music magazine, Ms. Krenz has written for a number of publications including Stagebill, Gramophone Explorations 4, and NewMusicBox. Ms. Krenz holds a degree in music history from Bucknell and studied music composition at Bucknell and Wesleyan Universities.

“I’m delighted to be following in the footsteps of Johanna Keller. I look forward to working with my colleagues at CMA to uphold the magazine’s high standards while continuing to push the limits and educate the cultural community about the expanding art form of chamber music.”

Ms. Krenz said in an interview that she hopes to be able to focus increasingly on “hard-hitting issues that are important to the industry, to the chamber music field, and to CMA’s members. [I want to print] things that will get our readers to respond, that will create a dialogue. That may take a while with a bi-monthly.”

Ms. Krenz received a bachelor’s degree in music history from Bucknell University, where she studied composition with Kyle Gann and William Duckworth. She has also studied with Alvin Lucier and Meredith Monk. Given her background as a composer, she is naturally eager to continue Chamber Music’s coverage of issues relating to new music. “So many composers write chamber music because it is affordable to write,” she commented. Chamber Music runs regular features on new music and on jazz by Kyle Gann and Gene Santoro, respectively. She hopes to augment information on composers with more information on ensembles who play new music.

CMA, the national service organization for professional chamber music professionals, was founded in 1977 to support the creation and performance of ensemble music across the country. With a membership of more than 10,000, including musicians, ensembles, presenters, artists, managers, educators, institutions, and advocates of ensemble music, CMA welcomes and represents a wide range of musical styles and ensemble formations. In addition to an annual conference, CMA provides its members with consulting services, health and instrument insurance, grant programs, and several publications including the bi-monthly magazine, Chamber Music, and website, www.chamber-music.org.