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Meet The Composer awarded $200,000 to 24 organizations to support the creation of new works by 17 composers through Commissioning Music/USA 2003, a joint program driven by MTC and the NEA. With the most recent grants, MTC maintains its reputation as one of the most significant players in the development of the American new music landscape.

For the past 15 years, Meet The Composer’s trademark commissioning program has helped in the creation and production of over 700 works and remains dedicated to getting multiple performances of the commissioned pieces well after their premieres. Just last June, 31 MTC-commissioned composers were featured as a part of “The Works,” an intensive 2-day festival that included a marathon concert at Minneapolis’ Southern Theater (which was featured in its entirety on a NewMusicBox web cast). “The Works” was a long-awaited opportunity for MTC to showcase the eclectic catalogue of new works that they have supported over the years.

MTC has demonstrated impeccably good taste in the selection of commissioning projects and has supported in the past such monumental works as John Adams’s opera The Death of Klinghoffer, André Previn’s opera A Streetcar Named Desire, John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, Philip Glass’s Concerto Fantasy, William Bolcom’s Symphony No. 6; Meredith Monk’s Mercy and Paul Dresher’s Sound Stage; Lou Harrison’s Rhymes with Silver (for the Mark Morris Dance Group), Zakir Hussain’s Flammable Contents, Tan Dun’s Concerto for Six Players, Steve Reich’s Drumming, John Harbison’s Flashes and Illuminations, and Julia Wolfe’s Early That Summer. With such a diverse and colorful history, it is not surprising that this year’s commissions come in many shapes and sizes, from solo works and chamber pieces to large multimedia music theatre productions and electro-acoustic works.

“Meet The Composer is pleased to continue its deep commitment to commissioning new music from distinctive and visionary musical voices of our time with the 2003 Commissioning Music/USA awards,” says MTC president Heather Hitchens. “This year’s organizations and composers have proposed an exciting array of projects that will add significantly to the repertoire and connect with audiences across the country.”

For composer Anna Dembska, who splits her time between New York City and Maine, the Meet The Composer commissioning grant has been the impetus to complete a project that she conceived of a decade ago with poet/librettist Beatrix Gates. The opera titled The Singing Bridge, is based on a story by Gates and is scheduled to be staged in Spring 2005 by Opera House Arts in Stonington, a remote town in coastal Maine. “In Maine and all over New England there are old opera houses and a lot of them have gotten really decrepit,” Dembska explains. “There are 4 women who bought it [the opera house in Stonington] in a state of decay and have started doing really nice things down there…It’s really community-based, but also very sophisticated.”

Anna Dembska’s opera The Singing Bridge will be premiered in 2005

The work, which gleans its inspiration from an extant metal bridge that use to span a tidal estuary in the state, is a perfect fit for the venue. “Our story is a personal story about a young woman, but her emotional life is reflected in the story of the bridge, so there’s a historical story surrounding her personal story,” Dembska says of the concept. “And the language of the water and the tides and the bridge are sort of metaphors for her emotional experience.”

Dembska, a singer and composer who has been interested in developing the expressive qualities of the voice, plans to incorporate a local flavor in her musical language for the piece. “I’m thinking about the natural sounds of Maine and the local cultural sounds of Maine that have to do with sea shanties and lumbering songs and just the way people talk around here which is really distinctive and has certain kinds of rhythms to it.” To get a taste of Stonington’s culture, Dembska, Gates and director Valeria Vasilevski spent two weeks in residence at the opera house, interviewing locals about their town and lives. With every new piece of information, the opera has taken a more definitive shape, but it wasn’t until the team was notified about the grant from Meet The Composer that an actual production became a reality. “I think when this grant did come through we felt that, ok, now we can do this.”

New York composer Harold Meltzer will also be embarking on a collaboration that has been long in the works with his MTC grant. “The Peabodys and I talked about doing something for maybe 4 or 5 years,” he recalls. “The pianist in the group, Seth Knopp and I discovered that we were both real fans of this primarily short story writer, who’s kind of a surrealist, named Donald Barthelme.” This shared interest led to the concept of a piano trio with narrator telling Barthelme’s story Sindbad.

Harold Meltzer received grants as both a composer and as the Artistic Director of Sequitur

The text weaves together Barthelme’s humorously warped version of the voyages of Sindbad with the experiences of a pathetic night school teacher who, according to Meltzer, is “constantly trying to inspire his students about romantic literature, but really he’s trying to inspire himself to be a more enterprising human being.” The final 20-min
ute product, due for a performance in October, will feature a narrator reading most of the text of the story with synchronized music.

Meltzer admits that with the premiere looming so near in the future, he was beginning to worry about finances. “I was kind of hemmed in because this piece is being presented in a few months and we had no clue where the money was going to be coming from.”

But he also acknowledges that while writing a piano trio without firm financial underpinning is stressful, larger works, such as the multimedia work that Matthew Rosenblum will be composing for Meltzer’s performing organization Sequitur, are not even in the realm of possibility with out such key support. Sequitur has been anxious to produce Rosenblum’s hour-long music theatre piece that requires massive forces including 18 musicians, 3 singers, 1 dancer, and recorded audio and video material. With the help of Meet The Composer, a premiere is tentatively scheduled for 2005 at the Miller Theatre in New York, with a subsequent performance at the Opera Theater of Pittsburg.

In addition to the much-needed financial boost, Meltzer points to another unique aspect of the MTC Commissioning Music/USA program. “It’s particularly exciting that I can apply again next year! There’s no barrier that way.” Unlike many awards such as Fromm Commissions that won’t allow recipients to re-apply for 7 years, MTC encourages composers to try again and again, ensuring that works of the highest quality are supported through the program.

The recipients of 2003 Meet The Composer Commissioning Music/USA grants are:

• Chen Yi / Virginia Arts Festival
• Jon Deak / Tales & Scales, Inc.
• Anna Dembska / Opera House Arts
• Paul Dresher / Seattle Chamber Players
• Michael Gordon / CalArts
• Fred Ho / Imani Winds
• Kamran Ince / Relâche, Inc.
• Phil Kline / Talujon Percussion Quartet
• David Lang / Carnegie Hall
• Alvin Lucier / Engine 27
• Harold Meltzer / The Peabody Trio
• Todd Reynolds / Ethel’s Foundation for the Arts
• Terry Rile / Kronos Performing Arts Association
• Matthew Rosenblum / Sequitur New Music Ensemble
• Joan Tower / Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
• Melinda Wagner / Network for New Music
• Carolyn Yarnell / Margaret Lancaster

For complete descriptions of the projects and photos of the composers, visit the MTC website.

Thirty-two young composers were honored with 2003 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Awards at a full-day celebration held in New York City. Any composer under the age of 30 is eligible to win a Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and composers are selected through a juried national competition. This year’s recipients ranged in age from 11 to 29, and contributed works that ranged from solo instrumental pieces to full symphonies.

The day’s festivities began with an informal listening session where an audience of award-winners and industry types was treated to some of these works including two piano sonatas, the first by 17-year old Timothy Andres and a second by recent Juilliard Masters degree recipient Stewart Goodyear. Andrew McKenna Lee, just returned from two months of residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell, gave an inspiring performance of his Scordatura Suite for solo guitar, and Orianna Webb played a recording of her Leo Kaplan Award-winning orchestral work Xylem. Webb, who received her PhD. from Yale shortly after receiving her award, was given an extra cash prize for taking home the top honor.

After the performances, the young composers were recognized during the fourth annual ASCAP Concert Music Awards ceremony hosted by Peter Schickele. A statement sent by ASCAP President and Chairman of the Board Marilyn Bergman and read by Vice President of Concert Music Frances Richard, extended the praise. “I can only tell you that if Morton Gould were here this day, he would be so pleased and so proud to be acknowledging you talents and encourage you to even greater heights.”

Of course, these greater heights are represented by the what ASCAP Chief Executive Officer John LoFrumento called “the achievements of outstanding citizens of the concert music world,” honored with the ASCAP Concert Music Awards as part of the same program. This year’s ASCAP member honorees included: Academy Award-winning composer Eliot Goldenthal; Julie Taymor, artistic director of film, opera and music theatre; librettist and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon; the New York Youth Symphony; George Steel, Executive Director of Columbia University’s Miller Theatre; Dale Warland, founder and conductor of the Dale Warland Singers; the College Band Directors National Association; and composer/teacher Samuel Adler. Acknowledging Adler’s commitment to education, four Morton Gould Award-winners—Martin Kennedy, Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, Nico Muhly, and Huang Ruo—wrote and performed short solo works dedicated to their former teacher: a perfect homage to the importance of a continuum between the established and the emerging.

ASCAP’s Concert Music Award honorees included:

Samuel Adler
College Band Directors National Association
Elliot Goldenthal
Paul Muldoon
New York Youth Symphony
George Steel
Julie Taymor
Dale Warland

For a list with photos and brief bios visit the ASCAP website.

2003 Morton Gould Young Composer Award Winners included:

Orianna Webb, Leo Kaplan Award Winner, (Akron, OH)
Judah Adashi (Boston, MA)
Patrick Burke (Pittsburgh, PA)
Anthony Cheung (San Francisco, CA)
Avner Dorman (Tel-Aviv, Israel)
Michael Djupstrom (St. Paul, MN)
Mathew Fuerst (Covins, CA)
Jeremy Gill (Philadelphia, PA)
Stewart Goodyear (Toronto, Canada)
Lane Harder (Houston, TX)
Daniel Kellogg (Wilton, CA)
Martin Kennedy (Tuscaloosa, AL)
Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum (New York, NY)
Andrew McKenna Lee (Charleston, SC)
Christopher Lee (Akron, OH)
John Mackey (New Philadelphia, OH)
Eli Marshall (Waterville, ME)
Nico Muhly (Randolph, VT)
Daniel Ott (Neptune City, NJ)
David Plylar (Peoria, AZ)
Philip Rothman (Buffalo, NY)
Huang Ruo (Hai Nan Island, China)
Matthew Van Brink (Port Jefferson, NY)
Dalit Warshaw (New York, NY)

For a complete with bios and photos of the winners visit the ASCAP website

The following composers were recognized with Honorable Mention:

Mark Berger (New Ulm, MN)
Kyle Blaha (Rochester, NY)
Robert Gross (Escondido, CA)
Jennifer Graham (Oakland, CA)
John Hedges (Wilmington, DE)
Vera Ivanova (Moscow, Russia)
Angel Lam (Hong Kong, China)
Sean McClowry (Rockford, IL)
Keith Murphy (Cambridge, UK)
Edward Niedermaier (Lake Minnetonka, MN)
Andrew Norman (Grand Rapids, MI)
Gordon Williamson (Ottawa, CA)

The awards for composers under the age of 18 include:

Timothy Andres (CT)
Peter Asimov (NY)
Julia Scott Carey (MA)
Ryan Gallagher (OH)
Kevin Kim (NJ)
Anna Lindemann (CO)
Marcus Macauley (WA)
Natasha Sinha (MA)

The following composers were recognized with Honorable Mention:

Kit Armstrong (CA)
Kyumin Lee (MA)
Tudor Dominik Maican (MD)
Michael Summa (PA)
Emilia Tamburri (NJ)
Joseph Trapanese (NJ)
Milena Zhivotovskaya (NY)

Opportunities for composers to hear a piece of their work performed by a professional orchestra are few and far between in today’s world of powerful unions, warhorse repertoire, and reluctant conductors, which is why the American Composers Orchestra‘s Whitaker New Music Readings are so appealing to emerging composers. Each year, up to eight composers are chosen to have their orchestral works performed by the ACO and obtain a professional quality tape of the performance. In addition, one of these composers is selected to receive the $15,000 Whitaker Commission to write a new work that will be performed by the ACO.

“The Whitaker Readings are one of the main ways that the orchestra interfaces with the compositional community at-large,” comments ACO Artistic Director Robert Beaser. “It’s a way of finding new composers—both giving them an opportunity and giving us an opportunity to be able to hear their work and get to know them.”

The eight composers selected to participate in the 12th Annual Whitaker New Music Reading session were Jude Weimar (Buried Secrets), Paul Rudy (Symphonie Pastorale), Martin Kennedy (Juvenilia), Matthew Fuerst (Portrait), Manly Romero (Merengue), Sally Lamb (The Coincidence of Being), Lansing D. McLoskey (Requiem, ver.s.001x), and David Stovall (Let it Fall). The readings took place on Monday, April 7th at Aaron Davis Hall in New York City. In addition to ACO Music Director Steven Sloane, Artistic Director Robert Beaser, and guest conductors Jeffrey Milarsky and Scott Yoo who ran the event, participants had the chance to interact with this year’s mentor composers Chen Yi, Joseph Schwantner, and Steven Stucky. The mentor composers and principal players of the ACO were charged with providing critical feedback to the composers following the readings.

After the reading session the mentor composers, conductors, Beaser, ACO President Francis Thorne, and ACO Executive Director Michael Geller convened to discuss the merits of each composer’s work. Through consensus, the composer that will be awarded the $15,000 Whitaker Commission is chosen. This year the honor went to Manly Romero, a composer who had received an honorable mention for the Whitaker Readings in 1999. But he, like so many other young composers who dream of writing for the orchestra, was determined to be involved with the program further. “In 2001, I decided that I was going to write a piece specifically for the Whitaker Reading session that would win the ACO commission (some nerve, eh?),” he quipped. “I started writing a piece to submit to it and other similar contests. I thought I would write it quickly and send it in for the 2002 reading, but I ended up working on Merengue for an entire year, doing a series of twelve (12!) re-writes and edits.”

Apparently the hard work paid off, as Beaser relates the judges’ impressions of the work. “It was clearly written at a very high professional level, meaning the ear was really wonderful.” In addition to the structural quality of the piece, Beaser was impressed by Romero’s unique and well-developed compositional voice that combines Latin American rhythmic and musical influences within the larger, orchestral framework. “It’s the type of a piece that can sometimes be dangerous,” Beaser said of Merengue. “[But] the language was one which managed to integrate the elements that he was using in such a way that one did not feel as though we were only hearing the elements…It felt like he had integrated those elements into a cohesive and unified language, which was his own.”

It is this personal compositional voice and clear artistic vision that have been the main criteria in the selection of Whitaker Commission winners and Reading Session participants in the past. “Very often we go with composers who have quirky voices,” Beaser affirms. “It’s fairly usual that we have a broad diversity of styles.”

Romero says that for the commission he plans to write a concert piece with “a recognizably Latin character.” For him, incorporating Latin styles into classical music pieces for the concert hall is “emblematic” of his identity. “My father comes from a poor Hispanic background, my mother from a non-Hispanic upper-middle-class background. They found common ground during the Beat era in San Francisco,” he recounts. “My heritage is a mixed bag, and this music, I think, reflects the variety and the confusion that comes with it.”

And while the commission is certainly a great honor for the selected composer, Beaser insists that “the reading is an ending in itself and the commission is icing on the cake…[The Reading Sessions] have become a really important part of the landscape for composers who want to write for orchestra.

“We want to take really talented people and subject them to a really intense experience,” he continues. “A lot of people who haven’t won the competition have gone on to do fabulous things and be very well-known composers.”

Since the program began 12 years ago, it has given 69 composers the chance to listen through their orchestral compositions. In addition to the 12 winners of the Whitaker Commission who have a new work performed by the ACO at a public concert, several participants in the readings have received other commissions from or been programmed by the ACO. Last year’s Whitaker Commission winner, Lisa Bielawa, is currently at work on her commission, The Right Weather, which will be performed by the ACO as part of a new concert series at Carnegie’s brand new Zankel Hall in February 2004. Plus, earlier this year, three Whitaker-commissioned works by Brian Robison, Dan Coleman, and Hsueh-Yung Shen were given their world premieres at Carnegie Hall.

Read an interview with Whitaker commission winner Manly Romero.

For detailed bios and photos of the composers that participated in the reading session, visit the ACO website.

Following the tragic collapse of Composers Recordings, Inc. and the suspension of the Mary Flagler Cary Trust Recording Program in the past year, the Aaron Copland Fund Recording Program, administered by the American Music Center, is more crucial than ever for the maintenance of a healthy system of documenting and promoting contemporary American music. This year $500,000 in grants were awarded to 34 organizations comprising performing ensembles, presenters, and recording companies. An independent 5-person panel selected recipients from a pool of 150 applicants requesting over $2 million total in grants. A complete list of winning projects can be found below.

As the US economy continues to sink, money and excessive generosity is becoming more scarce, but Fund president John Harbison affirms the money for the Recording Program is in no danger. “Thanks to the tremendous success of the Copland 100th anniversary year, beautifully prepared and encouraged by the work of his publishers Boosey & Hawkes, the Copland Fund is in a healthy condition even in these difficult financial times,” he commented. “The Trustees remain very gratified by the vigor and diversity represented in this year’s choices by the Recording Program panel. We will continue to nurture the Fund toward the continuation, and hopefully the increase of our activity in this field.”

The Aaron Copland Fund for New Music was established by Aaron Copland who bequeathed to it a large part of his estate. Created with the goal of encouraging and improving public knowledge of contemporary American music, the Fund awards grants annually through the Recording Program, the Performing Ensembles Program, and a Supplemental Program for service organizations and other non-profit institutions.

For Becky Starobin, the director of Bridge Records that received 5 awards totaling $43,000, the Recording Grants are indispensable to her company. “The Fund has generously supported a wide variety of our projects, ranging from jazz to classical music, and has shown a stylistic breadth that is truly impressive,” she notes. “The Copland Fund is a model for proving how one man and his legacy can glorify a nation and its art.”

“The grant…will allow me to finish the project which I have worked on for almost four years now,” adds Jon Nelson, a composer, trumpeter and director of JOMAFIA Records in Buffalo, NY. He received $8000 to complete a recording of music for brass ensembles. “With some 25 musicians involved, it is by far the largest undertaking I have produced yet. It is also an important project, in that it will be a first recording of pieces by such important American composers that include Milton Babbitt, LaMonte Young, Tom Pierson, David Felder, and myself,” he continues. “My hope is that once these pieces are heard by my colleagues in the brass world, they will seek opportunities to play them and present them to more audiences around the world.”

Beth Custer, a composer with her own record label BC Records, will be using her $15,000 grant to record her score to the silent Georgian film comedy My Grandmother. “It’s my best work yet and I’m thrilled to be able to get it out there,” she said. “I was raised in the era of the Cold War and have come to look at this project as small gesture towards peaceful collaborative art between Russia [the former Soviet Union] and the United States.” She, along with Milestone Film and Video are negotiating with Teknovid, the Georgian company that holds the negatives to the rare film, to get this project into production and distribution.

Innovative ideas like Starobin’s, Nelson’s, and Custer’s are reiterated amongst this years recipients, all of whom help promote the 3 major principles that underlie the Recording Program: 1) To document and provide wider exposure for the music of contemporary American composers; 2) To develop audiences for contemporary American music through record distribution and other retail markets; 3) To support the release and dissemination of recordings of previously unreleased contemporary American music and the reissuance of recordings that are no longer available.

Gold Medalist Ned Rorem Photo by Jeffrey Herman

[On May 21, 2003, at the annual Ceremonial of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, composer Ned Rorem was awarded the Academy’s Gold Medal, its highest honor. The Gold Medal, awarded in recognition of an entire body of work, is given in alternate years to members in each of the AAAL’s disciplines: literature, visual art, and music. The year, in addition to Rorem, the Gold Medal was awarded to poet W. S. Merwin. Below are the comments by AAAL member-composer David Del Tredici upon presenting Rorem with the award. -FJO]

Good afternoon, everyone.

And now, the Academy’s triennial exercise in “shock and awe”—its celebration of the American composer to whom its Gold Medal is awarded in recognition of an entire body of work.

First presented in 1919 to Charles Loeffler, the Academy’s highest recognition has over the years been given to many composers of happy memory, including (for example) Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Samuel Barber, and Leonard Bernstein – all of them, of course, very distinguished. Today’s honoree, however, has eclipsed each of them in at least two respects: First, will their longer names ever be quite so familiar to crossword-puzzle aficionados? And, would any of them have even contemplated having his scandalously personal journals published– and, so voluminously? Still, in 1976, it was not for Literature, but for Music, that our honoree was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Unlike his, none of my journals – thankfully – has ever been published! Truth be told, I’m more at home with poetic texts. And so I’ve written, as a personal tribute, an acrostic celebrating our honoree’s name:

Newly-minted song abounds, as
Ever fresh his music sounds.
Dauntless writer, never shy, he
Rightly claims the public eye.
Over years his output grew so
Rich, so elegant, so new.
Empty praise would only bore ‘im, so
May we laud with gold, Ned Rorem

But acrostic verse is too facile, Ned, and gives me too little opportunity, to catalogue your many accomplishments. Once hailed by Time magazine as “the world’s best composer of art songs” (and you have produced hundreds of them), you have ranged far beyond that genre. For orchestra, you have composed three symphonies, four piano concertos and an array of other works – not to mention your chamber pieces, your six operas, your choral works of every description, your ballets and your music for the theatre. In all, truly, a “body of work” so formidable as to induce both shock and awe. (And, frankly, mystification: How on earth have you found time to journal, or to serve as this Academy’s president?!)

Forty years ago, when your Paris Diary was published, shock and awe likewise greeted your self-identification as a gay man. Shock, of course, was then a commonplace reaction to such self-revelation, particularly among classical musicians. Awe, however, was the reaction of gay composers such as myself, for whom your bold step was positively liberating. A couple minutes ago, I invoked the names of Copland, Thomson, Barber and Bernstein. Their ghosts, surely, would be astonished to see that coming out needn’t derail a musical career, as this pinnacle moment for you – this outpouring of our affection – amply attests.

Ned Rorem, it is my great pleasure, on behalf of the Academy, to award you its 2003 Gold Medal for distinguished achievement in Music.

David Del Tredici
© 2003 David Del Tredici; all rights reserved

[Ed. NOTE: An extensive conversation with David Del Tredici appears in the June 2003 issue of NewMusicBox, which will be available online from June 1, 2003. ]

Composers gather at the 2003 AAAL Ceremonial (Clockwise from upper left): Charles Ives Fellowship winner Barbara White; Academy Award in Music winner Jeffrey Mumford; Academy Award in Music winner Eric Chasalow; Danks Award in Music winner Kevin Puts; Charles Ives Fellowship winner Daniel Kellogg (right) with Young Concert Artists’ Vicki Marguiles (left); AAAL Member and Gold Medal presenter David Del Tredici with partner Ray Warman (right); Charles Ives Scholarship winners Anthony Cheung (left) and David T. Little (right) All photos by Jeffrey Herman

Cantor Benzion Miller at an Archive recording session © 2003 Milken Family Foundation

Since the arrival of the first Jews to the North American continent in 1654, American music has boasted numerous Jewish voices, from the Yiddish theatre songs that came to define modern American Musical Theatre to the cantorial masterpieces of American synagogues and works by major Jewish composers like Leonard Bernstein, Ernst Toch, Lukas Foss, and Osvaldo Golijov. While many of these works have become part of the standard repertoire of American music, many more are in danger of being lost to current and future generations. The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music aims to preserve this dynamic musical heritage, and, since its founding in 1990, has been engaged in extensive documentation projects. On Monday, at a reception held at the Jewish Museum in New York City, the Milken Archive announced its collaboration with Naxos American Classics that will yield 50 CDs over the next 3 years.

The entire recording collection will include more than 600 original compositions, over 500 of which have never been previously recorded for commercial release. Represented on the CDs will be approximately 200 American composers, almost half of who are still living. The discs have been 13 years in the making and were recorded in 15 cities around the world. Many of the works, such as the 1944 Genesis Suite composed jointly by Nathaniel Shilkret, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Darius Milhaud, Alexandre Tansman, Ernst Toch, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky, required significant restorative work, and others needed new orchestrations and arrangements. In addition to the recordings, the Milken Archive also hopes to become a distributor of these new scores and arrangements.

Richard Sandler, executive vice-president of the Milken Family Foundation (known primarily for their work in education and medical research), introduced the Milken Archive recording project with enthusiasm. “I’d like to believe that nothing we are doing at the Foundation—and we are doing quite a bit—will have a longer lasting effect than the Milken Archive,” he began. “The music of this archive encompasses numerous genres, from classical to jazz, from choir music to theatre. There are many compositions that have never before been recorded and may never have been heard if it wasn’t for this project.”

Defining both Jewish music and American music is a sticky situation. Selecting the works to be included in the Archive was a difficult task carried out by a distinguished panel of musicologists, conductors, performers, cantors, and scholars, spearheaded by Archive Artistic Director and Jewish music scholar Neil W. Levin. “The Milken Archive addresses a wide variety of expression that pertains directly to or has arisen from the nearly 350-year old Jewish experience in America,” explained Levin. “That experience may be secular or sacred or both. Mostly the music that we address concerns music that has been conceived or written in this country by composers who have been part of the overall American environment and influence, whether as natives or as immigrants.”

At Berlin rehearsal of Berlinski’s Avodat Shabbat (l to r) Herman Berlinski, Gerard Schwarz, Neil Levin, Lowell Milken, Richard Sandler, and Robert Brubaker © 2003 Milken Family Foundation

The recordings included in the Archive contain both sacred and secular work by both Jews and Non-Jews. Compositions were considered for the series if they were based upon either Jewish textual content, Jewish languages, use of traditional Jewish modes or melodies, Jewish social or sacred functions, inspiration from Jewish themes, or historical context. But as Levin points out, “the overriding criteria for selection remain aesthetic quality within each category and authenticity.”

On Monday, shortly before the official announcement, the Milken Archive signed a formal agreement with Naxos, who will aid in the production and distribution of the entire Archive catalogue through their American Classics series. “It is really an honor for Naxos to take our imprint and our brand and have it associated with such wonderful musicians and works and heritage,” Naxos USA President Jim Sturgeon stated. “In my 6 years at Naxos, it’s the most important and significant partnership that I’ve been a part of.”

Since its inception 5 years ago, the American Classics series has become Naxos’s best-selling set, with over 100 recordings made to date and over half a million units sold. Sturgeon explains that Naxos is “excited that we can take the Milken Archive recordings and bring them together with our co-brand and …take this music to the world.” The first five recordings will be released in September 2003, followed by monthly releases.

But the individually released recordings are only one part of the larger Milken Archive vision. Once all of the recordings have been releas
ed, they will become available in a comprehensive box set, containing 20 thematic volumes. The box set will include at least 35% more music and include supplementary materials such as DVDs, expanded liner notes, and a separate volume of essays. The massive collection is primarily marketed for libraries and educational institutions and is one part of the part of the multi-level curriculum that the Milken Archive is designing for use in high schools, colleges, and adult education programs. In addition, the Milken Archive has been documenting major figures in Jewish American music for the past decade in a series of videotaped oral histories. Currently, over 800 hours of video footage exist as part of the oral history project. All of these parts will serve as in-depth resources for future scholarly work.

David Krakauer plays at Berlin memorial to authors whose works were banished during the Third Reich © 2003 Milken Family Foundation

In addition, the Milken Archive will be co-sponsoring an international conference festival on American Jewish Music with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America called Only in America—Jewish Music in a Land of Freedom. This five-day event will be structured around panel discussions and seminars with leading academic and musical personalities, and musical performances. It is scheduled to take place in New York City, November 7-11, 2003.

“American Jewish Music!” Levin summed up. “American because it represents a genuine part of our diverse and symbiotic American culture. Jewish, as an expression of Jewish tradition and life that has only been enhanced by the American experience in the American environment. And above all, it is music. Simply music. It is music that transcends ethnic or religious boundaries and invites sharing. And it is music that has the power to speak to all of us as Americans, as Jews, as human beings, and I think most importantly of all, as universal lovers of good music.”

Elliott Carter and Helen Jones Carter Photo by Becky Starobin, courtesy Bridge Records

Helen Jones Carter, wife of composer Elliott Carter, died on Saturday, May 17 at the couple’s home in Greenwich Village, New York. The cause was heart failure; she was 95.

She was born in Jersey City, New Jersey on July 4, 1907 to John Jones, an accountant, and Ada Forst Jones. Educated in Jersey City schools, she received studio art training at the Art Students League in New York, where her principal teacher was the Ukrainian Cubist artist Alexander Archipenko. She became active as a sculptor; her portrait head of Marcel Duchamp, a personal friend, is in the collection of the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. Later, she sculpted a portrait head of Elliott Carter, which can be seen at the New York Public Library (main branch).

Helen Jones Carter’s bust of her husband, Elliott Image courtesy the New York Public Library

During the 1930’s, she became one of the directors of the WPA Art Program in New York. She met Elliott Carter through a mutual friend; at that time Carter lived in an apartment he had sublet from the composer George Antheil. Helen Jones and Elliott Carter married on July 6, 1939. Their son, David Chambers Carter, was born in 1941. After she married, Helen Carter set aside her career as a sculptor.

Elliott Carter dedicated his recent Boston Concerto to Helen Carter. Premiered on April 3, 2003 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Ingo Metzmacher, the work bears as its epigraph a poem by William Carlos Williams that reads in part,

As the rain falls
so does
      your love
bathe every
              open
Object of the world

Helen Jones Carter is survived by her husband Elliott Carter, her son David, and his family: Carol and son Alexander Elliott Carter-Park. A memorial service will be held at a later date.

First Music 20 composers (l to r): Steven Gates, Jeff Myers, and Andrew Norman

The 40th Anniversary of the New York Youth Symphony will be marked by commissioned works by three young composers. Andrew Norman, Steven Gates, and Jeff Myers have been selected to participate in the orchestra’s 20th First Music season and have been asked to write pieces surrounding the theme of “celebration,” marking 20 years of commissioning new works from young composers. Including the 2003-04 commissions, the New York Youth Symphony will have created 60 new orchestral works. While last year’s commissions requested that the composers meditate upon New York City, a task that brought images of September 11th to mind (although certainly not all of the pieces were oriented toward this event), the commission for the 2003-04 season forego any shadow of tragedy. While the word “celebration” may elicit repressed memories of Disneyfied parade music, the different takes on the theme will most certainly be deeply personal for the composers. For instance, Gates, who recently earned his master’s as the University of Southern California, will be focusing on the region in Southern California known as Joshua Tree, collaborating with poet Jennifer Dobbs. “It is an ancient and hauntingly beautiful desert area that has a wonderful spirit to it. In a broad sense, I am celebrating beauty, life, nature, space.”

While all three composers are native Californians, their studies have scattered them throughout the U.S. For Myers, who will be moving from the Eastman School of Music to the University of Michigan this fall, this will be his first opportunity to write for a full orchestra. “I will be able to do some things that I have been wanting to do for a while, like write very large chords and play with tone color in ways that I couldn’t with small ensembles. I am very interested in creating sonorities that sound ‘electronic’; I tend to think about sound very empirically.”

Like Myers, this will also be Gates’s first opportunity to try out his orchestral chops. “For the last few years I have worked more on chamber music than large ensembles, but this project works out wonderfully because I was just about to make the jump and write for orchestra.”

Norman, the youngest of the three, has the most experience with orchestral writing. His first orchestral pieces were for his high school orchestra, in which he played viola, and he has also had his work performed by professional and university orchestras. But even with so many orchestral compositions under his belt, he is thrilled to be writing for the New York Youth Symphony. “I tend to view the medium and the music I write for it through the lens of my own orchestral experience,” he says. “As a result, practical concerns are always of primary importance to me, and I am continually asking myself, ‘Could I play this?’ or perhaps more importantly, ‘Would I want to?’ ”

Gates agrees that it is important to keep who he is writing for in mind. “It’s important to me that the performers enjoy the physical experience of playing my music, and that they understand it on more than just a surface level.”

And although there are certain instrumentation and rehearsal limits placed on the orchestra, none of the composers feel deterred by the age of their performers. “The New York Youth Symphony is certainly one of the most talented youth orchestras in the country, so I haven’t felt the need to write at what might be a typical youth symphony level. After all, they are about to perform Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra,” Gates points out.

“While there are considerations to be made—like an avoidance of overly complex rhythms and a careful use of exposed textures—I feel no need to ‘write down’ to these players or limit my imagination because they are students,” Norman adds. “My goal is to write an effective piece that is both gratifying to play and to hear.”

Myers is also very optimistic about writing for the NYYS. “There is a balance to be made—I wouldn’t want to dumb the music down, nor would I want to write absolutely whatever I thought sounded good on MIDI. As a result I am focusing on things that, technique aside, should make the piece a worthwhile listening experience.”

“There is always so much to learn from any performance of a large ensemble work,” Norman continues. “It is a chance to hone skills of orchestration, to try out new ideas and to learn from conductors and players. But the First Music experience is special because it is a chance to connect with musicians that are close to my own age.” For him, the niche of writing for student orchestras is one that is too often overlooked.

All three composers site the commission as an invaluable opportunity for the development of their professional careers, in terms of learning how to work within the restrictions of a commission format, learning about orchestras, hearing their music played by a high quality ensemble, and gaining confidence in their ability to write for large, visible ensembles. And for Gates, First Music will bring him another new experience in addition to writing for orchestra. For a “guy from a small town in Northern California,” Gates says the trips to New York and having his work premiered at Carnegie Hall “will be a blast.”

About the composers:

Jeff Myers (b.1977) was born and raised in Fremont, CA, a suburb of the San Francisco Bay Area. From age 8-11 he studied piano on and off. In high school, he pursued other interests in chemistry, biology, and poetry until one night at a party when he attempted to improvise on the piano. Soon afterwards, Jeff was totally obsessed with piano and composition, teaching himself to notate and orchestrate. After high school, Jeff enrolled in nearby San Jose State University where he was exposed to many types of music including electro-acoustic music, Western classical music, jazz and world musics. Studying under Brian Belet, he wrote his first major work Five Parametric Etudes, for Disklavier (digital player-piano), which won a BMI Award and is now featured on a CD of contemporary music (Capstone Records). Jeff continued to explore many options studying with electro-acoustic composer Allen Strange and film composer Dan Wyman (he scored Lawnmower Man). After deciding to pursue contemporary concert music, he made his next home the Eastman School of Music where he has worked with David Liptak, Dan Godfrey and Martin Bresnick. During his two-year stay he has received numerous honors including a BMI Award, an ACA residency, a Tanglewood Fellowship, a Yvar Mikhashof Grant, a Fromm Foundation Commission, and a First Music Commission. Since he began composing, he has undergone several stylistic changes, from tonal to quintal, conceptual to polystylistic, and is now settling into a personalized synthesis of these styles, which he believes retains the best attributes from each. Jeff’s biggest musical influences are Lutoslawski, Vivier, Ligeti, and Messiaen and their influence can probably be heard as an undercurrent in most of his latest works. Jeff is currently working on a commissioned piece from the New York Youth Symphony, a short suite for orchestra. Next year, he will be studying at the Unive
rsity of Michigan with Bright Sheng, and will sadly lament the cancellation of the TV show Buffy, The Vampire Slayer.

Steven Gates (b. 1976) completed his undergraduate work in composition at the University of Denver, Lamont School of Music, where he studied with Donald Keats. It was also here that Mr. Gates began focusing his primary performing area on jazz piano, and has since played with numerous jazz combos and bands. In May 2003, he will graduate from the University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music, with a Masters Degree in Composition, and will begin his doctoral work there in the fall. His primary instructors are James Hopkins and Frank Ticheli. Mr. Gates’ most recent honors include: 1st place, Tampa Bay Composers’ Forum Prize for Excellence in Chamber Music Composition, and the designation of honors at the University of Oregon’s “I Wage Peace” choral music competition. Recently, Mr. Gates received a commission from the New York Youth Symphony, which will premiere the new work in February 2004.

Andrew Norman (b.1979) studies composition and piano at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where his principal teachers have been Donald Crockett, Stephen Hartke, and Stewart Gordon. In 2002 he received his B.M., summa cum laude, from the Thornton School and was named its “Most Outstanding Piano Performance Major” and “Most Outstanding Undergraduate.” He has been commissioned by the Modesto Symphony (1998), the California State University Stanislaus Symphony (1999), the William Kapell Piano Foundation (2001, 2002), and the New York Youth Symphony (2003). His compositional honors include two Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (1998, 1999), an honorable mention (2003) and a Special Citation (1997) from ASCAP, First Place in the National Federation of Music Clubs Emil and Ruth Beyer Composition Awards (2003), Second Place in the Music Teachers’ National Association Composition Contest (2001), and First Place in the USC Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Work (2002). Andrew has twice been a Composition Fellow at the Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East (2002, 2003), and he was one of five young composers in residence at the National Youth Orchestra Festival at Interlochen (1998). As a member of the Music Teachers’ Association of California Young Artist Guild, Andrew maintains an active recital schedule throughout the state. He currently teaches piano and composition at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music.

May 12, 2003—Winners of the 79th annual John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship U.S. and Canada competition were announced last month and amongst the 184 selected artists, scholars, and scientists, were 9 American composers. Recipients were chosen from a pool of over 3200 applicants and in total the Guggenheim Foundation granted $6,750,000, making the average award $36,684. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The awards are intended to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed.”

According to Foundation president Edward Hirsch, over $220 million has been awarded to more than 15,200 individuals through the Fellows competition since its inception in 1925. Amongst past recipients of the fellowship are many Nobel Laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners. Individuals are selected for a fellowship through a two-step process by which numerous field-specific advisory panels make recommendations to the Committee of Selection.

This year’s fellows in musical composition are:

Patricia Barber
Martin Bresnick
Anthony Brown
David Froom
Fred Hersch
Harold Meltzer
Alvin Singleton
Henry Threadgill
Barbara White