Commissions & Premieres
Artists and Works Commissioned and/or Premiered by
Premiere Commission, Inc.:
Timothy Andres: Heavy Sleep
Timo Andres (b. 1985, Palo Alto, CA) is a composer and pianist who grew up in rural Connecticut and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. His debut album,
Shy and Mighty, which features ten interrelated pieces for two pianos performed by himself and pianist David Kaplan, was released by Nonesuch Records in May 2010 to immediate critical acclaim. Of the disc, Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that
Shy and Mighty "achieves an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene... more mighty than shy, [Andres] sounds like himself."
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Milton Babbitt: A Waltzer in the House (ballet) 
The compositional and intellectual wisdom of Milton Babbitt has influenced a wide range of contemporary musicians. A broad array of distinguished musical achievements in the dodecaphonic system and important writings on the subject have generated increased understanding and integration of serialist language into the eclectic musical styles of the late 20th century. The recipient of numerous honors, commissions, and awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize Citation for his "life's work as a distinguished and seminal American composer," Babbitt is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Angelo Badalamenti: Snapshot: Prague, 1986 
Though his jazzy, sometimes nightmarish compositions have earned Grammy Award-winning film composer Angelo Badalamenti a special place in the David Lynch canon, the tireless musician has also found success with such world-renowned filmmakers as Jane Campion (Holy Smoke, 1999) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (The City of Lost Children, 1995). A native of Brooklyn, NY, who spent his childhood enjoying the lavish auditory pleasures of opera and classical music, later studies at the Eastman and Manhattan Schools of Music found the lifelong music lover coming into his own as a composer.
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Gordon Beeferman: Phenomena 
Gordon Beeferman a composer, pianist and improviser based in New York City. His works - orchestral, solo, chamber, and opera - have been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Quartet New Generation recorder collective, eighth blackbird, pianist Winston Choi, soprano Lisa Bielawa, NYC-based Anti-Social Music and many others. The Chicago Tribune praised Beeferman for his "masterly orchestral craftsmanship; odd, refreshing sonorities and expressive speech." The Albany Times-Union described his work as "chilling... unpredictable... brutal." The New York City Opera presented an excerpt from his chamber opera-in-progress "The Rat Land" on the VOX 2007: Showcasing American Composers series.
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Lisa Bielawa: The Lay of the Love and Death, Portrait-Elegy, Fledgling, and Rondolette 
Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa often takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and from close artistic collaborations. A graduate of Yale University with a BA summa cum laude in Literature, her music explores the ritual and phenomenological nature of music-making and listening, employing instrumental forces in ways that are both dramatic and intimate in their use of time and space. Bielawa's The Lay of the Love and Death, written for violinist Colin Jacobsen and baritone Jesse Blumberg and based on an epic poem by Rilke, premiered at Alice Tully Hall in March 2006. Hurry, for soprano and chamber ensemble, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered in 2004 as part of Dawn Upshaw's Perspectives series.
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William Bolcom: New York Lights
William Elden Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, three Grammy Awards, and the Detroit Music Award. Bolcom is a professor of music composition at the University of Michigan. In 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. James Levine and the Vienna Philharmonic premiered the Fantasia Concertante for viola, cello, and orchestra in 1986 at the Mozarteum in Salzburg; the Fifth Symphony was premiered in 1990 by The Philadelphia Orchestra and Maestro Davies. Also under Davies' baton, Bolcom's first opera, McTeague - starring Ben Heppner in the title role and Catherine Malfitano as his wife Trina, was premiered by the Lyric Opera in Chicago on October 31, 1992, and subsequently played to nine sold-out houses. The University of Indiana at Bloomington presented four performances in February and March 1996. Maestro Davies also presided at nine sold-out performances of A View from the Bridge in October and November 1999 in Chicago, as well as at The Metropolitan Opera in December 2002. He is married to mezzo-soprano Joan Morris.
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David Bruce: The shadow of the blackbird
David Bruce was awarded the prestigious Lili Boulanger Memorial Award in 2008, after a nomination by Osvaldo Golijov (a previous nomination in 1998 came from Sir Harrison Birtwistle); other prizes include the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Competition in 1994, the Adam Prize (King's College) and the Herberts Howellls Prize (RCM). Bruce was born in Connecticut, USA to English & Welsh parents (he holds both UK and US citizenships). He began his undergraduate studies in music in 1988 at Nottingham University (composition tutors included Jim Fulkerson and Nicholas Sackman), before moving on to the Royal College of Music (1991-3) where he obtained a Masters Degree in Composition, studying with Tim Salter and George Benjamin; and a PhD in Composition at King's College, London (1995-9), under the supervision of Sir Harrison Birtwistle. His work has attracted the attention of some of the world's leading musicians, including soprano Dawn Upshaw, Klezmer pioneer Giora Feidman, clarinettist Todd Palmer and the St Lawrence String Quartet. Upshaw in particular has played an important role in bringing Bruce's music to the attention of a wider audience, instigating the commission for his opera A Bird in Your Ear, and performing his song-cycle Piosenki at Carnegie Hall and elsewhere. Upshaw was also the soloist in a new song-cycle with ensemble, The North Wind was a Woman, commissioned for the Gala opening of the 2009 season by the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center.
Other recent commissions include Gumboots, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for clarinettist Todd Palmer and the St Lawrence String Quartet, which has had almost 30 performances in its first two years, including a repeat performance at the 2010 Spoleto festival by Palmer and SLSQ which was broadcast on 'Performance Today' and syndicated across US public radio; Groanbox for New York's Metropolis Ensemble featuring his friends the Groanbox Boys; and Caja de Musica for Concert Artists Guild Winner Bridget Kibbey's Carnegie Hall recital debut. Current projects include a new commission for Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble; a third commission from Carnegie Hall to be premiered by Ensemble ACJW in Feb 2011; a new double concerto for world-renowned klezmer clarinettist Giora Feidman; a solo piano piece for pianist Bruce Levingston to be premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2011; a new flute, viola and harp trio for San Diego-based 'Art of Elan'; and a new chamber opera for The Opera Group, based on Philip Pullman's short story The FireWork Maker's Daughter.
Bruce's work in opera has attracted considerable attention. His one-act opera A Bird in Your Ear (2008) was commissioned by Bard College, NY and after its successful premiere has had performances by New York City Opera as part of the 2009 VOX festival; as a finalist in the National Opera Association's Chamber Opera competition 2008; and with students at NYU. The New York Times hailed A Bird in Your Ear as "by far the best...rich...enchanting...skillfully written and imaginative".
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Regina Carter: Praia Dos Carnieiros 
Born in Detroit, Regina Carter grew up listening to Motown, but also studied classical violin. Carter found artistic freedom in jazz by exploring the melodic and percussive possibilities of the violin. She was diligent in her pursuit of musical excellence, and Carter.s creative genius in composition and improvisation soon became a formidable combination on the jazz scene. Having appeared with greats like Wynton Marsalis and R&B diva Aretha Franklin, Carter continues to gain the respect of critics and fans alike for her musical diversity. Carter has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship Prize.
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Justine Chen: Ancient Airs and Dances 
A native of Brooklyn, New York, composer/violinist Justine Chen has been the recipient of many prestigious awards and commissions. Organizations and performers who have commissioned, presented and performed her works include Premiere Commission, Inc., The Juilliard School, New York City Opera, The New Juilliard Ensemble, New York Choreographic Institute, the Washington Ballet, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the FLUX Quartet, the Elements Quartet, the Vinca Quartet, the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Concertante, The Arial Wind Ensemble, the Chamber Dance Project, and the Broyhill Ensemble. She received her violin and composition training at The Juilliard School, and her ballet training at the School of American Ballet.
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John Corigliano: Circa 1909 
John Corigliano is one of the finest and most widely recognized American composers. Among the dozens of citations, doctorates, and other honors he has received are included all of the most important music awards - several Grammy's, a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 2 (2001), a Grawemeyer for his Symphony No. 1 (1991), and an Academy Award for his score to Francois Girard's 1997 film "The Red Violin." Corigliano's work has been performed by some of the most visible orchestras, soloists and chamber musicians in the world, and recorded on the Sony, RCA, BMG, Telarc, Erato, Ondine, New World, and CRI labels.
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Sebastian Currier: REM, Departures and Arrivals, and Digital Mist
The music of composer Sebastian Currier has been performed worldwide in major cities such as Paris, Rome, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, London and Toronto. In the United States, his works have been performed in Carnegie Hall in New York, Symphony Hall in Boston, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. Sebastian Currier received the 2007 Grawemeyer Award, the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and several awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, His works have been performed by such orchestras as the National Symphony, Gewandhaus Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony. Sebastian Currier holds a DMA from the Juilliard School.
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Curtis Curtis-Smith: Ghost and Passacaglia Etudes 
An internationally recognized composer, he is the recipient of over 100 grants, awards, and commissions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Koussevitzky Prize at Tanglewood, the Prix du Salabert, and grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, and most recently commissions from the Barlow Endowment and the Harvard University Fromm Foundation.
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David Del Tredici: Innocence; Three Gymnopedies; Ballad in Lavender 
Generally recognized as the father of the Neo-Romantic movement in music, David Del Tredici has received numerous awards (including the Pulitzer Prize) and has been commissioned and performed by nearly every major American and European orchestral ensemble. "Del Tredici," said Aaron Copland, "is that rare find among composers - a creator with a truly original gift."" In May 2005 Robert Spano conducted the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus in the premiere and subsequent recording of Paul Revere's Ride, recently nominated for the 49th Annual Grammy Awards as the Best New Classical Composition of 2006. Among past recordings were two best-sellers - Final Alice and In Memory of a Summer Day (Part I of Child Alice); the latter work won Del Tredici the Pulitzer Prize in 1980.
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Mohammed Fairouz: El Male Rachamim
Mohammed Fairouz, born in 1985, is one of the most frequently performed, commissioned, and recorded composers of his generation. Hailed by
The New York Times as "an important new artistic voice"" and by BBC World News as "one of the most talented composers of his generation," Fairouz integrates Middle-Eastern modes into Western structures, to deeply expressive effect. His large-scale works, including four symphonies and an opera, engage major geopolitical and philosophical themes with persuasive craft and a marked seriousness of purpose. His solo and chamber music attains an "intoxicating intimacy," according to New York?s WQXR, which selected his CD
Critical Models as Album of the Week.
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Paul Festa: The Apparition of the Eternal Church
Paul Festa is a writer, film director, and musician. He studied violin at The Juilliard School and literature at Yale. Paul Festa still claims that he is a die-hard agnostic, but when he first Messiaen's Apparition he was driven to extreme heights of spiritual and erotic ecstasy and he immediately decided that he had to share Messiaen's piece with others and document their reaction to the music. He acquired a video camera, grabbed a pair of headphones and cornered every fascinating individual he could find - playwrights, poets, Wigstock drag queens, Scissor Sisters, professional models, documentary filmmakers, pianists, performance artists, and everyone from Harold Bloom to Lemony Snickett to John Cameron Mitchell - and forced them all to listen to Messiaen's 10-minute piece straight through, asking that they describe its effect on them as the video tape rolled. The result is a surprising, exhilarating and often hilarious collective interpretation that Karl Bartos (the founder of Kraftwerk) aptly called "one of the best movies about music I have ever seen." Upon hearing Apparition all of them are deeply affected and they vividly express their churning emotions with eloquent, witty, and candid personal disclosures. The music and its interpreters conjure something like what William Blake famously called "the marriage of heaven and hell."
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Kimball Gallagher: Four Preludes 
A native of Boston, Kimball Gallagher earned his undergraduate degree at Rice University in the studio of Jeanne Kierman-Fischer, and he later finished his Masters degree as a pupil of Robert McDonald at The Juilliard School. His life-long mentor Joseph Smith is a mainstay of his musical development. Other influential teachers have included Jerome Lowenthal and Jonathan Bass. He has embraked on a project composing 88 preludes inspired from people and places around the world.
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Philip Glass: A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close and Suite from Dracula
Philip Glass is one of the most important and influential artists of our time. He has composed for dance, film, opera, orchestra, and theater. His 1976 operatic collaboration with Robert Wilson, Einstein on the Beach, is considered a landmark in 20th century music theater. He has worked with many prominent artists, including David Bowie, Alan Ginsburg, Erroll Morris, Martin Scorsese, Ravi Shankar, Paul Simon, and Twyla Tharp. Born on January 31,1937, Mr. Glass graduated from the University of Chicago at age 19 with degrees in mathematics and philosophy and then studied at The Juilliard School with Vincent Persichetti and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. While in Paris, he was hired by a filmmaker to transcribe the music of Ravi Shankar. He absorbed the techniques of Indian music and, after researching music in North Africa, India, and the Himalayas, began applying Eastern techniques to his own work. This eventually led to a musical breakthrough using a style that came to be called Minimalism. Glass's works have evolved, however, in both musical complexity and length in a way that can hardly now be called just "minimal". While certain principles remain constant, Mr. Glass utilizes greater rhythmic and thematic variations to evoke even deeper fields of sound and emotion.
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Nolan Gasser
Nolan Gasser is a critically acclaimed composer, pianist, and musicologist - most notably, the architect of Pandora Radio's Music Genome Project. His original works have been performed in such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, La Salle Pleyel (Paris), and the Rose Bowl (Pasadena), among many others. Key current projects include an opera,
The Secret Garden, commissioned by San Francisco Opera (premiered March 1, 2013), a musical,
Benny and Joon, in partnership with H2H Productions and MGM On Stage, and a forthcoming book on the interrelation of music and science.
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Augusta Gross: Toward Night
Augusta Gross is a composer of intimate, thoughtful works that have a distinctive and piquant voice. Her works express tremendous depth using an extremely spare and subtle means of expression. In this, her work descends not only from Arvo Part and Erik Satie, but also from earlier composers such as Gluck and Josquin. Born into an illustrious family of musicians, scientists and scholars, Gross began her musical studies at an early age. She first studied the piano and, after writing numerous worked on her own, compositional technique. While continually nurturing her many interests in the arts (Dr. Gross is also a gifted visual artist), she became a highly respected psychologist,with a special interest in diagnosing and treating individuals with learning difficulties. She eventually retired from practice and devoted herself to composition. Gross traces her interest in music and the development of her musical abilities to her longstanding curiosity about the nature of communicating emotional meaning through nonverbal methods. She considers the piano, in particular, a wonderfully expressive 'and vocal' conduit of emotion. Her works have been performed and recorded by numerous prominent artists both in the United States as well as abroad.
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Daron Hagen: Snapshot: Gwen and Earl's Wedding Day, December 20th, 1951 
The composer of four major operas, as well as numerous orchestral, chamber, choral, and lyric compositions that have received numerous performances worldwide, Daron Hagen's catalogue continues to grow dramatically as prominent orchestras and musicians, including the New York Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Gary Graffman, and the Kings Singers, continue to commission and record new works. Along with his service as President of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation in New York City, Mr. Hagen is a Lifetime Member of the Corporation of Yaddo. Awards and fellowships include two Rockefeller Fellowships, the Camargo Foundation Fellowship, Charles Ives scholarship, ASCAP-Nissim Prize, Barlow Prize, Bearns Prize, and the Kennedy Center Friedheim Prize. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music.
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Wendell Harrington: Snapshots (film)
Designer Wendall K. Harrington has won the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and American Theatre Wing award for The Who's Tommy. Broadway credits include In My Life, The Good Body, Vincent in Brixton, Amy's View, The Capeman, Ragtime, Freak, Company, The Will Rogers Follies, The Heidi Chronicles, My One and Only, They're Playing Our Song. Opera and ballet credits include Turn of the Screw, Nixon in China, A View From the Bridge, The Photographer, The Magic Flute, Anna Karenina, Othello, Ballet Mecanique. She has also worked with Simon & Garfunkel, John Fogerty, Chris Rock, and the Talking Heads.
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Fred Hersch: Saloon Songs, My Coma Dreams
Pianist and composer Fred Hersch has been called a "one of the small handful of brilliant musicians of his generation" by Downbeat and has earned a place among the foremost jazz artists in the world today. From the late 70's onward as a sideman to jazz legends including Joe Henderson, Art Farmer and Stan Getz, he has solidified a reputation as a versatile master of jazz piano, as well as a relentlessly probing composer and conceptualist. He is widely recognized for his ability to steadfastly create a unique body of original works while reinventing the standard jazz repertoire ? investing time-tested classics with keen insight, fresh ideas and extraordinary technique. Whether unaccompanied, in duo, working with trios and quintets, Hersch has explored the jazz tradition to its fullest even as he opens new and undiscovered doors. Hersch's numerous accomplishments include a 2003 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for composition, two Grammy® nominations for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance and a Grammy® nomination for Best Instrumental Composition. He has appeared on over one hundred recordings, including more than two-dozen albums as bandleader/solo pianist.
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David T. Little: Accumulation of Purpose 
David T. Little is "one of the most imaginative young composers" on the scene, a "young radical" (
The New Yorker), with "a knack for overturning musical conventions" (
The New York Times). His operas
JFK (Royce Vavrek, librettist; Fort Worth Opera / Opéra de Montréal / American Lyric Theater),
Dog Days (Royce Vavrek, librettist; Peak Performances / Beth Morrison Projects), and
Soldier Songs (Prototype Festival) have been widely acclaimed, "prov[ing] beyond any doubt that opera has both a relevant present and a bright future" (
The New York Times).
Recent works include The Conjured Life (Cabrillo Festival Orchestra / Cristian Macelaru), Ghostlight—ritual for six players (eighth blackbird / The Kennedy Center), AGENCY (Kronos Quartet), dress in magic amulets, dark, from My feet (The Crossing / ICE), CHARM (Baltimore Symphony / Marin Alsop), Hellhound (Maya Beiser), Haunt of Last Nightfall (Third Coast Percussion). Little is currently working on a new opera commissioned by the MET Opera / Lincoln Center Theater new works program with Royce Vavrek, and the music-theatre work Artaud in the Black Lodge with Outrider legend Anne Waldman (Beth Morrison Projects). His music has been heard at LA Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, LA Opera, the Park Avenue Armory, Holland Festival, the Bang On A Can Marathon, BAM Next Wave and elsewhere. Educated at University of Michigan and Princeton, Little is co-founder of the annual New Music Bake Sale, has served as Executive Director of MATA, and serves on the Composition Faculty at Mannes-The New School. From 2014-2017, he served as Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia and Music-Theatre Group. The founding artistic director of the ensemble Newspeak, his music can be heard on New Amsterdam, Innova, and VIA Records labels. In fall 2016, VIA Records released the world-premiere recording of Dog Days, starring the original cast and Newspeak led by conductor Alan Pierson; the CD was listed as one of NPR’s Best Recordings of 2016. He received a 2017 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. David T. Little is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
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Zhou Long: Gazers 
Zhou Long is a Chinese-born American composer of orchestral, chamber and vocal works that have been performed throughout the world. Mr. Zhou studied piano as a child, but the Cultural Revolution interrupted his musical progress in 1966. He later studied composition with Wu Zu-qiang at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing from 1977-83. He then studied composition with Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky at Columbia University and there earned his DMA in 1993. His honors include First prizes in the Ensemblia in Mönchengladbach (1990, for Ding [Samadhi]), d'Avray (France, 1991, for Dhyana), Barlow (1994, for Tian Ling), and Masterprize (1998, for Two Poems from Tang) competitions, as well as many earlier prizes in national competitions in China. Most recently, he received the Adventurous Programming Award from ASCAP (1999, for Music from China), a Grammy Award (1999, for the Teldec CD of his Words of the Sun and works by other composers) and the Academy Award in Music for lifetime achievement from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2003). He has lived in the USA since 1985 and is married to the composer Chen Yi.
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Keeril Makan: Three Surreal Shorts and Fledgling
Recipient of the 2008 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, Keeril Makan has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, the Gerbode Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, Meet the Composer, and ASCAP. His commissions include ones from the Bang on a Can All-Stars, American Composers Orchestra, and Carnegie Hall. Makan's work has been featured at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco and the MATA Festival in New York, and internationally at the Gaudeamus Festival in the Netherlands, Le Domaine Forget in Canada, and Voix Nouvelles in France. His baritone saxophone solo Voice within Voice appears on Brian Sacawa's CD American Voices on Innova. The first CD of his music, In Sound, was released on the Tzadik label in June 2008 with performances by the Kronos Quartet and Paul Dresher Ensemble. Trained as a violinist, Makan received degrees in composition and religion from Oberlin. He completed his PhD in composition at the University of California-Berkeley. Outside the US, he spent a year in Helsinki, Finland, at the Sibelius Academy on a Fulbright grant. Having been awarded the George Ladd Prix de Paris from the University of California, he also lived for two years in Paris, France. Makan is Assistant Professor of Music at MIT and makes his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Philippe Manoury: Spins
Philippe Manoury is one of the world's leading composers and computer music researchers. He studied composition with Gerard Condé and Max Deutsch (one of Schoenberg's first students in Vienna), and at the Conservatoire National de Musique de Paris, with Michel Philippot and Ivo Malec. He studied computer-assisted composition with Pierre Barbaud .
In 1978, Philippe began teaching in Brazil at universities in Sao Paulo, Brasilia, and other locations. A major appointment followed at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Lyon (1986-96). Most significant is his long association with the world's leading center for computer music research, IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), a branch of the Centre George Pompidou in Paris. Philippe has worked as a musical researcher (in collaboration with Miller Puckette) since 1981, and as a Professor of Composition since 1993. At IRCAM Manoury composed Zeitlauf (1981), a work for mixed choir, instrumental ensemble, synthesizers, and tape.
For the European Year of Music, the Council of Europe commissioned Manoury to compose Aleph, which premiered in 1985. He also wrote a series of chamber works, including Musique I and II, and Instantanés. In 1992 and 1993 he composed La Nuit du Sortilège, which won an award from the UNESCO International Composers' Tribune. In 1999, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland commissioned Sound and Fury, premiered by Pierre Boulez.
Philippe has composed three operas, 60e Parallèle, K..., and La Frontière. K... was commissioned and premiered by the Paris Opera in 2001. One of his most important works is Sonus ex Machina, a series of compositions (Jupiter, Pluton, Neptune and La Partition du Ciel et de l'Enfer) for solo instruments, ensemble and real-time computer processing. Mr. Manoury was also composer in residence at the Orchestre de Paris where he composed Noon, a large piece for soprano, choir, orchestra and electronics. It was premiered by Esa-Pekka Salonen.
In 2005, Philippe composed Identités remarquables and Strange Ritual for the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Modern Ensemble. Recently, Mr. Manoury premiered On-Iron, a 75-minute oratorio for choir, percussion, electronics and video which toured five cities in France.
James Matheson: Quartet, Windows 
Brooklyn-based composer James Matheson (b. 1970) has rapidly emerged as one of the most distinctive, vital, and creative musical voices of his generation. Among his commissions are works for the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the Chicago and Albany Symphony Orchestras, Carnegie Hall and the Borromeo String Quartet. The American Academy of Arts and Letters honored him in December, 2011, with the Charles Ives Living, an award of $100,000 a year for 2 years (2012-2014). Current commissions include new works for the St. Lawrence String Quartet (to be premiered in February 2014), soprano Kiera Duffy and pianist Roger Vignoles (February 2013), the Los Angeles Philharmonic (spring 2015), Kyo-Shin-An Arts' James Schlefer and the Orchestra of the Swan (fall 2014), pianist Nadia Shpachenko (March 2013), and Swarthmore College for its Sesquicentennial Celebration in 2014.
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Paul Moravec: Vince and Jan: 1945 
Paul Moravec is the composer of over seventy orchestral, chamber, choral, and lyric compositions as well as several film scores and electro-acoustic pieces. His music has earned numerous distinctions, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, a Fellowship in Music Composition from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters as well as many commissions. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University, he has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Hunter College and currently heads the Music Department at Adelphi University.
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John Patitucci: Joan Patitucci 
Born in 1959 in Brooklyn, New York, John Patitucci began playing the electric bass at age ten. He quickly moved from playing soul and rock to blues, jazz and classical music. John began composing and performing at age 12. At age 15, he began to play the acoustic bass and at age 16 began the piano. His eclectic tastes caused him to explore all types of music as a player and a composer. Since 1985, his association with Chick Corea has brought him worldwide acclaim and put him at the forefront of the jazz world. His many recordings with Chick Corea's Elektric Band and Akoustic Band, and his six solo recordings for GRP Records have brought him two Grammy awards (one for playing and one for composing) and eight Grammy nominations. In addition, his first solo recording, JOHN PATITUCCI, went to number one on the Billboard Jazz charts.
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Lenny Pickett: String
Lenny Pickett came to the forefront on the 1973 breakout album, Tower of Power. His solos are simply as good as they get. He worked with Tower for about a decade and returned to do a series of solos on the 1993 CD, TOP. Pickett's studio work can be found on a plethora of CD's. Currently, he leads the Saturday Night Live Band.
Russell Platt: Trio 
Russell Platt holds a unique position in American music. As a composer he is the winner of both the Charles Ives Scholarship and Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a 2007 Copland House Fellowship; as a writer, he has been honored with a 2010 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Music Criticism, in recognition of his work for
The New Yorker, where he is a music senior editor, and for
Opera News, to which he is a regular contributor.
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Peter Quanz: A Waltzer in the House (ballet) 
Born in Canada, Peter Quanz' choreographic talent was nurtured by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School. Following his graduation, the Stuttgart Ballet engaged him with a focus on his choreographic development. In March 2005 the Chemnitz Ballet in Germany premiered his first full evening work, Charlies Kreuzfahrt (Charlie's Cruise). In 2005, Mr. Quanz created a new ballet, "Kaleidoscope", for American Ballet Theatre and, in 2007, the new ballet "Suspended Aria" for the Mariinsky Theatre, premiered by Valery Gergiev as part of the White Nights Festival. He has also choreographed for the Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, as well as young choreographers' evenings with the Stuttgart Ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.
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Wolfgang Rihm: Brahmsliebewaltzer
Wolfgang Rihm is one of themost important composers of his generation and the best-known representative of the neoexpresionist German musical movement called "New Simplicity". Born in 1952 in Karlsruhe, he was composing by age eleven; his early teachers included Eugen Werner Velte, Wolfgang Fortner, and Humphrey Searle. He attended the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1970 and studied with Stockhausen, Klaus Huber, and Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht. He won the City of Stuttgart Prize in 1974 and the City of Mannheim Prize in 1975. His influences include Webern, Feldman and Stockhausen as well as Helmut Lachenmann and Luigi Nono. Notable works include the operas Oedipus (1987), with texts by Rihm after Sophocles, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Müller; Die Eroberung von Mexico (1991), after Antonin Artaud; and the violin concerto Gesungene Zeit, recorded by Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under James Levine. Rihm has served as composer in residence at the Luzerne, Salzburg and Strasbourg Festivals.
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Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez: Waves 
Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez was born in Mexico City in 1964 and now lives in the New York Tundra, where he teaches composition at the Eastman School of Music. He studied with Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Steven Mackey and Henri Dutilleux at Yale, Princeton and Tanglewood, respectively. He has received many awards in the field (e.g. Guggenheim, Fulbright, Koussevitzky, Fromm, American Academy of Arts and Letters.) He likes machines with hiccups and spiders with missing legs, looks at Paul Klee's Notebooks everyday, hasn't grown much since he reached adulthood at age 14, and tries to use the same set of ears to listen to Bach, Radiohead, Ligeti or Deep Purple.
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Paul Schoenfield: Cowbird 
Paul Schoenfield, a native of Detroit, was born in 1947. He began studying piano at age six and wrote his first composition the following year. He eventually studied piano with Julius Chajes, Ozan Marsh, and Rudolf Serkin. He holds a degree from Carnegie-Mellon University, as well as a Doctor of Music Arts degree from the University of Arizona. Mr. Schoenfield has received commissions and grants from the NEA, Chamber Music America, the Rockefeller Fund, American Composers Forum, and many other organizations. His compositions can be heard on the Angel, Decca, Innova, Vanguard, EMI, Koch, BMG, and the New World labels.
Jonathan Sheffer: 25.VI.95 
Jonathan Sheffer, founder of the Eos Orchestra, is a prolific composer of music for theater and film. Mistake). His opera, Blood on the Dining Room Floor, with text by Gertrude Stein, received the Richard Rogers Production Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Mr. Sheffer has also conducted the recording of scores for several Hollywood films, including Batman Forever, Interview With the Vampire, A Time To Kill, Heat, Batman and Robin, and Sphere. He most recently conducted the recording of the score for the Julie Taymor film, Titus. His orchestral compositions include a ballet (which he also conducted) (October 1993); a Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Orchestra, which premiered in Stockholm in November 1996, with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; and Six Piano Pieces, written in 1996. His orchestration of Francis Poulenc's Appolinaire Songs was performed at the Poulenc Centenary Celebration at the 92nd Street Y in October 1999. A native New Yorker, Mr. Sheffer graduated from Harvard University where he studied with Leonard Bernstein and Leon Kirchner. He also attended the Juilliard School and the Aspen School of Music.
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Hollis Taylor: Corfu '72 
Hollis Taylor is a unique figure in music. Once the youngest member of the Oregon Symphony (in the violin section at age 18) and concertmaster/soloist at Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC., she went on to win the Oregon State Fiddle Championship. Since then, she has continued to defy categorization. Her playing is featured in the films, "My Own Private Idaho" and "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." Her CD "Twisted Fiddle" received international acclaim. As a composer, Taylor also blurs the lines of classical, jazz, and folk. European folk music in compound meter inspired Unsquare Dances, composed in Budapest, Hungary in 1995. Two works make up the CD Frames and Boxes: Trail Mix for Five Scordatura Violins and Box Set for Solo Violin, a re-take of the J. S. Bach Solo Violin Partita in B minor reflecting Afro-Cuban, bebop, blues, and funk sensibilities.
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Christopher Tignor: South by Southwest 
In many ways,
Christopher Tignor represents a new generation of composers. Fronting his band
Slow Six, he writes the music and designs software instruments (some
distributed freely) which he uses to sample and transform the band's live sound. The result are scores and soundscapes that are carefully crafted and delicately manipulated. At the same time, Slow Six works and rehearses much like a traditional rock band, adding a real element of collaboration to the music. They've released multiple albums, and Christopher one solo album, Core Memory Unwound, which bring his software instruments to the forefront, weaving around intimate violin and piano melodies.
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Price Walden: Sacred Spaces and Amazing Grace (arrangement)
Cecil Price Walden (b. 1991) is a composer and pianist based in Oxford, MS. His lyrical works have received national critical acclaim.
Price frequently writes works based on his experiences of the South. In October 2011, his large-scale work, “Leaves of Greens” was premiered at the Lyric Theatre in Oxford, which led Southern Living Magazine to name him one of their first ever “Heroes of the New South” (March 2012) Notable performances include the premiere of “hydrogen jukebox” by the University of Mississippi Wind Ensemble at the 2010 CBDNA Southern Regional and a performance of “Leaves of Greens” at the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival by the Atlanta Opera. His song cycle, “Abide with Me: 5 songs of love” has been heard around the country, and was recorded by Jos Milton for Albany Records. 2017 sees the premiere of his first opera, The Contract Player, with librettist Lane Williamson.
In addition to composition and his work as a solo performer, Price also frequently performs as a collaborative pianist and vocal coach. He has been music director for the University of Mississippi Theatre Department since 2011 and was previously the music director for Ghostlight Repertory Theatre. He also frequently works as a freelance performer, and has appeared with the Memphis Symphony’s Opus One Ensemble.
Price studied Music and English at the University of Mississippi and studied piano under Stacy Rodgers.
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Gregg Wramage: Seven Solitudes 
Gregg Wramage was born in Belmar, New Jersey on June 13, 1970. He received his B.M. and M.M. from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied on scholarship with Richard Danielpour. In addition to being selected as a finalist in the ASCAP Young Composer Awards on three separate occasions, Mr. Wramage has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and scholarships from the Bowdoin, Brevard, Aspen, and Norfolk music festivals and the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. In 1998, he was awarded the New Music for Young Ensemble's Josef Alexander Award for his wind quintet, Brilliant Mirrors, which was premiered by Pentasonic Winds in December of 2000 and sponsored in part by a Meet the Composer Fund Grant. Mr. Wramage's orchestral work Deep Midnight was selected by David Zinman for the Aspen Music Festival Jacob Druckman Composition Prize (2000).
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Charles Wuorinen: Heart Shadow
Charles Wuorinen (b. 1938, New York) is one of the world's leading composers. His many honors include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize (the youngest composer to receive the award). His compositions encompass every form and medium, including works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, soloists, ballet, and stage. His newest works include his Fourth Piano Concerto for Peter Serkin and James Levine, commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Heart Shadow for Bruce Levingston, and Ashberyana, chamber settings of poems by John Ashbery. His opera, Haroun And The Sea Of Stories, based on the novel of Salman Rushdie, was premiered by the New York City Opera in Fall 2004. Wuorinen has been described as a "maximalist," writing music luxuriant with events, lyrical and expressive, strikingly dramatic. His works are characterized by powerful harmonies and elegant craftsmanship, offering at once a link to the music of the past and a vision of a rich musical future. Both as composer and performer (conductor and pianist) Wuorinen has worked with some of the finest performers of the current time and his works reflect the great virtuosity of his collaborators. Wuorinen is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky: Passacaglia 
Composer (Uzbekistan) Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In 1986 he graduated from the Tashkent State Conservatoire, where he took composition and instrumentation classes with his father, professor Felix Yanov-Yanovsky. Yanov-Yanovsky has won a number of awards for his musical compositions. Performers of Yanov-Yanovsky's music have included the Arditti Quartet, Dawn Upshaw, the Kronos Quartet, the Moscow Ensemble of Contemporary Music, the New Juilliard Ensemble, Jerusalem Contemporary Players, the Xenakis Ensemble, David James, Yo-Yo Ma, the London Sinfonietta, and 2e2m.
In addition to his concert music, Yanov-Yanovsky is known for his scores for 54 films and more than 30 theater performances.
Commissions from Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky for the Silk Road Project include Night Music: Voice in the Leaves (2000) and Paths of Parables (2006). Mr. Yanov-Yanovsky is currently a composer in residence at Harvard University.
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Chen Yi: Burning
As the recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2001-2004), Chen Yi has been the Lorena Searcey Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor in Music Composition at the Conservatory of the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1998. Born on April 4, 1953, in Guangzhou, China, into a family of doctors with a strong interest in classical music, Chen Yi started studying violin and piano when she was only three, with Zheng Rihua and Li Suxin, and music theory with Zheng Zhong. Ms. Chen has received music degrees from the Beijing Central Conservatory (BA & MA) and Columbia University in the City of New York (DMA). Chen Yi became the first woman to receive a master's degree in composition in China in June 1986, when she gave a whole evening concert of her orchestral works in Beijing. Honors include a Grammy Award, the Lili Boulanger Award, the Sorel Medal (New York University), the 2001 ASCAP Concert Music Award, and the 2002 Elise Stoeger Award from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. A composer and ambassador for the arts who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries, she writes music that reaches a wide range of audiences and inspires people with different cultural backgrounds throughout the world.
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1 Co-commissioned with Concert Artists Guild
2 Co-commissioned with Library of Congress
3 Co-presented with Rooftop Films and St. Bartholomew's Church
4 Commissioned through Premiere Commission
5 Commissioned by Peak Performances @ Montclair State (NJ), funded with the generous support of Linda and Stuart Nelson through Premiere Commission, Inc. in honor of Fred Hersch. Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
6 Co-commissioned with Colin Jacobsen
7 Commissioned through Premiere Commission, Inc.
PHOTOS: William Bolcom: Katryn Conlin; Currier: Leah Reid; Wuorinen: Nina Roberts; Rihm: Schott-Archiv / Peter Andersen
