American Composers Orchestra and WWFM Announce
The ACO Experience
A New Radio Program on WWFM Featuring Live ACO Recordings
Airing on Monday Evenings Once a Month
Next Episode Featuring Music by Fabian Svensson and Judd Greenstein
Airing Monday, November 28, 2016 at 9pm ET
“Innovating, Right Before Your Ears”
#ACOExperience
More Information: www.americancomposers.org/acoexperience
WWFM: www.wwfm.org
New York, NY – American Composers Orchestra (ACO) and WWFM The Classical Network announce The ACO Experience, a new radio program hosted by Diane Guvenis that features live recordings of music by today’s most talented and exciting composers. All works are performed by the American Composers Orchestra or by guest artists and ensembles participating in ACO concerts and ACO’s 2011 and 2015 SONiC: Sounds of a New Century, nine-day citywide festivals in New York, each featuring music by more than 100 composers age 40 and under. The broadcast will air once a month on Mondays at 9pm. More information about recent and upcoming broadcasts is available online at: www.americancomposers.org/acoexperience.
David Osenberg, WWFM Music Director, says, “In addition to the great European masters and masterpieces of the past The Classical Network is committed to music of our country and our time. For over four decades ACO has been a beacon for American music past and present. This broadcast partnership will allow ACO’s invaluable mission and outstanding performances to reach a new and expanded audience.”
ACO President Michael Geller says, “We are thrilled to have an ongoing radio presence with The ACO Experience. So much of the music that ACO performs includes world premieres that are unavailable anywhere else, so it makes sense to make this exciting and eclectic new music available beyond the walls of the concert hall. It helps leverage our mission on behalf of the talented composers writing today. And we are tremendously excited about the partnership with WWFM, an award-winning station that has such a strong commitment to new music.”
The next episode of The ACO Experience will air at 9pm ET on Monday, November 28 and feature eighth blackbird’s performance of Fabian Svensson’s “Two Sides” from Fractured Jams at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, part of the 2011 SONiC Festival, and Judd Greenstein’s My City, commissioned and performed by ACO with DM Stith and The Crossing at the Brookfield Place Winter Garden, part of the 2015 SONiC Festival. Swedish-born Fabian Svensson’s music embodies such seemingly disparate qualities as incessant energy, austere beauty and wry humour. Unusual instrumentations are a recurring feature his music, and Svensson’s work list includes a solo toy piano piece, a ukulele duo and a piece for 8 melodicas, hi-hat and bass. Two Sides was written for Italian ensemble Sentieri selvaggi as a part of their concert season dedicated to “social and political rights”. Judd Greenstein’s My City is a setting of two Walt Whitman poems about New York City, Mannahatta and Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, with the former, simpler poem serving as an introduction to the epic work that follows. Greenstein composes structurally complex, engaging works for varied instrumentation and has written for the Minnesota Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, the Lucerne Festival, yMusic, and Roomful of Teeth among many others. He is a founding member of NOW Ensemble, the composer/performer collective, and is the co-director of New Amsterdam Records/New Amsterdam Presents, an artists’ service organization that supports post-genre musicians through the development of performances and new recordings.
The first episode of The ACO Experience aired on September 26, 2016, and featured ACO’s Carnegie Hall performances of Gity Razaz’s The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (April 2016) and Wang Lu’s Flowing Water Study II (2011 SONiC Festival); PRISM Quartet’s performance of Lei Liang’s Yuan and the JACK Quartet’s performance of Vykintas Baltakas’ B(Ell Tree) from ACO’s 2011 SONiC Festival; and Music from Copland’s House’s performance of Viet Cuong’s Wax And Wire from the 2015 SONiC Festival.
The second episode aired on October 24, 2016, and included ACO’s Carnegie Hall performance of Christopher Stark’s And Start West (2011 SONiC Festival), Suzanne Farrin’s Infinite Here (2011 SONiC Festival, Brookfield Place Winter Garden), and Angélica Negrón’s Me He Perdido or I’ve Gotten Lost (2015 SONiC Festival, Brookfield Place Winter Garden); Nieuw Amsterdams Peil’s performance at Le Poisson Rouge of Joey Roukens’ Shadows And Bells from the 2015 SONiC Festival; and Tyshawn Sorey’s drum set solo at Joe’s Pub during the 2011 SONiC Festival.
Future Episodes:
Program 4 – Monday, December 26, 2016 at 9pm ET: The broadcast will feature ACO’s performances of Paul Yeon Lee’s Echo Of A Dream (2011 SONiC Festival, Brookfield Place Winter Garden) and Alex Mincek’s Continuo (2015 SONiC Festival, Brookfield Place Winter Garden), plus Jason Eckardt’s Subject performed by JACK Quartet (2011 SONiC Festival, Miller Theatre at Columbia University), and Kate Soper’s Only The Words Themselves Mean What They Say sung by Soper with flutist Erin Lesser (2011 SONiC Festival, 92Y Tribeca). New York-based composer Alex Mincek was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2012, winner of the Alpert Award in the Arts, and recipient of the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Art and Letters. His Continuo was commissioned by ACO with funding from the New York Council of the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Program 5 – Monday, January 30, 2016 at 9pm ET: The broadcast will feature ACO’s performances of Ruby Fulton’s Road Ranger Cowboy (2011 SONiC Festival, Brookfield Place Winter Garden), Kenji Bunch’s The Devil’s Box (2011 SONiC Festival, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall); plus Jason Moran’s Cane performed by Imani Winds (2011 SONiC Festival, Miller Theatre at Columbia University), and Dan Visconti’s Lonesome Roads performed by Music from Copland House (2015 SONiC Festival, WNYC’s The Greene Space). Baltimore-based composer Ruby Fulton (b. 1981) grew up in Northwest Iowa. Along with composer George Lam, she is co-director of Rhymes With Opera, a company dedicated to bringing new opera to unconventional spaces. Her Road Ranger Cowboy is an imaginary take on the larger-than-life perspective of a cowboy she encountered in real-life at a truck stop in Waterloo, Iowa.
Program 6 – Monday, February 27, 2017 at 9pm ET
Program 7 – Monday, March 20, 2017 at 9pm ET
Program 8 – Monday, April 24, 2017 at 9pm ET
Program 9 – Monday, May 15, 2017 at 9pm ET
About ACO
Founded in 1977, American Composers Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers. ACO makes the creation of new opportunities for American composers and new American orchestral music its central purpose. Through concerts at Carnegie Hall and other venues, recordings, internet and radio broadcasts, educational programs, New Music Readings, and commissions, ACO identifies today’s brightest emerging composers, champions prominent established composers as well as those lesser-known, and increases regional, national, and international awareness of the infinite variety of American orchestral music, reflecting geographic, stylistic, and temporal diversity. ACO also serves as an incubator of ideas, research, and talent, as a catalyst for growth and change among orchestras, and as an advocate for American composers and their music. ACO programs seek to innovate and experiment, educate students and the public, and open the orchestra to diverse new influences and audiences.
To date, ACO has performed music by 800 American composers, including 350 world premieres and newly commissioned works. Among the orchestra’s innovative programs have been SONiC: Sounds of a New Century, a nine-day citywide festival in New York of music by more than 100 composers age 40 and under; Sonidos de las Américas, six annual festivals devoted to Latin American composers and their music; Coming to America, a program immersing audiences in the ongoing evolution of American music through the work of immigrant composers; Orchestra Tech, a long-term initiative to integrate new digital technologies in the symphony orchestra; Improvise!, a festival devoted to the exploration of improvisation and the orchestra; coLABoratory: Playing It UNsafe, a new laboratory for the research and development of experimental new works for orchestra; and Orchestra Underground, ACO’s entrepreneurial cutting-edge orchestral ensemble that embraces new technology, eclectic instruments, influences, and spatial orientation of the orchestra, new experiments in the concert format, and multimedia and multi-disciplinary collaborations.
Composer development has been at the core of ACO’s mission since its founding. In addition to its annual Underwood New Music Readings and Commission, ACO also provides a range of additional educational and professional development activities, including composer residencies and fellowships. In 2008, ACO launched EarShot, a multi-institutional network that assists orchestras around the country in mounting new music readings. Recent and upcoming Earshot programs have included the Detroit, Berkeley, La Jolla, Nashville, Memphis, Columbus, Colorado, San Diego Symphonies, the New York Philharmonic, New York Youth Symphony, and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. For more information visit www.EarShotnetwork.org. The Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, launched in 2010, supports jazz artists who desire to write for the symphony.
Among the honors ACO has received are special awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and from BMI recognizing the orchestra’s outstanding contribution to American music. ACO is the 2015 recipient of the Champion of New Music Award given by American Composers Forum. ASCAP has awarded its annual prize for adventurous programming to ACO 36 times, singling out ACO as “the orchestra that has done the most for American music in the United States.” ACO received the inaugural MetLife Award for Excellence in Community Engagement, and a proclamation from the New York City Council. ACO recordings are available on ARGO, CRI, ECM, Point, Phoenix USA, MusicMasters, Nonesuch, Tzadik, New World Records, InstantEncore.com, Amazon.com and iTunes. ACO’s digital albums include Playing It UNsafe (March 2011), Emerging Composers Series: Vol. 1 (February 2012), Orchestra Underground: X10D (June 2012), Orchestra Underground: Tech & Techno (July 2014), and SONiC Double Live (July 2016), a collection of premiere performances from its groundbreaking SONiC: Sounds of a New Century festival. ACO has also released Orchestra Underground: A-V, a groundbreaking album of multimedia works available for free streaming at www.vimeo.com/channels/orchestraunderground. More information about American Composers Orchestra is available online at www.americancomposers.org.
About WWFM
Located at Mercer County Community College in West Windsor, NJ, listener-supported WWFM began broadcasting on September 6, 1982 and has grown into a full-time classical music network broadcasting a combination of original and national programming which highlights the richness and diversity of classical music. WWFM delivers the most comprehensive and diverse range of repertoire of any classical music station in the United States.
The Classical Network is the recipient of the 2014 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Radio Broadcast Award. Our parent college, Mercer County Community College, was named as home of one of the top college radio stations in the U.S. for two consecutive years by BestColleges.com, a national website that serves as a resource for prospective college students. The Classical Network is committed to maintaining the quality of its programming and to continuing its active involvement in the arts and cultural community of central New Jersey and its environs.
The Classical Network supports the regional arts community, by partnering with local performers, ensembles, and concert venues, as well as some of the top music schools and conservatories, and broadcasting select performances through its “Celebrating Our Musical Community” and “Celebrating Our Musical Future” series. Our partners include more than 50 cultural, music and educational institutions such as the Curtis Institute of Music, Trinity Wall Street, Merkin Concert Hall, The American Composers Orchestra, Astral Artists, Strings Music Festival in Steamboat Springs, CO, Choral Arts Philadelphia, Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Piffaro, Princeton Festival, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Princeton University, Manhattan School of Music, Peabody Institute, Oberlin Conservatory, Westminster Choir College of Rider University and Columbia University, to name a few.
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This press release is available online at www.americancomposers.org/press-media
SONiC: Sounds of a New Century was made possible with lead support from the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, the Fromm Music Foundation, and the Howard Gilman Foundation. ACO’s recording initiative is made possible with the support of the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. Support for American Composers Orchestra is provided by The Herb Alpert Foundation, The Amphion Foundation, Inc.; The ASCAP Foundation; Sidley Austin Foundation; Mary Duke Biddle Foundation; BMI and the BMI Foundation; The Cheswatyr Foundation; The Edward T. Cone Foundation; The Aaron Copland Fund for Music; Charles E. Culpeper Fund; The Joe and Hellen Darion Foundation, Inc.; Deutsche Bank; The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University: Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; Fromm Music Foundation; Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation; The Howard Gilman Foundation; Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts; Guggenheim Partners; Jephson Educational Trust; The Jerome Foundation; J. M. Kaplan Fund; League of American Orchestras; Ellen and James S. Marcus; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Metropolitan Valuation Services; New Music USA; The New York Community Trust Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund; Polo Ralph Lauren Foundation; Seyfarth Shaw LLP; Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation; Mr. and Mrs. Paul Underwood; Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy; and World Wide Land Transfer, Inc.
ACO programs are made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. ACO is a member of the League of American Orchestras and EarShot, the National Orchestral Composition Discovery Network.
american composers orchestra
Derek Bermel, Artistic Director | George Manahan, Music Director
Dennis Russell Davies, Conductor Laureate | Robert Beaser, Artistic Director Laureate
244 West 54th Street, Suite 805 | New York, NY 10019-5515
Phone: 212.977.8495 | Fax: 212.977.8995 | Web: www.americancomposers.org
