American Composers Orchestra Announces
2016 Spring Benefit
Celebrating American Composers’ Boundless Creativity & Innovation
Monday, May 16, 2016 at 6:00pm
Tribeca Rooftop | 2 Desbrosses Street, NYC
Tickets: $500 per person and up at http://bit.ly/ACOSpringBenefit2016
or by phone at 212-977-8495 x204. Festive Attire Recommended.
New York, NY – American Composers Orchestra (ACO) will hold its 2016 Spring Benefit on Monday, May 16 at 6:00 pm at Tribeca Rooftop (2 Desbrosses Street, Manhattan), celebrating American composers’ boundless creativity and innovation as exemplified throughout the orchestra’s 39-year history.
ACO’s Spring Benefit will begin with a cocktail reception, followed by dinner and performances by some of the composer-performers and soloists who have appeared with ACO, including Peter Basquin, Derek Bermel, Steve Mackey, Missy Mazzoli, Rufus Reid, Jason Treuting, and Jessie Montgomery. ACO’s Spring Benefit is a rare opportunity to hear these incredible artists in such an intimate setting.
The 2016 Spring Benefit is co-chaired by Gina Hubbell and Andrea J. Lawrence, and the Benefit Committee includes Anthony B. Creamer III, Ralph Crispino, Jr., Michael Gehret, Tess Mateo and Gary Brewster, Steve Schleider, Metropolitan Valuation Service, Frederick Wertheim and Angelo Chan, Augusta Gross and Leslie Samuels.
The venue for ACO’s Spring Benefit, Tribeca Rooftop at 2 Desbrosses Street, is a 15,000 square-foot loft-style penthouse with panoramic views of the Hudson River, Empire State Building, SoHo, and downtown Manhattan.
Tickets to ACO’s Spring Benefit are offered at $500 and $1,000 per person and Tables of 10 are available at $5,000 and $10,000. Tickets and Tables may be purchased at http://bit.ly/ACOSpringBenefit2016 or by calling Keith O’Brien at 212-977-8495 x204. A limited number of complimentary press tickets are available.
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.
To date, ACO has performed music by more than 700 American composers, including nearly 300 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, 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. 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), and Orchestra Underground: Tech & Techno (July 2014). 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 the Artists
GRAMMY-nominated composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel is ACO’s artistic director. With numerous commissions from ACO to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Jazz at Lincoln Center, Derek recently served as Artist-in-Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is also Director of Copland House’s Cultivate! Program.
Peter Basquin served as ACO’s principal pianist for over two decades, premiering over 100 new works with the orchestra. Peter was the winner of the Montreal International Competition, and is a graduate of Manhattan School of Music. He is Professor Emeritus at the Hunter College.
Missy Mazzoli has been called “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart.” (Time Out New York). She has received acclaim for her chamber, orchestral and operatic work Missy. Missy’s music has been performed by Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, the Detroit Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, and ACO, where she was a featured composer in the SONiC festival.
Jessie Montgomery is a New York native violinist, composer and music educator. Jessie served as ACO’s Van Lier Emerging Composer Fellow, and has long been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization. Her music has been played by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Young People’s Chorus of New York and Albany Symphony. Jessie has performed as a member of the Catalyst Quartet, and she was co-founder of PUBLIQuartet.
Rufus Reid has been one of the premiere bassists on the international jazz scene for over 40 years. Among the many jazz giants he has performed, toured and recorded with are Lee Konitz, the Thad Jones & Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, Dexter Gordon, J.J. Johnson, Art Farmer, Stan Getz, Kenny Burrell, Kenny Barron, and Benny Golson. Rufus was also a participant in ACO’s first Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, for which he composed Mass Transit, a symphonic work that premiered in 2011.
Steven Mackey is one of the leading composers of his generation. He has received numerous awards including a GRAMMY in 2012. His first musical passion was playing the electric guitar in rock bands based in northern California, and he has blazed a trail since then by including the electric guitar and vernacular music influences in his concert music. He has been a frequent mentor-composer for ACO program, and he continues to be active as an improvising musician, performing with his band Big Farm.
Percussionist Jason Treuting has performed and recorded in venues as diverse as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Walker Art Center, the Knitting Factory, the Andy Warhol Museum, Zankel Hall, Lincoln Center, DOM (Moscow) and Le National (Montreal). As a member of So Percussion, he has collaborated with artists and composers including Steve Reich, David Lang, John Zorn, the electronic music duo Matmos, and choreographer Eliot Feld. Jason was a featured composer in ACO’s 2015 SONiC festival, and he works regularly with Steve Mackey’s band Big Farm.
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