A Partnership Among
The American Music Center,
The Cheswatyr Foundation, NPR,
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and WNYC Radio
To Commission, Perform, and Broadcast New Works
by American Composers
New York, N.Y. -- Five of the country's leading cultural organizations have joined forces to support the creation and performance of music by contemporary American composers with the Cheswatyr New Music Initiative. The multi-year project, announced at a press event on October 11, has several components, all in the service of the creation, performance, and wide dissemination of new music. The Cheswatyr New Music Initiative will: commission a new piece from one composer per year; support a world-premiere performance of the work by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall; facilitate numerous subsequent performances by Orpheus during its U.S. and international tours; give the work a live local broadcast premiere on WNYC, New York Public Radio and successive national and international broadcasts through NPR; and provide additional exposure for the work though the Internet with sound clips, score files, and other digital media.
For the first year of the Cheswatyr New Music Initiative, the composer is Marc Mellits, whose work will be given its world premiere by Orpheus at Carnegie Hall on February 4, 2006, with additional performances by Orpheus on tour as well as broadcasts on WNYC and NPR. In 2007, composer Ingram Marshall's new piece will also be performed by Orpheus at Carnegie Hall, on tour, and broadcast on WNYC and NPR. Both works will have a Web presence that makes the music available to listeners worldwide.
The Cheswatyr New Music Initiative addresses an ongoing challenge in the music world: while many new works are commissioned, few are given more than one or two performances, and some are not heard following their premieres. The groundbreaking project supports not only a world-premiere performance by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, but multiple performances by Orpheus during the ensemble's extensive domestic and European tours. Beyond that, there are the opportunities of a live local premiere by WNYC Radio and subsequent national and possibly international broadcasts on NPR.
The partners in this new project are The American Music Center, The Cheswatyr Foundation, NPR, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and WNYC Radio. Together, they represent an unprecedented alliance among a chamber orchestra, a musical service organization, a philanthropic endowment, a national radio network, and the country's largest public radio station. The partners will champion the new works at every stage of their development, from commission to performances to broadcasts, giving them numerous repeat hearings and bringing them to the broadest possible audience. In addition, editorial coverage on WNYC and NPR will provide context for the project.
Marc Mellits was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1966, and has studied at the Eastman School of Music, Yale School of Music, Cornell, and Tanglewood. Recent commissions include works for Bang On A Can All-Stars, Sergio and Odair Assad, Canadian Brass, Nexus, and Eliot Fisk. Mr. Mellits is a founding member of the Common Sense Composers' Collective, which seeks new and alternative ways of collaborating with performance ensembles, and is the artistic director and keyboard player of the Mellits Consort. Highlights of 2005 were the world premieres of Tight Sweater, a work for piano, cello, and marimba commissioned by Muzik3 for the ensemble Trifecta, as well as his String Quartet No. 2, commissioned by Kronos Quartet.
Ingram Marshall was born in 1942 in Mount Vernon, New York. A former student of Vladimir Ussachevsky and Morton Subotnik, he studied at Columbia University and California Institute of the Arts, and has been a student of Indonesian gamelan music. In recent years he has concentrated on combining tape and electronic processing with ensembles and soloists. His music has been performed by the Theater of Voices, Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Saint Louis Symphony, and American Composers Orchestra. Mr. Marshall's Bright Kingdoms, commissioned by Magnum Opus/Meet the Composer, had its premiere in 2004, and the American Composers Orchestra premiered Dark Florescence, his concerto for two guitars and orchestra, in 2005.
[Longer biographies of each composer, as well as questions-and-answer interviews with the composers concerning the Cheswatyr New Music Initiative, are available from Cohn Dutcher Associates.]
The partners are:
[Complete information on each of the partners is available from Cohn Dutcher Associates. An interview with Cecille Wasserman, President of the Cheswatyr Foundation; Elena Park, Executive Producer, Music & Culture, WNYC Radio; and John Schaefer, Host of Soundcheck & New Sounds, WNYC Radio, is also available.]
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