Network for New Music
Network for New Music was awarded $18,420 to produce a recording for Albany Records featuring chamber music by Bernard Rands, including Scherzi; Walcott Songs; Sans Voix Parmi les Voix/Prelude; and now again-fragments from Sappho. Guest artist: Janice Felty, mezzo soprano
Since 1984, Network for New Music has produced, presented and commissioned over 530 new works. Winners of the 2001 ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, Network for New Music has collaborated with the League of Composers/ISCM, Phrenic New Ballet, poets Sonia Sanchez and Stephen Dunn, Temple University, the University of the Arts, and many other artists and institutions. The group has commissioned composers of international reputation including Milton Babbitt, Donald Martino, Jennifer Higdon, James Primosch, Gerald Levinson, Libby Larsen, Maurice Wright, Bernard Rands, Philip Maneval, Augusta Read Thomas, Mario Davidovsky, Melinda Wagner, Richard Wernick, Thomas Whitman, Eric Moe, David Rakowski, Andrea Clearfield, Chen Yi, Jennifer Barker, Adam Wernick, George Walker, Steven Mackey, Shulamit Ran, Robert Capanna, Zhou Long, George Tsontakis, Sebastian Currier, and many others. The Network Ensemble draws two-thirds of its members from the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as from The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, faculty members of leading universities, and guest artists from the region. http://www.networkfornewmusic.org/
|
Panelist Biographies
Steven Stucky (panel chair), Composer/Conductor, Cornell University
Composer Steven Stucky was the recipient of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Second Concerto for Orchestra, which The New York Times described as “an electrifying piece ... [that] stands apart from academic disputes about style and language, and strives for direct communication.” Mr. Stucky’s extensive variety of works ranges from large-scale orchestral compositions to a cappella choral works, and include solo piano pieces, an eight-minute work for five percussionists, and chamber music for numerous combinations of instruments from piano quartet and string quartet to wind quintet, voice with piano, saxophone with piano, and many more. His relationship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic is the longest such association between an American orchestra and a composer; he was appointed Composer in Residence by Andre Previn in 1988, and is now Consulting Composer for New Music, working closely with Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Steven Stucky’s work has been performed by such artists as Marin Alsop and Evelyn Glennie, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony, Los Angeles Piano Quartet, Helsinki Radio Symphony, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony, National Symphony, New World Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Toronto Symphony, and numerous others. Mr. Stucky frequently conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group and Ensemble X, a group for contemporary music he founded in 1997. Stucky was Composer in Residence of the Aspen Music Festival and School in 2001 and director of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble in 2005, which he conducted in frequent concerts.
Among his honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bogliasco Fellowship, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the ASCAP Victor Herbert Prize and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His first Concerto for Orchestra was one of two finalists for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Mr. Stucky has taught at Cornell University since 1980, chairing the Music Department from 1992 to 1997, and now serves as Given Foundation Professor of Composition. He has also taught at the Eastman School of Music and the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Stucky, born November 7th, 1949, in Hutchinson, Kansas, was raised in Kansas and Texas. He studied at Baylor and Cornell universities with Richard Willis, Robert Palmer, Karel Husa, and Burrill Phillips.
Peter Burwasser, Presser Foundation representative, Journalist
Peter Burwasser has been writing professionally about music for his entire adult life, beginning with reviews for local north New Jersey newspapers while still in high school. He taught himself to play the piano at age seven, and had a series of teachers, some very good, and others who indulged his bad habits, but has had no other formal musical training. His only public appearance as a pianist was a momentous one, in 1995, as one of eighty eight pianists assembled to celebrate the 88th anniversary of Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School, an event listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest piano ensemble ever.
Peter has been the classical music critic of the Philadelphia City Paper since issue number two, in 1982, and has been a contributor to Fanfare Magazine since 1990. He is also an editor and contributor for Philadelphia Music Makers Magazine. Other freelance venues have included the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Music Project’s annual report, Carnegie Hall Playbill, WRTI Radio Guide, and the newsletter of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Peter serves on the boards of the Presser Foundation, the Philadelphia Musical Fund Society, Philadelphia Music Makers, and the Wagner Free Institute of Science.
Peter is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, class of 1980. He has a dual degree in History and International Relations. While at Penn, Peter was the classical music director at WXPN, and from 1978 to 1979, the station’s music director.
Gerald Cleaver, Composer/Drummer (special report on jazz applicants)
Born May 4, 1963 and raised in Detroit, Gerald Cleaver is a product of that city’s rich music tradition. Inspired by his father, drummer John Cleaver, he began playing the drums at an early age. He also played violin in elementary school, and trumpet in junior high school and high school. As a teenager he gained invaluable experience playing with Detroit jazz masters Ali Muhammad Jackson, Lamont Hamilton, Earl Van Riper, and Pancho Hagood. While attending the University of Michigan as a music education major, he was awarded a Jazz Study Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to study with drummer Victor Lewis.
He graduated in 1992 and began teaching in Detroit where he worked with Rodney Whitaker, A. Spencer Barefield, Marcus Belgrave, Donald Walden, Wendell Harrison, and with visiting musicians Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Kenny Burrell, Frank Foster, Cecil Bridgewater, Ray Bryant, Eddie Harris, Dennis Rowland, Howard Johnson, Diana Krall and Don Byron. In 1995 he accepted an appointment as assistant professor of Jazz Studies at the University of Michigan, and in 1998 also joined the jazz faculty at Michigan State University. He moved to New York in 2002.
Gerald has performed or recorded with Franck Amsallem, Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Lotte Anker, Reggie Workman, Marilyn Crispell, Matt Shipp, William Parker, Craig Taborn, Kevin Mahogany, Charles Gayle, Mario Pavone, Ralph Alessi, Jacky Terrasson, Jimmy Scott, Muhal Richard Abrams, Dave Douglas, Tim Berne, Jeremy Pelt, Ellery Eskelin, David Torn and Miroslav Vitous, among others. As a leader, Cleaver's 2001 recording Adjust (Fresh Sound New Talent) was nominated in the Best Debut Recording category by the Jazz Journalists Association. He currently leads the bands Violet Hour, NiMbNl and Uncle June.
Gil Rose, Artistic Director, Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Music Director, Opera Boston
Gil Rose is recognized as one of a new generation of American conductors shaping the future of classical music. In 1996, he founded the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the country’s foremost professional orchestra dedicated exclusively to performing and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Under his leadership, BMOP’s unique programming and high performance standards have attracted critical acclaim and earned the orchestra eight ASCAP awards for adventurous programming as well as the John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music. In 2007 Mr. Rose was awarded Columbia University’s prestigious Ditson Award and an ASCAP Concert Music award for his exemplary commitment to new American Music. Since 2003 Mr. Rose has also served as Music Director of Opera Boston, an innovative opera company in residence at the historic Cutler Majestic Theatre.
As a guest conductor, Mr. Rose made his Tanglewood debut in 2002 conducting Lukas Foss’ opera Griffelkin, a work he recorded for Chandos and released in 2003 to rave reviews. In 2003 he debuted with the Netherlands Radio Symphony conducting three world premieres as part of the Holland Festival. He has led the American Composers Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra of the Ukraine, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, National Orchestra of Porto, and the Boston Symphony Chamber Players.
In June 2003, BMOP and Opera Boston together launched the much-celebrated Opera Unlimited, a ten-day contemporary opera festival featuring five operas and three world premieres. In 2006 Opera Unlimited presented the North American premiere of Peter Eötvös’ Angels in America to critical acclaim. Also recognized for interpreting standard operatic repertoire from Mozart to Bernstein, Mr. Rose’s production of Verdi’s Luisa Miller was hailed as an important operatic event. The Boston Globe recognized it as “the best Verdi production presented in Boston in the last 15 years.”Mr. Rose’s recording of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa for Naxos has been hailed as an important achievement by the international press. He was chosen as the “Best Conductor of 2003” by Opera Online. He made his Chautauqua Opera debut in 2005 with a production of Lucia de Lammemoor and in the 2006-07 season conducted performances of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, a revival of Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny as well as Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers.
Gil Rose’s extensive discography includes world premiere recordings of music by Eric Chasalow, Lee Hyla, Tod Machover, Steven Mackey, Steven Paulus, Bernard Rands, George Rochberg, Elena Ruehr, Reza Vali, Evan Ziporyn, John Cage, Charles Fussell, Michael Gandolfi, John Harbison, and Gunther Schuller. His world premiere recording of the complete orchestral music of Arthur Berger was chosen by The New York Times as one of the “Best CDs of 2003.”
Augusta Read Thomas, Composer
Augusta Read Thomas was the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from May 1997 through June 2006. She was an assistant then associate professor of composition at the Eastman School of Music from 1993–2001, and from 2001 until 2006 was the Wyatt Professor of Music at Northwestern University. Having recently resigned from her teaching position, she continues her involvement with Northwestern University by serving on the Dean’s Music Advisory Board. Presently, Thomas is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Music in the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago.
Augusta Thomas has received prizes and awards from the Siemens Foundation in Munich; ASCAP; BMI; the National Endowment for the Arts; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; the Koussevitzky Foundation; the Naumburg Foundation; the Fromm Foundation; the Barlow Endowment; Chamber Music America; and the French International Competition of Henri Dutilleux. In 2001 she received the American Academy of Arts and Letters lifetime achievement award, its highest honor for music composition. In 2007, Ms. Thomas's composition, Astral Canticle, was one of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Current projects include: a violin concerto co-commissioned by Festival Présences with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the BBC Proms, and Mr. and Mrs. Bill Brown, with Frank-Peter Zimmermann as violin soloist, will premiere in Salle Pleyel, Paris, with Kazuchi Ono conducting. A new work for orchestra, commissioned by the Juilliard School, will premiere in fall 2009. Recent projects include HELIOS CHOROS, a triptych for orchestra commissioned by the Dallas Symphony; HELIOS CHOROS II, co-commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra; and HELIOS CHOROS III, commissioned by the Orchestra of Paris.
Ms. Thomas’s orchestral works have been performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and the American Composers Orchestra. Augusta Read Thomas studied with Jacob Druckman at Yale University, and with Alan Stout and Bill Karlins at Northwestern University; she also studied at the Royal Academy of Music.
|
