American
Composers Orchestra
Now entering its 35th year, 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 its concerts at Carnegie Hall and
other venues, recordings, radio broadcasts, educational programs, New Music
Readings, and commissions, ACO identifies today’s brightest emerging composers;
champions prominent established composers and 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 600 American composers, including
200 world premieres and newly commissioned works. Among the orchestra’s
innovative programs have been 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; Playing
it Unsafe, a new laboratory for the research and development of experimental
new works for orchestra; and, of
course, 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.
The 2011–2012 season represents one of ACO’s boldest yet, with the launch of SONiC: Sounds of a New Century, a
festival devoted to music written in the 21st century by composers age
40-and-under. SONiC features over 100
composers from six continents, more than 20 world premieres, and sixteen
ensembles jam-packed into nine days in October.
For 20 years, ACO’s New Music Readings have provided career advancement and
exposure to a new generation of emerging composers. Today, ACO’s Underwood New
Music Readings have become a right-of-passage for any aspiring orchestra
composer. Extending its mission beyond New York, ACO launched EarShot, the
national orchestral composition discovery network in 2008. EarShot assists
orchestras around the country in launching new music readings sessions and
composer development opportunities. Recent EarShot collaborations include
programs with the Nashville Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, New York Youth
Symphony, and Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Visit earshotnetwork.org for more information.
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 31 times, singling out ACO as “the orchestra
that has done the most for new American music in the United States,” and most
recently awarding ACO the 2008 ASCAP Morton Gould Award for Innovative
Programming. ACO received the inaugural METLife Award for Excellence in
Audience 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, and InstantEncore.com. Visit americancomposers.org
for more information.
George Manahan
In
his second season as music director of the American Composers Orchestra, George
Manahan has had a wide-ranging and esteemed career, embracing everything from
opera to the concert stage, the traditional to the contemporary. In addition to his work with ACO this season,
Manahan maintains his commitment to working with young musicians as
director of orchestral studies at the Manhattan School of Music, as well as
guest conductor at the Curtis Institute of Music.
Manahan has performed as a guest conductor with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s; the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra;
Hollywood Bowl Orchestra; and the Atlanta,
San Francisco, and New Jersey symphonies. He is a regular guest with the
Music Academy of the West and the Aspen Music Festival, and has also appeared
with the Seattle, Portland, and Santa Fe opera companies; Lyric Opera of
Chicago; Opera Theatre of St. Louis; Opéra national de Paris; Teatro Comunale
di Bologna; and Minnesota Opera, where he was principal conductor.
Manahan’s extensive recording activities include the premiere release of Steve
Reich’s Tehillim for ECM, a
Grammy-nominated recording of Edward Thomas’s Desire Under the Elms, Joe Jackson’s Will Power; and Tobias Picker’s Emmeline.
He has conducted numerous operatic world premieres, including Charles
Wuorinen’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories,
David Lang’s Modern Painters, Hans
Werner Henze’s The English Cat, and
the New York premiere of Richard Danielpour’s Margaret Garner. As music director of the Richmond Symphony for 12
years and music director of the New York City Opera for 14 seasons, he was
honored five times by the American Society of Composers and Publishers for his
commitment to 20th-century music.