American Composers Orchestra
Now in its 34th 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, recordings, radio
broadcasts, educational programs, New Music Readings, and commissions, ACO identifies
today's brightest emerging composers, champions prominent established composers, and
increases 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 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 festival and 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; and, of
course, Orchestra Underground, ACO's entrepreneurial cutting-edge orchestral ensemble that
embraces new technology, eclectic instruments and influences, and spatial orientation of
the orchestra, new experiments in the concert format, and multimedia and multi-disciplinary
collaborations.
Among the honors ACO has received are special awards from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters and from BMI in recognition of the orchestra's outstanding contribution to American
music. ASCAP has awarded its annual prize for adventurous programming to ACO 32 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
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, and online at InstantEncore.com. Visit americancomposers.org for more information,
and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
George Manahan
George Manahan has had an unusually wide-ranging career, embracing everything from opera
to the concert stage, the traditional to the contemporary. He conducted his first concert
as music director of American Composers Orchestra in October 2010 in Carnegie Hall's Zankel
Hall, commencing his tenure with "vibrant, polished, playing" (The New York Times)
in a program that included premieres by John Luther Adams and Wang Jie. His previous
appearances with ACO include the 19th Annual Underwood New Music Readings at Columbia
University's Miller Theatre in May 2010. Manahan has been Music Director at New York City
Opera for 12 seasons. In that time, he helped envision the organization's groundbreaking
VOX program, a series of workshops and readings that have provided unique opportunities for
composers to hear their new concepts realized and for audiences to experience exciting new
compositional voices. In addition to established composers such as Mark Adamo, David Del
Tredici, Lewis Spratlan, Robert X. Rodriguez, Lou Harrison, Bernard Rands, and Richard
Danielpour, Manahan has introduced works by composers on the rise, including Adam
Silverman, Elodie Lauten, Mason Bates, and David Little.
Manahan's wide-ranging 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, and the New York
premiere of Richard Danielpour's Margaret Garner. As music director of the
Richmond Symphony for 12 years, he was honored four times by the American Society of
Composers and Publishers for his commitment to 20th century music. This past fall, he
joined the Manhattan School of Music faculty as Director of Orchestral Studies.
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