New Music News Wire
- MTC Van Lier Fellowships Awarded to Galindo and Khaliq
- 2008 ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composer Award Recipients Announced
- 10 Composers Awarded 2008 Guggenheim Fellowships
- OPERA America and Opera.ca Announce 2008 Opera Fund Awards Totalling $380K
- Finnish Composer Kaija Saariaho Wins 2008 Nemmers Prize
- New Technology Gives Blackberry Users Access to 2,700 U.S. Radio Playlists
- Composer, Conductor, Educator Gerhard Samuel (1924-2008)
MTC Van Lier Fellowships Awarded to Galindo and Khaliq
Meet The Composer’s 2008 Van Lier Fellowships have been awarded to composers Gilbert Galindo and Majid Khaliq. The purpose of the Fellowships—which are $8500 each with an additional $2200 to support an educational project for youth (18 and under) designed by fellowship recipients—are to provide financial support for young composers in the early stages of their careers.
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Gilbert Galindo is an emerging young Mexican-American composer that is increasingly being performed across the country. He has received commissions from the Chicago Fine Arts Society, Duo Petrarca, and the Lone Star Brass with additional premieres and performances from the Midland Odessa Symphony, Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra, Bard Institute Composers Orchestra, and the ai ensemble of dal niente group. (Ed. Note: Gilbert Galindo also currently serves as the Membership Coordinator and Library Administrator at the American Music Center.)
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Majid Khaliq is a musician native to the New York area. His musical palette ranges from the roots of American-jazz music through the greats of the European-classical tradition. Khaliq has been described by Wynton Marsalis as having “a unique blend of improvisation, groove, and technical sophistication.” Composition and arranging are serious interests of Khaliq. His compositional teachers are Samuel Zyman and John Blake Jr. In addition to his activities as a performer and composer, Khaliq is also a teacher and has written many essays as well as a method book on the art of violin playing.
Past recipients of MTC’s Van Lier Fellowship include César Alvarez, Cristian Amigo, Valerie Coleman, Mario Diaz de León, Dafnis Prieto, Sherrise Rogers, Daniel Bernard Roumain, Julio Santillan, Manuel Sosa, and Emilio Teubal. Meet The Composer administers the Van Lier Fellowship on behalf of the Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of the New York Community Trust. The Fund provides support for talented, culturally diverse young people who are seriously dedicated to a career in the arts.
2008 ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composer Award Recipients Announced
ASCAP Foundation President Marilyn Bergman has announced the recipients of the 2008 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. The young composers will be recognized at the 9th Annual ASCAP Concert Music Awards at The Times Center in New York on May 22, 2008.
The recipients are listed with both their place of origin and current residence:
Timothy Andres (b. 1985, Palo Alto, CA) of New Haven, CT
Ryan Brown (b. 1969, Upland, CA) of San Francisco, CA
Paul Dooley (b. Santa Rosa, CA) of Ann Arbor, MI
Sean Friar (b. 1985, Santa Monica, CA) of Princeton, NJ
Judd Greenstein (b. 1979, New York, NY) of Brooklyn, NY
Eric Guinivan (b. 1984, Wilmington, DE) of Los Angeles, CA
Trevor Gureckis (b. 1982, Charleston, SC) of Astoria, NY
Evan Johnson (b. 1980, Washington, DC) of Providence, RI
Elizabeth A. Kelly (b. 1982, New York, NY) of Rochester, NY
Martin Kennedy (b. 1978, Wakefield, England) of St. Louis, MO
Angel Lam (b. 1978, Hong Kong, China) of New Haven, CT
Wei-Chieh Lin (b. 1982, Taichung, Taiwan) of New York, NY
Javier Jimmy Lopez (b. 1978, Lima, Peru) of Emeryville, CA
Paula Matthusen (b. 1978, Tempe, AZ) of Brooklyn, NY
Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980, Abington, PA) of Brooklyn, NY
Eric Nathan (b. 1983, New York, NY) of Larchmont, NY
Douglas Pew (b. Redwood City, CA) of Erlanger, KY
Chris Rogerson (b. Buffalo, NY) of Philadelphia, PA
Kenneth David Stewart (b. Carrolton, TX) of Houston, TX
John Supko (b. 1980, Valley Stream, NY) of Centreville, VA
Zachary Wadsworth (b. Buffalo, NY) of Ithaca, NY
Daniel Wohl (b. Paris, France) of New York, NY
Cynthia Wong (b. 1982, Schenectady, NY) of New York, NY
The youngest ASCAP Foundation Composer Awards recipients range in age from 6 to 18 and are listed by state of residence:
Emily Bear, age 6 (IL)
Yuri Boguinia, age 16 (CO)
Peng-Peng Gong, age 15 (NY)
Andrew Hsu, age 13 (CA)
Jane Lange, age 9 (CA)
Thomas Reeves, age 13 (NY)
Natasha Sinha, age 17 (MA)
Conrad Tao, age 13 (NY)
Siddarth Viswanathan, age 15 (NJ)
The following composers received Honorable Mention:
Lembit Beecher
Taylan Cihan
Daniel Thomas Davis
Evan Fein
Takuma Itoh
Alex Kotch
Matti Kovler
Clint Needham
Paul Swartzel
Dan Visconti
In the youngest category, the following composers received Honorable Mention:
Anderson F. Alden, age 16 (CA)
Preben Antonsen, age 16 (WA)
Eleanor Bragg, age 11 (MA)
Holly Druckman, age 18 (NY)
Roy Femenella, age 14 (NY)
Solomon Hoffman, age 15 (NY)
Ryan Korell, age 17 (IL)
Dylan Mattingly, age 17 (CA)
Vartan Simonian, age 13(CA)
Timothy Woos, age 15 (VT)
Yan Zhu, age16 (MO)
The ASCAP composer/judges were: Eve Beglarian, Martin Bresnick, Steven Burke, Sebastian Currier, Kamran Ince, Paul Lansky, and Augusta Read Thomas.
The award-winning composers share prizes of approximately $45,000, including the Leo Kaplan Award, in memory of the distinguished attorney who served as ASCAP Special Distribution Advisor, the Charlotte V. Bergen Scholarship for a composer 18 years of age or younger, and grants from The ASCAP Foundation John DeVries, Jack Norworth, Joseph Meyer, and Morton Gould Funds. Jack Norworth wrote such standards as “Shine On Harvest Moon” and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” The Awards are also sponsored by Sibelius, the music notation software company, which generously awards the recipients with free software.
Established in 1979, with funding from the Jack and Amy Norworth Memorial Fund, The ASCAP Foundation Young Composer Awards program grants cash prizes to young Concert Music composers up to 30 years of age whose works are selected through a juried national competition. These composers may be American citizens, permanent residents, or students possessing U.S. Student Visas. Following the death of former ASCAP and ASCAP Foundation President Morton Gould (1913-1996), a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer whose first composition was published by G. Schirmer when he was only six years of age, the ASCAP Foundation Young Composer program was renamed in his memory.
10 Composers Awarded 2008 Guggenheim Fellowships
Edward Hirsch, the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, announced on April 3 that in its 84th annual competition for the United States and Canada, the Foundation has awarded 190 fellowships to artists, scientists, and scholars, with awards totaling $8,200,000, among the recipients are 10 composers. In all, 75 disciplines and 81 different academic institutions are represented by this year’s fellows. Fifty-six fellows are unaffiliated or hold only adjunct or part-time positions at universities. Supplemental support for these unaffiliated fellows is provided by the Leon Levy Foundation. The successful candidates were chosen from a group of more than 2,600 applicants.
The 2008 Fellows for Music Composition are:
Geri A. Allen
Mason Bates
Kyong Mee Choi
Anthony Korf
Janet Maguire
Rufus Reid
Paul Rudy
Laura Elise Schwendinger
Kurt Stallmann
Miguel Zenón
OPERA America and Opera.ca Announce 2008 Opera Fund Awards Totalling $380K
OPERA America and Opera.ca have announced the recipients of the 2007-2008 Repertoire Development and Production Awards from The Opera Fund and the Canadian Opera Creation Fund. Seven projects received a 2008 Development Award from The Opera Fund. Two projects received a Development Award from the Canadian Opera Creation Fund, which also funded four Production Awards. Development Awards provide financial assistance for companies’ efforts to assess and refine a work-in-progress or to revive a work after its recent premiere. Production Awards provide a portion of the direct costs of producing a work to each member of a consortium.
The following projects have received Development Awards from The Opera Fund:
- Florentine Opera Company: Río de Sangre — $10,000
Don Davis, composer
Kate Gale, librettist- Houston Grand Opera: Brief Encounter — $20,000
André Previn, composer
John Caird, librettist- The Minnesota Opera: Joyeux Noël— $25,000
Kevin Puts, composer
Michael Korie, librettist- Music-Theatre Group: Arjuna’s Dilemma — $25,000
Douglas J. Cuomo, composer
Dr. Ramananda Prasad, librettist- Nautilus Music-Theater: The Risk of Flight — $25,000
Mary Ellen Childs, composer and librettist- Opera Theatre of Saint Louis: The Inspector General — $50,000
John Musto, composer
Mark Campbell, librettist- San Francisco Opera: The Bonesetter’s Daughter — $25,000
Stewart Wallace, composer
Amy Tan, librettist
Projects receiving a Development Award from the Canadian Opera Creation Fund include:
- Calgary Opera: The Inventor — $25,000
Bramwell Tovey, composer
John Murrell, librettist- Soundstreams Canada: The Children’s Crusade — $25,000
R. Murray Schafer, composer and librettist
Projects receiving a Production Award from the Canadian Opera Creation Fund include:
- Manitoba Opera: Transit of Venus — $40,000
Victor Davies, composer
Maureen Hunter, librettist- Queen of Puddings Music Theatre Company: Inês — $50,000
James Rolfe, composer
Paul Bentley, librettist- Soundstreams Canada: Pimooteewin (The Journey) — $25,000
Melissa Hui, composer
Tomson Highway, librettist- Tapestry New Opera Works: Sanctuary Song — $35,000
Abigail Richardson, composer
Marjorie Chan, librettist
The Opera Fund is a permanent endowment which allows OPERA America to make a direct impact on the ongoing creation and presentation of new opera and music-theater works. The Fund, launched with support from The National Endowment for the Arts in 2001, has been supported thus far by the Helen F. Whitaker Fund, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Canada Council for the Arts, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The James S. and John L. Knight Foundation, The George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation, Lee Day Gillespie, and Lloyd and Mary Ann Gerlach. The Opera Fund and its precursor programs have awarded nearly $10.4 million in funds to companies throughout North America in support of their efforts to expand and enrich the repertoire. Recent recipients of The Opera Fund grants include John Adams’s Doctor Atomic, Richard Danielpour’s Margaret Garner, Jake Heggie’s The End of the Affair, Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar, Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath, and Thomas Pasatieri’s Frau Margot. The 2007-2008 Opera Fund adjudicators included: Dr. Susan H. Carlyle, founder of The Carlyle Fund; writer, director, composer, and performer Rinde Eckert; composer Daron Hagen; soprano Wendy Hill; and composer Lowell Liebermann.
The Opera Fund’s 2009 Guidelines for Audience Development Awards will be available in July 2008, and will be made available to OPERA America Professional Company Members and their partners.
Finnish Composer Kaija Saariaho Wins 2008 Nemmers Prize
Kaija Saariaho is the 2008 winner of the $100,000 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition. The biennial award honors composers of outstanding achievement who have significantly affected the field of composition. Past winners include John Adams (2004) and Oliver Knussen (2006). The Nemmers Award, which is admistered by the Northwestern University School of Music in Evanston, Illinois, is one of the largest cash awards for composers.
New Technology Gives Blackberry Users Access to 2,700 U.S. Radio Playlists
A free new downloadable application called the Radio Companion will allow users of BlackBerry smartphones to keep track of what is playing on radio all across the United States in real time. Radio Companion was developed by Nobex Technologies, a company founded in 2007 by the developers of METAmessage. It is powered by Mediaguide, a media monitoring and technology company originally founded with ASCAP in 2002, which monitors over 2,700 college, non-commercial, and commercial radio stations for music, advertisements and speech through a proprietary fingerprinting technology and a network of remote monitoring stations. Click here for a complete list of stations currently monitored by Mediaguide.
With Radio Companion, users will be able to see what is playing with just a few quick clicks on their BlackBerry. They can then select the music track to have its details sent instantly to their email account, with a direct link to click-through and purchase the song online. Radio Companion displays the song title and artist, as well as a thumbnail graphic of the album cover or artist photo. They can also scroll backwards to view previous songs and artists on the station’s playlist. Radio Companion does not yet stream audio from radio stations directly to BlackBerry smartphones. Nobex and Mediaguide anticipate adding this feature in late summer of 2008. Radio Companion is available for download here.
Composer, Conductor, Educator Gerhard Samuel (1924-2008)
Composer, conductor and educator Gerhard Samuel died from cardiac arrest on Wednesday, March 25, 2008 at his home on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. He was 83.
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Born in Bonn, Germany, on April 20, 1924, Samuel moved to America with his immediate family in 1939 to escape Nazi persecution. He studied at Eastman School of Music and at Yale University under Hindemith. At Tanglewood he was a protégé of Koussevitsky. He worked on Broadway, promoted American music in post-war Paris, and was an associate conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony. In 1959 he became music director of the Oakland Symphony and San Francisco Ballet. He founded the Oakland Chamber Orchestra and was the first conductor of the Cabrillo Festival.
In 1971 he became associate conductor of Los Angeles Philharmonic and a professor at California Institute of the Arts. In 1976 he was appointed to the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (CCM). As Director of the Conservatory’s Philharmonia, he tirelessly championed contemporary music and brought the orchestra to international standing. Samuel was also a prolific composer of works characterized by hyper-expressive melodies and constantly shifting sonorities. At the time of his death, he was working on an opera based on Thomas Mann’s novella The Blood of the Walsungs.
Composer Harold Blumenfeld wrote the following words for NewMusicBox in memory of Gerhard Samuel:
Gerhard was my oldest, closest friend. And youngest: still in our teens, we were conservatory class mates as the war loomed. We were drafted, served. Gerhard was out first, worked with Hindemith at Yale, lauded him to the skies. I followed.
He went on to become a centrifuge of musical energy in California, conducting new works of dozens of American composers, and composing. Later in career, on to Cincinnati, where he built the College-Conservatory’s orchestra into one of the best of its kind in the world. There, just twelve years ago, he brilliantly conducted the premiere of my Rimbaud opera, Seasons in Hell, to full houses, landing it on an Albany compact disc. His efforts on behalf of my music were tireless and exhilarating.
Samuel retired to Seattle in 1996 and loved to spend time at his cabin in the Cascade Mountains. He is survived by his partner Achim Nicklis, sister Erica Wilhelm, nephews Cris and Marc Wilhelm and their families, and his cousins and friends.
(Compiled and Edited by Frank J. Oteri)