
Frank J. Oteri is the composer advocate at New Music USA and the editor of NewMusicBox, which has been online since May 1999. An outspoken crusader for new music and the breaking down of barriers between genres, Frank has written for numerous publications and has also been a frequent radio guest and pre-concert speaker. Frank is also the vice president of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and a board member of the International Association of Music Information Centers (IAMIC). Frank holds a B.A. and a M.A. (in Ethnomusicology) from Columbia University where he served as Classical Music Director and World Music Director for WKCR-FM.
Frank’s own musical compositions reconcile structural concepts from minimalism and serialism and frequently explore microtonality. His music has been performed in venues ranging from Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall and the Theatre Royal in Bath, England to the Knitting Factory, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and PONCHO Concert Hall in Seattle where John Cage first prepared a piano. Among his most widely performed compositions are: Imagined Overtures, a 36-tone rock band piece that has been performed around the country and is the centerpiece of a 2009 CD by the Los Angeles Electric 8; and Last Minute Tango which pianist Guy Livingston has toured around the world and paired with a short film by Thijs Schreuder on his DVD One Minute More. MACHUNAS, a performance oratorio inspired by the life of Fluxus-founder George Maciunas which Oteri created in collaboration with Lucio Pozzi, received its world premiere during the 2005 Christopher Summer Festival in Vilnius, Lithuania; that performance can be streamed in its entirety from the website of the Other Minds Video Archive. Oteri’s most recent works include: Love Games, a setting for girls chorus, harpsichord, and two tambourines of three poems by the Elizabethan sonneteer Mary Wroth which was commissioned and premiered by the Young People’s Chorus of New York City under the direction of Francisco J. Núñez for their Radio Radiance series; (not) knowing the answer, a setting of six sijos by James R. Murphy for unaccompanied vocal ensemble in 13-limit just intonation; and Counting Time in Central City, a setting for unaccompanied SATB chorus of three poems by Charles Passy commissioned by Central City Chorus for their 35th anniversary season, which received its world premiere performance in New York City in June 2016.
Oteri’s most recent composition, Already Yesterday or Still Tomorrow (2020), will receive its world premiere on January 23, 2021 at 7:30pm CST in a performance by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Delta David Gier which will be streamed for free live from Sioux Falls’ Washington Pavilion on the South Dakota Symphony’s Facebook page as well as on the website for South Dakota Public Broadcasting. (An additional performance of the work will be streamed live from South Dakota State University’s Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center on Sunday, January 24 at 2:30pm CST.)
In 2007, Oteri was the recipient of ASCAP’s Victor Herbert Award for his “distinguished service to American music as composer, journalist, editor, broadcaster, impresario, and advocate” and, in January 2018, he received the Composers Now Visionary Award. For more information, visit fjoteri.com.
Articles by Frank J. Oteri:
Lots of new music will usher in a new American administration on January 20, 2021. Newly commissioned works by Kimberly Archer and Peter Boyer, classics by Aaron Copland, Julie Giroux,...
Julie Giroux, who creates music primarily for wind band, takes musicians and audiences on a journey that is a real sonic adventure and, at the same time, is always fun.
Valerie Coleman is committed to storytelling through her music, no matter the idiom. “I recognize that there are stories that are yet untold that if they were told, they would...
The concept for New Music Gathering was born in an online forum and now, in our time of physical distancing, it has been reimagined for virtual space.
Anthony Davis has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his opera The Central Park Five.
David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and Sean Connors of Third Coast Percussion explain how they introduce audiences to percussion instruments, how they each came to devote their lives to...
Nathalie Joachim’s exuberant, forward-looking attitude about music-making and her inspiring comments about how she came to follow her creative path still represent our collective future once we are able to...
In the hopes that this can lead us toward a consensus about what might be best practices for how to deal with this extraordinary and unprecedented situation moving forward, we...
The ASCAP Foundation has announced the 20 recipients and 3 honorable mentions of the 2020 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards. The recipients, who receive cash awards, range in age...