Theodore Presser Company Signs Huang Ruo and Clint Needham
The Theodore Presser Company will now be publishing the music of two additional American composers—Huang Ruo and Clint Needham. Last week, the company officially announced the signing of an exclusive agreement with Huang Ruo, who was born in 1976 in Hainan, China, and currently resides in New York City. And earlier in the summer the company signed several works by Clint Needham (b. 1981, Texarkana TX), who is currently a Doctoral Fellow at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington.
|
Huang Ruo’s writing ranges from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and modern dance, to sound installation, multimedia, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film. Ensembles that have premiered and performed his music include the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Asko Ensemble, and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2003, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre presented an all-Huang Ruo concert as part of its Composer Portraits series, where his four chamber concertos were premiered as a cycle by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) with Huang Ruo conducting. Future commissions include a grand opera for Opera Hong Kong, an orchestral work for the Macau International Music Festival, a string quartet for the Chiara Quartet, and three new works for the Camerata Pacifica, where he is the newly appointed composer-in-residence. His music is available on recordings from Naxos, Albany Records, and Koch International.
|
Clint Needham, still in his twenties, has already been honored with many awards. In 2007, his Earth and Green was selected for the Underwood New Music Readings by the American Composers Orchestra. The work was awarded the William Schuman Prize, the highest honor in the BMI Student Composer Awards, and Needham was also named the winner of the ACO’s Underwood Commission. The resulting composition, Chamber Symphony, was premiered by the ACO in November 2008. A version for full orchestra of the 3rd movement of the Chamber Symphony, entitled Radiant Nation, won the 2009 Young Composer Competition of Symphony in C (formerly Haddonfield Symphony) in New Jersey. His music has been recorded by the American Brass Quintet and the University of North Texas Symphonic Band.
In signing with the Theodore Presser Company, Huang Ruo and Clint Needham join a composer roster that includes Samuel Adler, Chen Yi, Adolphus Hailstork, William Kraft, Lowell Libermann, Thomas Pasatieri, Shulamit Ran, Behzad Rangbaran, Peter Schickele, Steven Stucky, George Tsontakis, Meliinda Wagner, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. (—Condensed from the press release)