2009-2010 Season Press Release
For Immediate Release
Date: February 8, 2009
Contact: Lisa Freeman
(718) 622-3005
The League of Composers/ISCM Announce the
2009-2010 Concert Season
David Gordon, President
Celebrating master composers of the 20th century alongside the current and rising stars of contemporary classical music, The League of Composers/ICSM is pleased to announce its 2009-2010 concert season. Upcoming concerts will feature The League’s Chamber Players, which includes New York’s finest contemporary musicians, in performances at the Tenri Cultural Institute, Merkin Hall, and Roulette. Dynamic programs include established works by Béla Bartók, George Crumb, Samuel Barber, Lou Harrison, and John Zorn, as well as premieres by Dary John Mizelle and Sebastian Armoza and Mark Berger’s 2009 League of Composers/ISCM Composition Competition-winning piece, String Trio #2.
The League’s season finale, hosted by WNYC’s John Schaefer, will be performed by its recently-formed orchestra, a 35-piece ensemble comprised of today’s finest new music specialists and conducted by Louis Karchin. The program will feature four premieres: Jason Treuting’s percussion quartet concerto oblique music for 4 plus (blank), commissioned by the League and featuring So Percussion (World Premiere), Elliott Carter’s On Conversing with Paradise, on texts of Ezra Pound, featuring Evan Hughes, baritone (US premiere – composed in 2008 at age 99), Milton Babbitt’s Transfigured Notes (New York Premiere, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra but never performed by them), and Joan Tower’s Purple Rhapsody featuring Paul Neubauer, violist (New York Premiere). The performance will also include The League’s 2009 Composition Competition winning piece: D.J. Sparr’s DACCA:DECCA:GaFfa.
The Orchestra of the League of Composers’ inaugural program at Miller Theatre in 2009 was described by The New Yorker as “a prestige affair,” while Time Out New York hailed the concert in its Critic Picks as “a program full of fresh sounds.” The New York Times highlighted the resurgence of the League with feature coverage in Arts & Leisure, declaring it a “bold endeavor”; in his review, Anthony Tommasini wrote, “The debut of an orchestra during bad economic times is good news,” remarking that the orchestra played with “vibrant authority.” Sequenza 21 raved that the concert was “stunning… the audience was treated to quite an evening.”
Tickets for all concerts are available in advance on our website (www.leagueofcomposers.org), by phone (718-622-3005), or at the door.
Brief Organization History:
The League of Composers, created in 1923, is the nation’s oldest organization devoted to contemporary music. The League draws on a remarkably rich history, including such groundbreaking premieres as Schönberg’s Die Glückliche Hand, Béla Bartók’s Village Scenes, Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata and Anton Webern’s Symphony for Chamber Orchestra. The League also sponsored the American premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps, many pieces by Aaron Copland, György Ligeti’s Horn Trio, Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Harlequin, and many works by current honorary Board Co-Chairs Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt.
During the League’s early years, prominent composers such as Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Paul Hindemith, Serge Koussevitzky, Darius Milhaud, Roger Sessions, and many others served on the Board of Directors, as President, and/or as Chair of the Board. In 1954, the League of Composers became the US chapter of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM) and has since been known as the League of Composers/ISCM.
In recent decades, the League has devoted itself to chamber works, and the Chamber Players of the League of Composers has featured many of the finest new music specialists since its inception in 1983.
In 2008, the League returned to its roots in an effort to recapture the excitement and prestige it enjoyed in its heyday, refining its mission, launching new initiatives, and creating a new orchestral ensemble. Although New York City offers an unparalleled array of chamber music concerts throughout the year, there remains a limited number of opportunities to experience new music through the richness of the orchestra. To fill this void, we created the Orchestra of the League of Composers by expanding the Chamber Players of the League/ISCM. In conjunction with the development of the orchestra and the new initiatives, the new administration made it a priority to widen the musical aesthetic of concert programming to better reflect the scope of today’s range of styles in new music and attract a new generation of listeners, much as the organization did in its early years. The 2008-09 season reflected all of these changes and culminated in the debut of the orchestra on our season finale. The 2009-10 season ambitiously expands each initiative.
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