Seven emerging composers will be featured at the American Composers Orchestra’s 24th Annual Underwood New Music Readings on May 6 and 7 at New York’s DiMenna Center for Classical Music. Each composer will receive a reading of a new work, and one composer will be selected to receive a $15,000 commission to be performed by ACO during an upcoming season. The 2015 readings, led by ACO Artistic Director Derek Bermel with George Manahan conducting, will include Yuanyan “Kay” He’s Passeig de Grácia, inspired by modernist architecture of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona; David Hertzberg’s Spectre of the Spheres, evoking the Northern Lights; David “Clay” Mettens’s Sleeping I am carried…, based on a melodic fragment by Alban Berg; Polina Nazaykinskava’s Nature’s Book of Life, exploring rhythm and sounds of the invisible world; Jules Pegram’s Shadows of the Studio, a tribute to the glory days of Hollywood’s studio system; play, pivot by Igor Santos, a Brazilian-American composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic concert music; and Carl Schimmel’s Two Variations on Ascent into the Empyrean, two orchestral movements inspired by his children’s artwork.
Posted May 6, 2015
