The Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina, has announced a commissioning project through which it will select ten American composers to contribute new works over ten seasons. In the Bonnie McElveen-Hunter Commissioning Project, as the project is known, EMF Music Director Gerard Schwarz and McElveen-Hunter—a philanthropist and former U.S. Ambassador to Finland who resides in Greensboro—will select the composers together. The first commissioned composer is Richard Danielpour, whose A Prayer for Our Time will be performed by the Eastern Music Festival Orchestra and cello soloist Julian Schwarz on July 20. John Corigliano will write a new work for violin and orchestra to be performed in 2014, with EMF’s concertmaster Jeff Multer as soloist. For the new Corigliano piece, Multer will perform on a violin once owned by John Corigliano’s father, who served as concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for 23 years. Works for future years will be announced at a later date.
Posted March 15, 2013
