Composers embarking on major works for orchestras today draw inspiration from a remarkable breadth of experience, bringing unusual sonorities, themes, and dramatic elements into their compositions. Four of them—Andy Akiho, Angelica Negrón, Carlos Simon, and Kate Soper—discuss the origins of recent or upcoming world premieres.
“A new, unique adventure”
Andy Akiho’s cello concerto “Nisei” recently completed its five-orchestra commission circuit that began last August at Sun Valley Music Festival and went on to the Oregon Symphony Orchestra (where Akiho is composer in residence), Pro Musica Columbus, and the Bozeman Symphony Orchestra, concluding at the South Carolina Philharmonic in April. Akiho and his cello soloist, Jeffrey Ziegler, have been friends and colleagues for over a dozen years, and Akiho saw “Nisei” as a challenge to go somewhere completely new.
Composer and percussionist Andy Akiho plays creations of sculptor Jun Kaneko in his “Sculptures” in a November 2023 performance with the Oregon Symphony. Oregon Symphony Principal Percussionist Michael Roberts also performed the work. The work was co-commissioned by the Omaha Symphony and the Oregon Symphony. Photo by Jason Quigley.
“Most of our projects involved a lot of amplification, foot pedals, electronics; our quartet was spoken word, steel pan [Akiho’s instrument], cello, and drums,” the composer says. “Nisei” is all acoustic, and the orchestra part has no percussion, piano, or harp, just strings, brass, and woodwinds. Akiho explored new realms with those tools. “In the second movement, I wanted to focus on contrapuntal conversations between the strings and Jeff. I wanted it to sound familiar, almost like the early Baroque era, but kind of time-traveling a little bit. And then Jeff floats long lines over a baroque-ish grid.”
“I wanted it to sound familiar, almost like the early Baroque era, but kind of time-traveling a little bit.” —Andy Akiho
The third movement, which Akiho wrote first, turned out to be the longest at 17 minutes. “I got into a kind of frenzy with it,” he recalls. “The whole movement is pretty much in 11/16. I don’t wake up and say, ‘I want to make something in 11’—I think of a rhythm I like, it’s a little quirky, and I transcribe it.”
Both Akiho and Ziegler are second-generation Japanese American, hence the work’s title. “I wasn’t to trying to develop traditional Japanese tunes,” Akiho says. “It’s more a subconscious feeling of something we have in common.”
Akiho doesn’t necessarily stick with the traditional orchestral palette. “I just go where the vibes take me”—whether it’s a triple concerto for ping-pong, violin, and percussion (“Ricochet” from 2015) or percussion movements played directly on the artworks of Jun Kaneko in “Sculptures,” commissioned by the Omaha Symphony and the Oregon Symphony in 2023. “I’m not disciplined or organized enough to stay in one direction anyway,” he says. “Every piece is a new, unique adventure.”
Soloist Jeffrey Zeigler performs Andy Akiho’s “Nisei” cello concerto with the Oregon Symphony and Music Director David Danzmayr in October 2024. The work was commissioned by five American orchestras. Photo courtesy of the Oregon Symphony.
“An elegy for sounds we have lost”
Multi-instrumentalist Angelica Negrón has written music for robots, toys, and plants in addition to orchestras, chamber ensembles, voices, and films. In 2023, she concluded her term as composer in residence at the Dallas Symphony with the premiere of her 10-minute work for orchestra, “Arquitecta,” which featured pots and pans, a voiceover recording, and the amplified vocal stylings of the “Afro/Indigenous/Columbian/Punk/Folklorist/Diva” Lido Pimienta. In October, she will return to Dallas with a work for orchestra, chorus, and soloists commissioned for the DSO’s 125th anniversary. Negrón’s works have been commissioned and performed by orchestras and ensembles across the country, but this is her most ambitious composition so far. Built on the structure of the Latin requiem mass, Negrón says, “It’s an elegy for sounds we have lost.”
In May of 2023, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra gave the premiere of composer in residence Angelica Negrón’s “Arquitecta.” Music Director Fabio Luisi led the work, which featured vocalist Lido Pimienta. Photo by Sylvia Elzafon.
An inspiration was David Haskell’s 2022 book Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction. “The spine of the piece,” she says, “is about species extinction and habitat loss, but it expanded into areas like language—the more I travel back home to Puerto Rico, the less Spanish I hear—and voices of people who have passed.” Interwoven in the Latin requiem text are verses from Puerto Rican poets “that speak to more present-day reality,” she says.
“I’m trying to propose another way of listening, of understanding how our sonic landscape is impacted by decisions we are making.” —Angelica Negrón
Negrón describes her elegy’s sonic world as “light, dreamy, sometimes a little playful.” There’s lots of percussion and electronics played live. It features harp and treble tessituras: the vocal soloists are soprano, mezzo-soprano, countertenor, and tenor—no baritone. “In my ideal world,” Negrón says, “I would have a children’s choir. Sometimes the chorus and soloists are treated like that—a lot of the vocal writing is more straight tone [no vibrato] than operatic.”
Those choices depart from what Negrón sees as the typically more “ominous” sound of requiems. “This is a meditative cycle. Obviously, it’s a mass of the dead, but at same time, I wanted space for light and reflection. There’s a quote in the Haskell book about how the vitality of world depends on whether we turn our ears back to the earth, hear the beauty and brokenness in it, and act. I’m hoping this is, in some way, through empathy, a call to action. In addition to nostalgia and missing things, I’m trying to propose another way of listening, of understanding how our sonic landscape is impacted by decisions we are making.”
In addition to orchestras and chamber groups, composer and multi-instrumentalist Angelica Negrón has composed works for robots, toys, and plants. Photo courtesy of Angelica Negrón.
“I had to think with two different brains.”
Carlos Simon, composer in residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the inaugural Boston Symphony Orchestra Composer Chair, drew on deep family traditions for his expansive Good News Mass for orchestra, choir, soloists, spoken poetry, and film, which was given its world premiere in April by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by LA Phil Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel. “I grew up listening to gospel—I come from a lineage of Pentecostal preachers—and I’ve always wanted to embed gospel in my work,” Simon says. “I’ve been experimenting with finding a way to do it that’s genuine and sincere.”
Composer Carlos Simon (right) during a rehearsal this spring for his Good News Mass at the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel.
He embedded gospel in the structure of a traditional mass; poet and editor Courtney Ware wrote the English libretto drawing elements from the original Latin. “I created songs, interludes where the orchestra could shine, and moments with just chorus or soloists,” says Simon. “Each component has an equal share. My favorite symphony is Mahler’s ‘Resurrection,’ but you have to wait an hour and a half for the choir to come in!” Works that combine classical and popular genres, such as Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” and William Bolcom’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience” gave him ideas about structure and pacing. (Good News Mass was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Sphinx Symphony Orchestra, and Boston Symphony Orchestra.)
“I’ve always wanted to embed gospel in my work. I’ve been experimenting with finding a way to do it that’s genuine and sincere.” —Carlos Simon
Communicating his musical ideas presented special challenges, he says. “I had to think with two different brains. How should those gospel elements look on the page so the orchestra can perform it as I hear it?” Also, as Simon relates, the soloists and the 48-member gospel choir, The Samples, didn’t read music, so he made a studio recording to help them learn their parts. He wasn’t sure how it would work, but when he arrived at rehearsals, “98% of notes were there. It was incredible. Even more important, the feeling was there.” The Los Angeles audience got “the intangibles,” experiencing a concert piece that is really a service. “People who had never been to a Pentecostal church told me that it was not what they expected, and they felt loved, encouraged, and inspired.”
Taking a bow at the April world premiere of Carlos Simon’s Good News Mass at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, from left: Gustavo Dudamel, Zebulon Ellis, Samoht, Jason White, Melina Matsoukas, Carlos Simon, Courtney Ware-Lett, and Marc Bamuthi Joseph. Photo by Elizabeth Asher.
“The irreplaceable heft of the orchestra”
Kate Soper is known for playful music-theater pieces that integrate mythical figures. Her “philosophy opera,” Ipsa Dixit, recently given its West Coast premiere at Long Beach Opera, was shortlisted for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, and she is a co-director and performer with Wet Ink, a New York-based new music chamber ensemble. Her new monodrama, “Orpheus Orchestra Opus Onus,” commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for premiere in May 2025, expands those elements for an orchestral palette. She started thinking about the piece late in the pandemic. “I was missing instruments, being around them,” she recalls. “At the same time, we were all going through a kind of reckoning about music, art, and cultural institutions—what they really mean, what their origins are, what’s problematic about them. And I started thinking about Orpheus. Monteverdi’s Orfeo is the first opera, so it’s connected to the beginning of institutionalized music.”
Kate Soper is a vocalist as well as a composer; her opera Ipsa Dixit was shortlisted for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, and she is a co-director and performer with Wet Ink, a New York-based new music chamber ensemble. Photo by Gretchen Robinette.
Soper, a soprano, plays a version of Orpheus interacting with and questioning the orchestra, which becomes a powerful character in the story. “We have all this amazing music but what are the consequences? Could we go back to the idea of music as pure, mathematical expression of celestial beauty?” Lest that sound ponderous, she adds, “I hope it’s also interesting and funny.”
Having written primarily for chamber ensembles, Soper found the big canvas exhilarating. She got to do “creative orchestration” for quotes from 17th-century music, and she uses the orchestral tutti as a dramaturgical device. “There’s an element of ‘Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’ as Orpheus tries to explain how the orchestra evolved. There’s a big harp part—Orpheus’s lyre—and lots of strange Baroque and Renaissance tonality that becomes a little twisted.” Overall, she says, “I’m trying to use the irreplaceable heft of the orchestra, the immensity of it.”
“Could we go back to the idea of music as pure, mathematical expression of celestial beauty?” —Kate Soper
Soper wrote the text, which includes quotes from Italian librettos of Orpheus operas and Rilke sonnets. As for her own role in the performance, she notes, “I have a non-traditional background as a vocalist, so I’m taking some lessons with a diction coach!”
Kate Soper’s monodrama, “Orpheus Orchestra Opus Onus,” was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, which gives its world premiere this May. In the work, Soper, a soprano with nontraditional interests, plays a version of Orpheus interacting with and questioning the orchestra. Photo by Maggie Shannon.
