“Many San Diego classical music promoters are suggesting we open our ears to living composers. That means music by Anahita Abbasi, John Adams, Judd Greenstein, Anthony Davis, Lei Liang, Missy Mazzoli, Reinaldo Moya, Anna Thorvaldsdottir and more,” writes Beth Wood in Friday’s (7/3) San Diego Union Tribune. “Whether online or live, listening to music created in the here-and-now can be richly satisfying…. La Jolla Symphony & Chorus … each season features several commissioned works.… In the San Diego Symphony’s 2019-20 season—albeit cut short by the pandemic—27 percent of its programming was music by living composers. The upcoming season has 38 percent…. Art of Élan [concert series] has commissioned emerging composers from its inception…. The State University of New York’s Institute for Composer Diversity analyzed 120 orchestras’ seasons programmed for 2019-2020. It found only 16 percent of the pieces were by living composers…. Lucy Abrams, an American clarinetist and artistic researcher studying at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, followed six U.S. major orchestras [and] found that the average percentage of contemporary music programmed in 2017-18 and 2018-19 was around 27 percent. She noted a sizable uptick to 41.5 percent in … 2019-20 seasons, which sadly were hijacked by the coronavirus pandemic.”
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