Composers (clockwise from top left): Angel Lam (credit Eric T. Carlson), Anna Clyne (credit Christina Kernohan), Arlene Sierra (Ian Phillips McLaren), Wang Lu, Sarah Gibson, Gity Razaz.
“Many orchestras, eager to demonstrate a commitment to contemporary music, have taken pride in programming works by living composers in recent years,” writes Javier C. Hernández in Thursday’s (5/26) New York Times. “But when the glamour of the premiere fades, many of those works all but disappear from the standard repertoire, rarely to be performed again. Now a group of nonprofit leaders is working to make new music a more permanent part of the artistic landscape. The League of American Orchestras on Thursday announced an initiative that will enlist 30 ensembles over the next several years to perform new pieces by six composers, all of them women. ‘There’s too much great music that gets lost and is never heard after its premiere,’ Simon Woods, the league’s president and chief executive, said … ‘We thought, “We need to solve that.” ’… The League, in partnership with the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation and American Composers Orchestra, has been working since 2014 to bring more diversity to orchestral programming…. The initiative … will build on those efforts, pairing each of the six composers with five ensembles.” The composers are Anna Clyne, Sarah Gibson, Angel Lam, Gity Razaz, Arlene Sierra, and Wang Lu. Learn more here.
