Performances
& Events

This evening American Composers Orchestra (ACO) is excited to present Where We Lost Our Shadows, a concert that threads its way through culture and time with three wholly original voices, reimagining the orchestra along the way. ACO first commissioned Du Yun six years ago, premiering her hypnotizing Slow Portraits, and since then she has continued to captivate audiences worldwide with works that defy traditional boundaries between theater, film, and music. Native New Yorker Morton Feldman and expatriate composer Gloria Coates, who has resided in Germany for many decades, are two true American mavericks of our era.In the spirit of bringing our audience and composers together, last season ACO launched its Commission Club, whose members take a deep dive into the creative process. Our first Commission Club composer was Ethan Iverson,who shared insights about writing his offbeat and jazz-tinged Concerto to Scale. This season, in conversation with Du Yun, audience members followed the creative arc of the work you’re hearing tonight, witnessing how she and her collaborators constructed an artistic narrative and brought it to the stage.We hope you’ll join us next season for our third Commission Club and our featured composer Mark Adamo, whose piece speaks to issues in the environment. His apocalyptic Last Year mourns four extreme landscapes,with the deep-voiced cello of virtuoso Jeffrey Ziegler as narrator. Next season in Zankel Hall, alongside Adamo’s work, ACO presents two more musical portraits of our natural world: the world premiere of Nina C. Young’s complete song cycle Out of whose womb came the ice, depicting Ernest Shackleton’s daring expedition to Antarctica, and the New York premiere of John Luther Adams’s mesmerizing Become River. ACO also focuses on New England—the “cradle” of American classical music—presenting the world premiere of a guitar concerto for dazzling virtuoso JIJI by Underwood Readings commissionee Hilary Purrington, the New York premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s Evidence, and an array of world-premiere arrangements of Ives songs by Purrington, Jonathan Bailey Holland, and Hannah Lash for mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton.In the meantime, we invite you to open your ears for tonight’s concert, and please join us afterwards in the lobby to celebrate Gloria Coates’s 80thbirthday and her enormous contribution to American music!

Carnegie Hall co-presents Sanctuary with ACO, a concert that explores the places, company, and states of mind in which composers seek inviolable refuge. Lisa Bielawa’s Sanctuary, a concerto for violinist Jennifer Koh, is an extraordinary historical research project around this powerful word, documenting the rhetoric around founding American principles and every important struggle along the way to a more perfect union.   In Restless Oceans, Anna Clyne finds inspiration in a poem by Audra Lorde; the musicians raise their voices in song and use their feet to stand united in a defiant work that embraces the power of women.   Hannah Kendall’s alternately buoyant and serene Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama takes its title from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s iconic collection of 16 diagrammatic block pieces. With a nod to the traditional African-American spiritual “Wade in the Water”, the work conjures both the majesty and elegance highlighted by the artist as well as her own reflective take on the history of globalization and multiculturalism ushered in by the famed Portuguese explorer.   Newly commissioned works by Dai Wei and Paula Matthusen complete this rich musical odyssey into the human soul that is both internal and external, local and international, abstract yet wholly tied to our everyday existence.

A celebration of composers with roots in New England, ACO’s season opener includes the world premieres of Hilary Purrington’s Harp of Nerves featuring guitarist JIJI and orchestrations of Selected Songs by Charles Ives, arranged by Purrington, Hannah Lash, and Jonathan Bailey Holland, featuring mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton. The New York City premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s Evidence completes the program.

Dear Friends,Welcome to American Composer Orchestra’s first post-pandemic concert at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. ACO had an exciting kickoff to its season with a Friends and Family composer gathering and our telematic tour-de-force New Canons. Tonight, we are honored to return to Carnegie Hall with Sanctuary, featuring two stellar artists—conductor Marin Alsop and violinist Jennifer Koh—whose tireless work on behalf of composers throughout the world has changed the face of music in our generation. The fact that Maestra Alsop performed with ACO decades ago makes this evening doubly special for both our musicians and audience. Sanctuary is a journey exploring the places, company, and states of mind in which composers seek inviolable refuge and inspiration. Throughout the two years of the pandemic, sanctuary has taken many forms for us all, as we have grappled with challenges both quotidien and metaphysical. For those of us who love and participate in the performing arts, the period has assured us that we will never again take for granted the kind of communal experience in which we partake this evening. Lisa Bielawa’s Sanctuary, written for Jennifer Koh, is an extraordinary historical research project around this powerful word, documenting the rhetoric around founding American principles and every important struggle throughout our history.  In Restless Oceans, Anna Clyne finds inspiration in a poem by Audra Lorde; the musicians raise their voices in song and use their feet to stand united in a defiant work that embraces the power of women.  Hannah Kendall’s alternately buoyant and serene Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama takes its title from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s iconic collection of 16 diagrammatic block pieces. With a nod to the traditional African-American spiritual “Wade in the Water,” the work conjures both the majesty and elegance highlighted by the artist as well as her own reflective take on the history of globalization and multiculturalism ushered in by the famed Portuguese explorer. Dai Wei's commission Invisible Portals, her Underwood Readings commission, is a meditation on Shambhala, the legendary Tibetan realm of peace and prosperity. She describes the portals as a place in which "multicultural and multidimensional conversations interweave beyond time and space." And Paula Matthusen's newly commissioned Prophecy in Reverse considers whether the notion of sanctuary evokes a space, feeling, sound or something else entirely. The work is a collaboration with poet Danielle Vogel, whose work Sea Margin: a prophecy in reverse, punctuates the movements via projections. We at ACO are delighted to welcome you back to Carnegie Hall with this rich musical odyssey into the human soul that is both internal and external, local and international, abstract yet wholly tied to our everyday existence.   With gratitude,Derek BermelArtistic DirectorMelissa NganPresident and CEO

The Gathering: A Collective Sonic Ring Shout is a sonic quest rooted in the African and African American ritual of the Ring Shout. Woven together through a diverse array of multidisciplinary artists featuring new musical works for orchestra and choir, this evening-length event brings the ancestral tradition of the Ring Shout into a contemporary context, opening a space to collectively grieve, to awaken JOY as a source of LIBERATION, and to find LOVE as a form of resistance. Directed by National Black Theatre’s Executive Artistic Director, Jonathan McCrory, the program features Carlos Simon’s Amen!, Courtney Bryan’s Sanctum, and the New York premiere of Seven Last Words of the Unarmed by Joel Thompson. These works are in conversation with new commissions from Herb Alpert Award-winner Toshi Reagon, Tony Award-winner Jason Michael Webb, and Lelund Thompson created to honor our present needs for a collective space of remembrance. The performance is anchored by an 80-member orchestra and a 50-voice choir composed of singers, professional and amateur, from multiple African American churches and choral ensembles in New York.