Americas Society Announces 2017 Music Commissions
Americas Society Announces 2017 Music Commissions
The organization has commissioned five new works inspired in the music of American-born, Mexican composer Conlon Nancarrow.
New York, April 12, 2017—Americas Society is pleased to announce that it has commissioned five composers to write new works for player piano and live instrumentalists inspired by the music of Conlon Nancarrow. A native of Arkansas, Nancarrow spent most of his professional life in Mexico. His works for the player piano are among the most original and influential collections of music composed in the twentieth century in the Americas.
The new works by Tatiana Catanzaro, Kyle Gann, Jaime Oliver, Carlos Sandoval, and Sabrina Schroeder will be premiered in Spring 2018 at Americas Society’s landmark building in New York City. On this occasion, the composers—some of whom worked with Nancarrow himself—will present and discuss their work, touching on topics related to the late composer’s life and oeuvre as well as broader aesthetic issues of perception and musical production.
Support for the creation of these new works comes from the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation; FACE Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, a program with major support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, SACEM, Institut français, and the Florence Gould Foundation; and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Born in 1912, Nancarrow joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Concerned by the harassment faced by other former Brigade fighters upon their return to the United States, he relocated to Mexico in 1940, where he remained until his death in 1997. Nancarrow’s renown rests on his later, intricately contrapuntal works, almost exclusively written for the player piano. Having spent many years in obscurity, the composer gained notoriety from the 1969 release of an entire album of his work by Columbia Records.
For the creation of these new musical works, the commissionees will take Nancarrow’s music for player piano as a point of departure. The Disklavier—a modern descendant of the player piano that performs without a live musician but that still retains the physicality of a piano—will serve as the common thread connecting all the pieces, which will also feature harp, percussion, bass, and Ondes Martenot.
Founded in 1965, Americas Society is unique among U.S. cultural institutions as the premier presenter of arts and culture from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada, including U.S.-based artists from the region and U.S.-Latino composers and musicians. Previously featured artists include ICE, JACK and Momenta Quartets, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Continuum Ensemble, Plácido Domingo, Egberto Gismonti, Inti-Illimani, and the Spanish Harlem Orchestra. Americas Society Music Program, which organizes the year-long Music of the Americas Concert Series, has been twice awarded the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, most recently in 2014.
In addition to offering global or U.S. premieres of several new works every season, Americas Society Music Program has developed a vigorous commissioning initiative that has premiered eight pieces since 2007. The commissioned composers are selected taking in consideration diverse nationalities, ages, and stylistic approaches. Previous Americas Society commissionees include Valéria Bonafé, Zosha di Castri (commissioned in collaboration with the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), Mario Davidovsky (supported by a grant from Chamber Music America), Du Yun, Alvin Lucier, Paulo Rios Filho, Aurelio Tello (with support from Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust), and Antonio Zimmerman (with support from The New York State Music Fund).
Americas Society kindly acknowledges:
