Meet The Composer President Moves to State Council on the Arts
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Heather A. Hitchens, who for eight years has been the president of Meet The Composer, was recently appointed by New York governor Eliot Spitzer to be the executive director of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). Founded in 1974 as a project of NYSCA, Meet The Composer developed into a national program for promoting and financially supporting a range of commissioning, residency, education, and audience interaction programs, and in 2007 awarded over $200,000 in commissions for new work. Though her career at Meet The Composer has spanned eleven years, Hitchens says she is excited about the new opportunities that NYSCA will present to her.
As president of Meet The Composer, Hitchens oversaw a 30-fold increase in individual giving, resulting in millions of dollars in grant funds and other financial support for composers. The New York State Council on the Arts, like Meet The Composer, serves to award artists with much-needed financial support; founded in 1967, it has awarded roughly $31 million per year, on average, to all fields of the arts within the state of New York. Hitchens says, “NYSCA represents a tremendous opportunity for me to extend this work and to help support the amazing array of cultural organizations across the state of New York.” Hitchens will assume her new title starting August 1, and Meet The Composer will announce their new president shortly.