Schwantner Named 2nd Composer for Ford/MTC/League National Orchestra Consortium
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The American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet The Composer announced on January 18, 2007 that American composer Joseph Schwantner has been selected as the composer for the second cycle of the nation’s largest commissioning consortium of orchestras. The commission is part of the Ford Made in America program, which launched with Joan Tower’s Made in America and which has given orchestras with small budgets representing all 50 United States an opportunity to present a new work of established American composers of international repute. Schwantner was chosen by a steering committee comprised of representatives of small-budget American orchestras.
Schwantner’s new work, which is made possible by Ford Motor Company Fund, the philanthropic arm of Ford Motor Company, and is also supported by a generous grant from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, will receive its world premiere with the Reno Chamber Orchestra in the autumn of 2008, and the work will then be performed in communities throughout the nation.
Joseph Schwantner remarked, “As one who participated in Meet The Composer’s original Orchestral Residency Program with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra back in the early 1980s, I have experienced first hand the power of composers and orchestras working together to connect new music with audiences. Since much of the music I have written over the last twenty-five years is for full orchestra, I particularly look forward to the opportunity this commission will give me to more fully consider and engage the musical possibilities of smaller orchestral forces.”
(Edited by Frank J. Oteri)