Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard Announces 2000 Commissions

At its October meeting, the Board of Directors of the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University announced the names of the eleven composers selected to receive 2000 Fromm Commissions. These composers were chosen from nearly one hundred applicants.

The ten composers who received commissions are: Dan Asia (Tucson, AZ); Ross Bauer (Kensington, CA); Laurence Bitensky (Lancaster, KY); David Dzubay (Bloomington, IN); Melissa Hui (Stanford, CA); Wendell Logan (Oberlin, OH); Zhou Long (Brooklyn, NY); Tristan Murail (Monroe, NY); Diedre Murray (Queens, NY); Richard Wilson (Poughkeepsie, NY).

Dan Asia Photo by Steven Meckler

Dan Asia will be using the Fromm Commission funds to write a work for violin and piano. “It’s a violin sonata or violin or piano duo – I’m not sure what to call it, because the pianist is very much a partner,” Asia explained. The commission was the brainchild of violinist Zina Schiff, who was joined in her efforts by fellow fiddlers Mark Rush, Gregory Fulkerson, and Curtis Macomber.

“I’ve wanted to do a piece like this for a while,” Asia commented. The piece is arranged in a five-movement arch form. The first movement is a “rambunctious” set of variations; the second and fourth movements are short interludes; the third movement is an elegy; and the fifth movement continues the variation process of the first, using the same material.

Asia recently finished a piece for guitarist Benjamin Verdery and violinist Syoko Aki called Momentary Lapses. (“I can see what the critics will say already,” Asia confessed, “but it seemed like such a quirky title.”) The duo will perform the four one-minute pieces at the end of January in New Haven. Another current project is an arrangement with piano, for cellists Steven Honigberg and David Tonkonogui, of the middle movement of his cello concerto. And Asia’s Piano Quartet, originally recorded by the Bridge Ensemble for Koch in 1995, is about to be reissued by Summit Records.

Wendell Logan Photo by John Seyfried

Wendell Logan has been commissioned to write a new work for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. At the moment, Logan has his hands full, however, with his new opera, which will receive its premiere at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art in February 2001. The opera, Doxology Chronicles: the Doxy Canticles, will be co-presented by the Museum and the Center for Black Music Research.

Doxology Chronicles was written in collaboration with Paul Carter Harrison, and will be performed by soprano Elizabeth Norman, mezzo-soprano Bonita Hyman and the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble conducted by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.“It’s an all-women’s opera,” Logan explained, “having to do with the disappearance of men from the earth. The women perform a yearly ritual to procreate.” Logan is also finishing a work commissioned by the NEA for speaker and orchestra based on one of the Sermons from God’s Trombones by James Weldon Johnson. He hopes to complete the Fromm Commission for SFCMP within two years.

Melissa Hui Photo by Wim Jansen

Stanford University Assistant Professor Melissa Hui will be composing a piece for the St. Lawrence String Quartet for premiere in 2002. At the time this article was written, Dr. Hui was traveling in India and could not be reached for further comment.

Zhou Long Photo by Jim Hair

Zhou Long has been commissioned by the Fromm Foundation to write a piece for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. The proposed work would be a mixed ensemble instrumental piece for five to seven musicians, approximately 12 minutes long, according to Zhou. The piece will receive its premiere in San Francisco in 2002.

A number of Zhou’s works have received premieres in the last year. These include a symphonic work, Out of the Tang Court, commissioned and premiered by the Bavarian Radio Symphony, a piano trio, Spirit of Chimes, commissioned for the Peabody Trio by Chamber Music America, and an evening-length program, Rites of Chimes, for Yo-Yo Ma and Music From China, commissioned by the Freer Gallery of Art of the Smithsonian Institution.

In May, Dr. Zhou signed an agreement with Oxford University Press to publish all of his music. He is also preparing his first CD of vocal music, to be released later this year by Cala Records. He is currently working on a song for the “Songbook for a New Century” commissioned by Meet The Composer and the New York Festival of Song. Zhou is one of eight composers commissioned by the Tokyo Philharmonic as part of their “Anthems for the New Century” project. His contribution, a new work for chorus and orchestra, will receive its premiere in October 2001 at the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall.

Diedre Murray Photo courtesy of the composer

Diedre Murray’s Fang will receive its first reading at Aaron Davis Hall in February 2001, and will likely open in December 2001 or January 2002. Produced by Music Theater Group, Fang is the third in a trilogy of works by Murray and the poet Cornelius Eady that explore the lives of African Americans in contemporary America (the first two were You Don’t Miss the Water and Running Man). The piece in its current form is scored for five voices and six instruments, although only one or two will be used at the reading. The Fromm Commission will pay Murray’s fee and provide some financial support to the ensemble that is performing it.

Fang was loosely inspired by Ivan Van Sertima’s book They Came Before Columbus, according to Murray. Van Sertima asserts that Africans came to Mexico before Columbus, and consequently influenced Native American culture. “I was reading the part of it in which he talks about similarities between Native American and African tales of werewolves and wolf clans, and it got my imagination running,” Murray related. Originally, she wanted to do a piece about werewolves, but the idea morphed into an exploration of the “nature of the animal in us all.”

Fang is the story of four middle-aged African-American professionals, friends from childhood, now living in Chicago, who are persuaded to travel back to New Orleans, the city where they all grew up. Murray claims the piece is “about friends that turn on each other and hunt each other,” and it also addresses the problem of “what happens when you juxtapose two cultures,” both ideas inspired by Van Sertima’s book. New Orleans, with its rich history and mixture of cultures, provided the ideal setting.

Cultures collide in Murray’s music, as well. “My music incorporates many different styles,” Murray explained. She refers in her composition to what she calls “roots music” – original American Indian, Zydeco, and Creole music, to name a few examples. “It sounds like the swamp,” she commented, “soulful, bluesy, emotional on the visceral level.” At the same time, she feels that the score has an intellectual side, as well, with references to New Orleans jazz and other historical styles.

These commissions represent one of the principal ways that the Fromm Music Foundation seeks to strengthen composition and to bring contemporary concert music closer to the public. In addition to the commissioning fee, a subsidy is also available for the ensemble performing the premiere of the commissioned work. Among a number of other projects, the Fromm Music Foundation sponsors the annual Fromm Contemporary Music Series at Harvard and supports the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood.

The current Directors of the Foundation are Thomas Forrest Kelly (Chair), Ursula Oppens, and Olly W. Wilson. Serving on the Advisory Council are John Adams, Mario Davidovsky, Ben Johnston, Paul Lansky, Donald Martino, Robert Morgan, Roger Reynolds, Michael Steinberg, and Joan Tower.