Meet The Composer Awards Three-Year Residency Grants to Six American Composers

The Six MTC Award Winners Photo courtesy Shuman & Associates

Heather Hitchens, president of Meet The Composer, has announced five new sites for New Residencies, a national program that integrates composers and their music into the day-to-day life of communities across the country. The five sites and composers are Dwight Andrews in Philadelphia, PA/Camden, NJ; Ernest Dawkins in Chicago, IL; Oliver Lake in Bloomfield/Montclair/Newark, NJ; Nathaniel Stookey in Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, NC; and Jon Jang and Francis Wong in San Francisco/Oakland, CA. Each of the composers will receive $100,000 over the three-year residency period. Jon Jang and Francis Wong, who have chosen to work collaboratively, will split the award. These residencies will begin March 1, 2000. Meet The Composer, a national service organization, has for more than 25 years fostered the creation, performance, dissemination, and appreciation of new music by living composers.

In announcing the awards, Ms. Hitchens, said: "I am delighted to welcome these very fine composers into the New Residencies program, and am confident that they will be invaluable contributors to the musical and cultural lives of the communities they are serving. New Residencies, now entering its seventh year, has had a tremendous impact on the lives of composers and communities nationwide: music of lasting value has emerged to help replenish the repertoire; composers have been afforded the opportunity to create work in a new and exciting context; and communities have been exposed to, and engaged in, the creative process. All of this has led to a greater understanding and enthusiasm for the work of the living composer."

New Residencies is an innovative concept in residency programs, as composers work with a wide variety of community-based service organizations, such as neighborhood centers, public housing authorities, and social service agencies, who work in partnership with performing and presenting organizations, such as orchestras, ensembles, opera, dance, and theater companies.

New Residencies composers reside in their host communities for the entire three-year residency period, becoming fully immersed in the local traditions and cultures. Composers draw communities together around the creation of new works and act as cultural ambassadors engaging in a broad range of arts, community development, and human service activities. These activities include assisting with local cultural programming, presenting workshops, and nurturing audience participation.

Since it was initiated in 1993, Meet The Composer's New Residencies program has supported 29 three-year partnerships throughout the United States, bringing composers to a wide array of communities large and small, from New York to Los Angeles, and Anchorage, Alaska to Hickory, North Carolina. The resulting interaction between composers and members of their host communities has inspired the creation of countless new compositions and has awakened a creative impulse in thousands of people from all walks of life, fostering a closer connection with composers and the music that they create.

The application deadline for the next round of New Residencies will be in the fall of 2000. For more information, call Meet The Composer at 212/787-3601, e-mail kgallo@meetthecomposer.org, or visit the website at www.meetthecomposer.org.

Leadership support for New Residencies is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Additional support is provided by the Ahmanson Foundation, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Fleishhacker Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The Plum Foundation, the Uris Brothers Foundation, the Weingart Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

New Residencies is one of four residency programs of Meet The Composer's Residency Works project, all of which have been created to achieve the organization's goal of giving composers an active presence in the performance of their work and further, to encourage audience members to move beyond passive listening and become informed and active advocates for the programming of contemporary music. The other programs of the Residency Works project are Music Alive, an innovative new program created jointly by Meet The Composer and the American Symphony Orchestra League, which funds two- to eight-week composer residencies among selected orchestras; the Meet The Composer Fund, designed to engage audiences by having composers participate in performance of their work; and New Music for Schools, which places professional composers in school residencies for periods of up to six months.