News: September 2000

Brian Robison Wins 2000 Whitaker Commission

Brian Robison Photo by John F. Gibson

omposer Brian Robison has been named winner of the 2000 Whitaker Commission, an honor that includes a $15,000 prize and world premiere performance by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Chosen from among seven finalists in one of this country's most coveted opportunities for emerging composers, Robison won top prize at the American Composers Orchestra's annual Whitaker New Music Reading Sessions with his evocative orchestral work entitled Imagined Corners. Robison's former teacher, composer Steven Stucky, calls Robison's compositions "absolutely first-rate: well and thoroughly heard, beautifully made, and possessing just the right amalgam of cogent structure with alluring sound."

In an interview, Robison called the commission a "dramatic boost for his career." Robison is a singer, instrumentalist, conductor, and composer currently teaching at the School of Music at Ithaca College and Cornell University. He earned his Doctorate and Masters degrees from Cornell University where in addition to Stucky, he studied with Karel Husa, and Roberto Sierra. He also studied with Burt Fenner at Pennsylvania State University, and with Philippe Manoury and Tristan Murail at the famed American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, where he was awarded the Maurice Ravel Prize in 1991.

The Whitaker Commission represents Robison's first orchestral commission. ACO's President, Francis Thorne said, "I am pleased that the Whitaker Reading Sessions have helped this extremely talented composer move to the next level in his career." Mr. Robison has already begun composing the work, entitled In Search of the Miraculous, scheduled for the 2001-2002 season. Robison described the new piece as a "great, continuous story" evolving from the interplay of nine different ideas. At least some of these nine ideas will be drawn from non-classical sources. Robison’s Imagined Corners, which was featured at the ACO’s Whitaker Readings last April, contained thematic material drawn from Irish folk-songs, the blues, Japanese ceremonial music, and chimpanzee vocalizations.

Other recent commissions and performances include works for the Bucket Consort, Society for New Music, Locrian Chamber Players, and Cornell Wind Ensemble. Current projects include Neo-/Meta- for violin and marimba, for Victoria and Robert Paterson, and piano arrangements for songs for Kenny Berkowitz's play Six Apparitions of Lenin Appear on the Piano, for performance by the Kitchen Theater Company, Ithaca, New York.

Held in New York this past April under the direction of Music Director Dennis Russell Davies, Resident Conductor Paul Lustig Dunkel, and Artistic Advisor/composer Robert Beaser, the ninth annual Whitaker New Music Reading Sessions attracted 150 submissions from emerging composers around the country. Made possible by a grant from the Helen F. Whitaker Fund, the Readings provide an invaluable opportunity for developing composers to experience a full orchestral rendering of their work, receive the reactions of conductors, composers and performers, and obtain a professional quality tape to assist in their advancement. Over the years, some thirty-eight composers have received crucial career-development through ACO's Whitaker Readings, including such award winning composers as Melinda Wagner, Derek Bermel, and Jennifer Higdon. Composers serving as mentors for the 2000 Reading Sessions included Ingram Marshall, Roberto Sierra, and Christopher Theofanidis.

Robison was joined by six finalists in this season's readings: Matthew Lima, a graduate student at the Royal Academy of Music where he has studied with Michael Finnissy and Steve Martland. His selected work was entitled A Golden Momentary Blur; Jason Freeman, a Columbia University doctorate student whose Diffusions was read; John Kline, an alumnus of Yale School of Music, who was represented by his Anytime Soon; Rafael Hernandez, a graduate student at University of Texas at Austin who studies with Dan Welcher, submitted Man Expanding. Currently pursuing a doctorate at Indiana University on a Fulbright Scholarship, Juan Cuellar entered Tatambó. The Reading Sessions concluded with Gliss by James Matheson, a colleague of Robison at Ithaca, who received his DMA from Cornell University.