League and New Music USA Announce New Music Alive Residencies

Five composer and orchestra pairs have been selected through a peer review panel process to participate in Music Alive, a national three-year composer-orchestra residency program of the League of American Orchestras and New Music USA.

This new iteration of Music Alive begins 2016-2017 and prioritizes collaborative work and immersive experiences for composers, orchestra musicians, artistic leadership, and community members. Music Alive hopes to demonstrate-through active partnership with the participating residency pairings-the power and value of living composers working at the center of American orchestras.

"We live in an era of unsurpassed compositional invention, as composers break musical barriers and redefine the rules," said League of American Orchestras President and CEO Jesse Rosen. "This new iteration of Music Alive takes engagement several steps further, building opportunities for cohorts of composers to learn from each other, and for entire orchestra staffs and musicians, as well as their communities, to interact closely with these talented composers-in-residence."

"Music Alive is driven by a belief in the power of new work," said New Music USA President and CEO Ed Harsh. "These new residencies will demonstrate even more powerfully than ever before the role that collaboration with living artists can play in vitalizing orchestras' connections to their communities."

The five new Music Alive composer-orchestra pairings are:

Lembit Beecher and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Anna Clyne and Berkeley Symphony

Stacy Garrop and Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra

Hannibal Lokumbe and The Philadelphia Orchestra

Jerod Tate and South Dakota Symphony Orchestra

The newly configured program was reimagined as a result of an extensive survey of leading professionals deeply experienced in relationships between composers and orchestras. The survey culminated in a 2015 convening by New Music USA and the League of American Orchestras hosted by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Colleagues in the new music and orchestra worlds met to identify and discuss critical challenges that the program could address directly. This iteration of Music Alive, and its residency priorities, directly emerged from these conversations.

More than visiting artists, the composers in residence will be centrally embedded within their orchestras, and their roles will be incorporated directly into the orchestras' operations, programming and curatorial decisions, and activities in their communities. Dedicated funding will be attached to the residency priorities, including workshopping, rehearsing, and developing new works or performing existing works by living composers; mentoring emerging composers through readings, shadowing, and other mentoring opportunities; and creating public access to the artistic process through open rehearsals, access to various media, and other points of entry. The composers, orchestra leadership teams, and program staff are also committed to engaging in a cohort-based planning process around the residency priorities, which will include virtual convenings as a group several times per year, as well as an annual in-person convening at the League's National Conference.

Panelists for the residencies were:
Jenny Bilfield, President and CEO, Washington Performing Arts
Avner Dorman, composer and Music Director, CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra
Sarah Lutman, Founder, Lutman & Associates
Shulamit Ran, composer
Kathleen van Bergen, CEO and President, Artis - Naples

Review criteria for the residencies were:
Artistry: the artistic merit of the composer's work and orchestra's performances
Opportunity: the partnership's potential for depth and innovation in residency work and in the thematic priorities.
Capacity and commitment: the ability of the orchestra and composer to make the
residency a success and to adhere to two core commitments - having a centrally
embedded composer and a cohort-based planning process.

About Music Alive
Launched in 1999 as a joint program between Meet The Composer (now New Music USA) and the League of American Orchestras, Music Alive has been a steward and partner in a multitude of projects that foster strong working relationships between American orchestras and accomplished composers across the country. In its 17 years, the program has supported 115 composers, 77 orchestras, and 119 distinct residencies. Music Alive is made possible due to a $1.5 million lead grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, The Amphion Foundation, and The ASCAP Foundation Bart Howard Fund.