American Composers Orchestra 2019-2020 Season Continues at Carnegie Hall With THE NATURAL ORDER

American Composers Orchestra (ACO) continues its 2019-2020 concert season with The Natural Order on Thursday, April 2, 2020 at 7:30pm at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. The concert features the world premieres of two new works commissioned by ACO that explore the complicated relationship between humankind and the natural world - Mark Adamo's Last Year: Concerto for Cello and String Orchestra and Nina C. Young's Out of whose womb came the ice. John Luther Adams' Become River, previously announced, will be replaced on the program with Silvestre Revueltas' Colorines.

Mark Adamo's Last Year: Concerto for Cello and String Orchestra, an ACO commission supported by ACO's 2020 Commission Club, features cellist Jeffrey Zeigler and explores the idea of an apocalyptic Quattro Stagioni. Instead of the four seasons as depicted by Vivaldi, Adamo uses four extreme landscapes and brings the deeper-voiced cello as a bearer of this tale. Nina C. Young and projection designer R. Luke DuBois create a sonic and visual portrait of famed explorer Ernest Shackelton's Antarctic journey (1914-16) in Out of whose womb came the ice, featuring baritone David Tinervia. ACO gave the world premiere of the first portion of the piece in 2017 and will premiere the expanded version on this concert, co-commissioned by ACO and Carnegie Hall. The concert opens with the great composer Silvestre Revueltas' tribute to the flowering plant of his native Mexico, Colorines.

Adamo writes of his new work for ACO and Zeigler, "I was brainstorming about our long-dreamt concerto right about the time I listened - for the first time in a while - to a performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons ... I was struck, not only by the beauty of the playing, but by the vigor and color of the composition, and by the innocence of its portraits. As soon as I finished listening to the concerti, I watched on the news how Hurricane Harvey - yet another in a series of once-in-a-lifetime storms that now seem to arrive every year - had just inundated the city of Houston. I turned to my spouse and, thinking of the Vivaldi, I thought, 'there's no way you could compose that piece today, could you?' Last Year is my attempt to answer that question."

Of her new work for ACO and baritone David Tinervia, Young writes, "Though Shackleton's expedition failed, it remains one of the most miraculous stories of polar exploration and human survival. Out of whose womb came the ice looks at the expedition from the time they enter the Weddell Sea to the sinking of the Endurance. The vocal and orchestra music focuses on the crew's perception of the Endurance in relationship to their surroundings. She goes from being simply a ship, to a lifeline and memento that connects them to the world they left behind. The visuals and electronics offer narrative elements drawn directly from documents of the journey: journal entries of the crew and images by expedition's official photographer Frank Hurley."

The concert will open with Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas's Colorines, a symphonic poem for chamber orchestra, from 1932. Inspired by the Colorín, or Coral Tree, the score of Colorines, "not only evokes the deep color that the trees of this name give to the landscape, but also the feelings of the women wearing necklaces made of the red and black fruit of this tree, or of children playing with them" (Musical Quarterly, 1941).

This season, ACO continues its commitment to the creation, performance, preservation, and promotion of music by American composers with programming that sparks curiosity and reflects geographic, stylistic, racial and gender diversity. "ACO's 2019-2020 Carnegie Hall programs highlight the breadth and depth of American music being composed today," commented ACO Artistic Director Derek Bermel. "Our audience will have the unique opportunity to experience world premieres of these emerging talents alongside established American voices - brand new music heard for the very first time in New York City."

The Natural Order Concert Program:
American Composers Orchestra
George Manahan, music director and conductor
Jeffrey Zeigler, cello
David Tinervia, baritone
R. Luke DuBois, projection designer

Silvestre Revueltas: Colorines (1932)
MARK ADAMO: Last Year (World Premiere; ACO Commission)
NINA C. YOUNG: Out of whose womb came the ice (World Premiere of expanded version; ACO Commission)

More information about American Composers Orchestra is available online at www.americancomposers.org.