Music Accord Announces Upcoming World Premieres, Website Launch

Music Accord, a consortium of ten presenting organizations across the United States dedicated to supporting the cultivation of American chamber music, announces the upcoming premieres of five commissioned works by Mark Adamo, Shulamit Ran, Sebastian Currier, Lowell Liebermann and Brad Mehldau. Launched in 1998 with world premiere compositions from Jake Heggie and Elliott Carter, Music Accord has quietly been commissioning chamber and recital works from leading composers for nearly fifteen years, with the primary goal of both perpetuating the creation of new American works as well as presenting them in leading concert halls across the United States and abroad.

At this time, Music Accord is proud to announce the inauguration of their website: www.musicaccord.org, which will gather and provide a comprehensive list of commissions, composers, performing artists, presenting organizations, video and audio samples, and publication information.

Ed Yim, who serves as consultant and administrator for the consortium, says of the group, "It is truly a remarkable and enlightened group of presenters who have banded together with the sole motivation to encourage American composers and American artists to create chamber music. The most recent commissions represent support for five of the finest musicians working today, adding to the already rich body of work this partnership has supported."

Music Accord was founded by Zarin Mehta, working with administrator Frederick Noonan. As Mr. Mehta explains, "The original idea in creating Music Accord was to add rich new works to the chamber music and recital genres, as well as provide numerous performances of those works by major presenters throughout the United States."

Music Accord is currently comprised of ten performing arts organizations throughout the country:

Celebrity Series of Boston
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City
Concerts from the Library of Congress in Washington, DC
Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State
UMS at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa
Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at University of California, Davis
San Francisco Performances
While members of Music Accord contribute financially to each commission, premieres of each work can be presented by organizations outside of the consortium. In keeping with its fundamental mission of supporting American composers and American music, as well as to make certain of the performance opportunities for that music, Music Accord awards commissions principally to composers who are US citizens or who reside in the United States. Unlike many other commissioning programs, the performing artists are identified first and participate in selecting the composers, which makes the commissioning and creative process a genuinely collaborative one between the presenters, performers and composers. "We wanted the composers to be chosen specifically by the artists so that the intention from the beginning was organic and led by artistic desire," says Mehta. "It was an original and thoughtful project that promoted wonderful collaborations with colleagues, artists and composers, and we're incredibly proud of the new repertoire that has enriched the literature over the past 15 years."

In addition to the 25 works already commissioned and premiered across the country and internationally, Music Accord is honored to announce five additional commissions from the following composers, whose works will be premiered over the course of the next two seasons:

Mark Adamo's Aristotle for baritone and string quartet, to be premiered by Thomas Hampson and the Jupiter String Quartet at Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, April 24, 2013
Brad Mehldau's new work for solo piano, to be premiered by Jeremy Denk in the 2013-2014 season
Sebastian Currier's new work for mixed chamber ensemble, to be premiered by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players in Boston and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center musicians in New York in April 2014
Shulamit Ran's Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory to be premiered by the Pacifica Quartet at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Japan in June 2014; The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York in November 2014; and Wigmore Hall in London in March 2015. This is the first co-commission that Music Accord has undertaken with international partners
Lowell Liebermann's new work for string quartet, to be premiered by the Emerson String Quartet in the 2014-2015 season
The consortium's first commission was Jake Heggie's Songs to the Moon for mezzo-soprano and piano, premiered in August 1998 by Frederica von Stade and Martin Katz at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois. Since that time, twenty-four additional commissions by such composers as David Del Tredici, Elliott Carter, John Harbison, Aaron Jay Kernis and André Previn have been premiered across the country by today's leading performers, including Yefim Bronfman, Jonathan Biss, Lynn Harrell, Guarneri String Quartet, Stephanie Blythe, Chanticleer, and many others.

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