Richard Carrick Named 2015 Guggenheim Fellow

by Ted Gordon on April 20, 2015, 10:25 a.m.

Richard Carrick has been named a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition, joining the historic ranks of fellow composers such as Aaron Copland, George Antheil, and countless other American composers throughout the years. Carrick has been hard at work in the past year, releasing a new album on New World Records entitled "Cycles of Evolution", which features instrumentalists from a who's who of contemporary music ensembles in New York: the New York Philharmonic, Either/Or, Hotel Elefant, the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, and the Toomai String Quartet. The album features several works available through PSNY, including Sub-merge and Adagios, in an arrangement for string orchestra. Check out the String Orchestra of Brooklyn performing Adagios live at St. Ann's Church: 

Christopher Cerrone Awarded 2015-16 Rome Prize

by Ted Gordon on April 17, 2015, 1:49 p.m.

Christopher Cerrone is among the winners of the prestigious Rome Prize, awarded every year to composers at the highest caliber of their craft by the American Academy in Rome. Along with scholars and artists from several other disciplines, Cerrone will join his cohort in Rome for a year of unrestricted artistic freedom, with generous support from the academy. Cerrone joins fellow PSNY Composers Anthony Cheung, Lei Liang, and Andrew Norman, all of whom have held the Rome Prize in the past ten years. 

We're also excited to announce that two of Cerrone's latest compositions are now available on PSNY: Not One Word for men's choir, commissioned and premiered by the Cornell University Glee Club in 2014, and Sonata for Violin and Piano, commissioned by the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University and premiered by Rachel Lee Priday and David Kaplan earlier this year. Check out a video of Priday and Kaplan performing this sonata below.  

Ann Cleare at the MATA Festival

by Ted Gordon on April 13, 2015, 11:47 a.m.

Now in its seventeenth year, New York's MATA festival, founded by Philip Glass, Lisa Bielawa, and Eleonor Sandresky, has reached a new milestone as one of the worlds leading festivals of new music, with nearly a thousand submissions for composers around the globe. In addition to the dozens of works that were chosen from these submissions, MATA has also decided to commission new works by some of the most interesting composers under 40. 

The highlight of this year's round of commissions is Ann Cleare's eöl, a collaborative work between Cleare, sculptor Brian Byrne, and percussionist Alex Lipowski. Lipowski, who along with Anthony Cheung is a co-director of the Talea Ensemble, will be the featured soloist at the premiere of eöl on April 18th at The Kitchen, playing a unique metal sculpture-instrument by Byrne, and accompanied by clarinet, saxophone, accordion, cello and double bass.

What is the eöl, you might ask? Byrne's new instrument consists of a set of several objects created from various metals, worn and played by the percussionist. eöl refers both to the concept of the "Aeolian," music produced by nature without human intervention, and to Eöl the elf, a character in J.R.R. Tolkien's writings, who weaves metals into magical armor. As Cleare writes, "The ensemble enacts a similar type of sonic weaving, leading to the sonic and visual formation of the percussionist's metallic hands." Here's an image of the eöl; be sure to check out the World Premiere of Cleare's new composition to see this sculpture in action.