Key American Works of the Schott Music Catalogue In Performances Around the Nation

This month key orchestral works by Bernard Rands, who celebrated his 75th birthday on March 2, Tobias Picker, Robert Beaser, Alvin Singleton, Kamran Ince, and Joseph Schwantner see performances all over the country.

Bernard Rands' 75th Birthday commemorative concerts: In honor of the composer's 75th birthday on March 2, Bernard Rands is honored in numerous concerts. On March 1, the dal niente ensemble of Chicago presented Bernard Rands' Concertino for solo oboe and chamber ensemble and ...in the receding mist... for ensemble featuring conductor Michael Henoch and oboist Andy Nogal. Concertino also sees a performance this month at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign conducted by Stephen Taylor by the university's New Music Ensemble on March 17. From March 27 through 29, Southern Illinois University (SIU) features the music of Bernard Rands at its Outside the Box Festival. As part of the festival Mr. Rands will partake in a lecture and composer's forum and audiences at the festival will hear key chamber, orchestral and choral works by the composer including Walcott Songs, Canti d'Amor and Ceremonial. The SIUC Wind Ensemble performs Ceremonial led by Christopher Morehouse and the SIUC Concert Choir presents three songs from Canti d'Amor under conductor Susan Davenport.

Tobias Picker's Old and Lost Rivers at the Nashville Symphony: Kelly Corcoran leads the Nashville Symphony through Tobias Picker's seminal orchestral tone poem Old and Lost Rivers on March 19, 20 and 21. Composed for the Houston Symphony as part of Texas' sesquicentenary in 1986, Old and Lost Rivers was inspired in part by the vast winding bayous of the Texas landscape along Interstate 10. Christoph Eschenbach has been a great champion of Old and Lost Rivers; performing and recording the piano version (for Virgin Classics) and the orchestral version with, among others, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich.

Also this month the Collage New Music ensemble of Boston present Picker's The Blue Hula at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge on March 2. The concert features the soprano, and Picker's longtime collaborator, Judith Bettina, who also performs Picker's songs Native Trees and To the Insects.

Alvin Singleton's PraiseMaker for chorus and orchestra at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra: Beginning March 5 Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Music Director Robert Spano leads the ASO and the Atlanta Symphony Chorus through three performances of Alvin Singleton's PraiseMaker. Utilizing a text by writer and filmmaker Susan Kouguell, PraiseMaker was commissioned for the 125th anniversary of the Cincinnati May Festival. Tim Page wrote of its premiere in The Washington Post:

PraiseMaker is the finest work I've heard from Singleton - linear and engaging, with some dense and expansive chords that linger in the memory. There is much effective use of spatial division - throughout much of the approximately 20-minute duration of PraiseMaker, chorus and orchestra seem to inhabit separate worlds, although they come together at the end. At times, one was reminded a bit of Hector Berlioz, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Morton Feldman (an unlikely trio!) and others, yet the ultimate effect is unmistakably Singleton's own. I'd like to hear PraiseMaker again.

Robert Beaser's Folk Songs at Honolulu Symphony: The music of the Schott Music American catalogue travels beyond the continental United States this month as the Honolulu Symphony under conductor Ann Krinitsky perform Robert Beaser's Folk Songs on March 11, 12 and 13. Premiered at the 2007 Aspen Music Festival, Folk Songs reflects the composer's lifelong interest in folk music and draws its material from Beaser's Souvenirs which exists in versions for clarinet or piccolo and piano, adapting and reordering the music from it while presenting it in a new setting - string orchestra, harp and timpani. Beaser describes the songs of Souvenirs as sounding "in some spiritual way like folk songs-somewhat akin to Mendelssohn's ‘Songs Without Words'."

Kamran Ince's Flight Box at Present Music in Milwaukee: The ensemble Present Music and artistic director Kevin Stalheim present Kamran Ince's Flight Box at Windhover Hall at the Milwaukee Art Museum on March 28. Commissioned by Present Music in 2000 to commemorate the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum's Santiago Calatrava building, Flight Box is a musical diary of the composer's travelling between the US and Turkey during the period of its composition and a meditation on the feelings inspired by visiting the museum building at various stages of its construction.

Other key works from Schott Music's American catalogue include Joseph Schwantner's Chasing Light, in the midst of a nationwide tour of orchestras as part of the Ford Made in America Commissioning Consortium with performances this month alone in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Arkansas, West Virginia, Utah, Idaho and Mississippi; and Bruce MacCombie's Samsara Rounds which received its world premiere by James DePreist and the Juilliard Orchestra last month.

Learn more on the music of these composers by visiting their composer profiles.

Robert Beaser
Folk Songs (2007)
for string orchestra and timpani
timp-hp-str(10.8.6.6.4)
15'

Kamran Ince
Flight Box (2001)
for chamber ensemble
ssax.asax.tsax-2tpt.tbn.btbn-perc-ebass.pno(synth)-vn.vc
13'

Bruce MacCombie
Samsara Rounds (2008)
for orchestra
pic.0.2.ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn-4.3.3.1-timp.perc-amp pno-str
14'

Tobias Picker
Old and Lost Rivers (1986)
for orchestra
3(3.pic).2.3(3.bcl).3-6.3.0.1-timp.perc-hp.pno-str
6'

Bernard Rands
Concertino (1996)
for solo oboe and chamber ensemble
fl.cl.hp.2vn.vc
20'

Joseph Schwantner
Chasing Light (2008)
for chamber orchestra
2(2.pic)2.2.2-2.2.1.0-timp.perc-amp pno-str
17'

Alvin Singleton
PraiseMaker (1998)
for mixed chorus and orchestra
text (En) by Susan Kouguell
2.3(3.ca).3(2.bcl).3(3.cbsn)-4.2.3.1-2perc-hp-str
22'