Music Alive residencies in action: 1. At the Seattle Symphony, artist Trimpin worked with participants from Path with Art, a Seattle-based nonprofit that serves adults dealing with addiction and homelessness, to design and build a musical instrument made out of found, broken, and retired objects. 2. At the Pacific Symphony, composer Narong Prangcharoen discussed creating a score about Orange County at a free Community Celebration before a performance of the work. In photo, he’s with Susan Kotses, Pacific Symphony’s vice president of education and community engagement, at the community event. 3. At the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, composer Gabriela Lena Frank improvises on the piano for patients during a music therapy session at Detroit Medical Center’s Children’s Hospital of Michigan. 4. Dayton Ballet performs Fate of Place, given its world premiere in February 2015, with a commissioned score by Stella Sung as part of her Music Alice residency, and choreography by Karen Russo Burke. Neal Gittleman led the Dayton Philharmonic.
The composer collective Sleeping Giant’s Music Alive residency at the Albany (N.Y) Symphony Orchestra included the creation of Requiem Reimagined. Director Daniel Fish placed vocalists in an unexpected location for the spring 2015 premiere.
Residence residency with the Albany Symphony in New York. In one of five projects nationwide funded by Music Alive, the residency program backed by the League of American Orchestras and New Music USA, the Albany Symphony brought in the young composers to help “chart a new path for our orchestra,” Albany Symphony Music Director David Alan Miller says. Music Alive has been helping orchestras do that since 1999. Rather than mandate a cookie-cutter format, the program invites orchestras to propose projects they think would suit their own audiences and communities, according to League President and CEO Jesse Rosen. “I think there’s a change in how people think about the arts today—especially the Western canon arts,” americanorchestras.org
Rosen says. “There’s a desire to bring those art forms to life in new ways, to new audiences and in new venues. Nonprofits in general, and performing-arts nonprofits in particular, are expected by funders, policymakers, and civic leaders to play a role as contributors to their communities beyond what they do on their main stages. This is work that organizations must do to carry out their charitable purpose.” The time-honored goal of creating works to premiere on orchestral subscription concerts is only part of Music Alive’s mission. Each of the current five residencies, which began in 2013-14 and conclude during the 2015-16 season, has its own character: • Besides transforming Mozart, Sleep-
ing Giant is curating new-music concerts featuring Dogs of Desire, the Albany Symphony’s contemporary-music ensemble, and other performers. • The Seattle Symphony collaborated with one of its city’s artistic luminaries: composer, inventor, and sculptor Trimpin, winner of accolades including a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, on an innovative new work that combines sound with interactive technology. Lead funding for Music Alive is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with additional support from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, and The ASCAP Foundation Bart Howard Fund.
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Gary Gold Photography
by Steven Brown