American Composers Forum

ListN Up
2020-06-19, 2020-06-12, 2020-06-05 | Virtual, United States
ListN Up is a series of weekly artist-curated playlists. Born from a desire to keep artists sharing and connected during times of isolation, ListN Up offers an intimate sonic portrait of contemporary artists by showcasing the diverse and stylistically varied music that influences their creative practice. This series is sponsored by American Composers Forum/innova Recordings with new releases every Friday on I CARE IF YOU LISTEN.

Living Music: Pirate Radio
2020-06-18 21:00, 2020-06-16 21:00, 2020-06-11 21:00, 2020-06-09 21:00, 2020-06-04 21:00, 2020-06-02 21:00 (America/New_York)
Living Music: Pirate Radio is a quarantine variety show, hosted by Nadia Sirota, that brings performances, conversation and community directly from socially-distanced artists to viewers at home. Watch on Facebook Live Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific and see more than a dozen archived episodes!

New Music Gathering
2020-06-15 - 2020-06-30 | Virtual, United States
New Music Gathering is an annual three-day conference dedicated to the performance, production, promotion, support and creation of new concert music.
With concerts, lecture/recitals, roundtable discussions, talks, and everything from composer-performer “speed dating,” to live action role playing games, NMG aims to be both a conference in the traditional sense but also quite literally a collective place for things to grow, improve, solidify, and above all get personal!

Connecting ACO Community: Weekly Premieres
2020-06-14 17:00, 2020-06-07 17:00, 2020-05-31 17:00 (America/New_York) | Virtual, United States
American Composers Orchestra Announces a new solo commissioning initiative in response to the COVID-19 crisis with online world premieres beginning Sunday, April 19, 2020 at 5pm on Zoom
$5 tickets* available through Eventbrite
If the $5 entrance fee poses a barrier to participation, interested listeners will be asked to fill out an anonymous form at https://bit.ly/ACOConnectComp or email Aiden Feltkamp at aiden@americancomposers.org to request a fee waiver.
In response to the impacts of COVID-19 on composers and performers, American Composers Orchestra announces Connecting ACO Community, a new initiative to commission short works for solo instrument or voice. Each composer will receive $500 to write the work, and each performer will receive $500 to perform the work, with the rights to stream for six months. With this project, ACO aims to support artists who need financial assistance; to create new work that will live beyond this crisis; and provide virtual, interactive performances to ACO’s supporters and the general public.
Ticketholders will receive a private link to join the performance, and all of the proceeds from the ticket sales will go solely to fund artists involved in this project. The composer, performer, and a host (ACO President Ed Yim or ACO Artistic Director Derek Bermel, who is also donating his own performance to the project) will hold an online chat with attendees after the performance. The recorded session will be available within 24 hours after the performance on ACO’s website and social media platforms, as well as on MUSIC on the REBOUND: an online festival for participating in live events as well as a platform for streaming concerts.
Connecting ACO Community Volume 2 Composer-Performer Teams and Schedule of Events
Sunday, June 7, 2020 at 5pm ET:
Joseph Pereira & Chester Englander, percussion (register/buy tickets)
Sunday, June 14, 2020 – OFF
Sunday, June 21, 2020 at 5pm ET:
Shara Nova & Ahya Simone, harp (register/buy tickets)
Note: Ahya Simone was unable to appear during the originally scheduled premiere in Volume 1, during which Shara Nova premiered a version for voice and guitar. This installment features Simone performing a second premiere of the work When I Said Let a Change Come for harp.
Sunday, June 28, 2020 at 5pm ET:
Karena Ingram & Monica Ellis, bassoon (register/buy tickets)
Sunday, July 5, 2020 at 5pm ET:
Krists Auznieks & Stephen Gosling, piano (register/buy tickets)
Sunday, July 12, 2020 at 5pm ET:
Lembit Beecher & Seth Parker Woods, cello (register/buy tickets)
Sunday, July 19, 2020 at 5pm ET:
Alejandro Basulto Martinez & Alecia Lawyer, oboe (register/buy tickets)

Nirmala Rajasekar (Veena) with Sriram Iyer (Mirdangam)
2020-06-14 11:00 (America/Chicago)
A live performance by composer/performer Nirmala Rajasekar on June 14th 2020 at 11 am CST by the Indian Music Society of MinnesotaIMSOM (Indian Music Society of Minnesota) and India Association of Minnesota
Nirmala Rajasekar is a world renowned Carnatic veena virtuoso and educator of South Indian Music. She has performed in venues throughout the world and is a recipient of many awards including a Bush artistic fellowship, a McKnight fellowship, Rotary Vocational Excellence award and Best Senior Veena Artiste. She is known for her talents in exploring South Indian Classical (Carnatic) to create collaborative projects with other music traditions including western classical and jazz. The press has often described her as a “Carnatic Ambassador”, as she has introduced Carnatic Music to many other art forms of the world.

"Alone Together" Juventas' New, Virtual Season Finale
2020-06-13 20:00 (America/New_York)
Please join Juventas New Music Ensemble for a special, live-streamed chamber music concert to cap off Juventas’s 15th anniversary season!
Highlights include audience favorites by composers:
Emma Wine, Gold Against the Gloom
Michael Gandolfi, Line Drawings
Wei-Chieh “Henry” Hu, Dance of the Manakin
Plus Aaron Copland‘s “Laurie’s Song” from The Tenderland
And the *World Premiere* of Oliver Caplan‘s Alone Together
With socially-distanced performances by:
Julia Scott Carey, piano
Minjin Chung, cello
Kelley Hollis, soprano
Wolcott Humphrey, clarinet
Olga Patrmanska-Bell, violin

Music Creator Meet-Up
2020-06-13 11:00, 2020-06-06 11:00, 2020-05-30 11:00 (America/Chicago) | Virtual, United States
About: In keeping with our mission to nurture the creative spirit of music creators and communities, American Composers Forum and New Music Gathering are partnering to host a weekly Music Creator Meet-Up. In these sessions, we will check-in with each other to see how we are doing, review creation in progress by one of our peers, and stay plugged in with the most recent resources.

Register

Date/Time: Every Saturday at 11am CT, May 16 – June 13, 2020
Note: Every week we’ll be focusing on one music creator and/or topic. If you would like to share your creation in progress with peers, please let the host know when you register so we can ensure you have 15 minutes space to do so.
What’s Next? New Music Gathering 2020!
Schedule: June 15-13, 2020.
Attendance is free, but registration is required to obtain a password that will get you into every Zoom event.
To register: click here.
Questions? Please shoot a line at newmusicgathering@gmail.com

Response To Violence Hosted by Mixtape
2020-06-11 15:00, 2020-06-06 14:00 (America/Chicago) | Virtual, United States
Stefon “Bionik” Taylor and Jason “J-Sun” Noer of MIXTAPE put out a call to white artists practicing Black art forms. This call to action is a virtual performance that takes part in a fundraising effort to support organizations working towards defunding police on a local level. They also asked: How can we make a difference with our art? What is our contribution to Black culture? Where is our accountability?
The performance consists of artists that align themselves with systemic change of injustices and ranges from rap to tap. Each artist will address the three questions alongside their performance and fully engage with the matter at hand.
Imagine if curfew, fear of loss of life, and distrust of those posing to protect us were part of our everyday lives. ALL of us are responsible for taking action to change this inequity. As Minnesota Artists we cannot turn away from this moment. Minnesota is resilient, beautiful, and unrepentant. The struggle for justice has become visible to those with the privilege to turn away. The Response to Violence movement remains focused on using art to challenge the systemic problems that must be addressed to change these inequitable practices.

#justiceforgeorgefloyd

ACF Town Hall
2020-06-09 17:00 (America/Chicago) | Virtual, United States
We feel that the best way we make it through this challenge is as a community. Taking this into consideration, we are hosting a series of virtual town halls where you can just drop in and hang out.

Register

Free Online Concerts: Culture in the Time of Corona
2020-06-07 15:00, 2020-05-31 15:00 (America/New_York) | Virtual, United States
The Streetlight Guild, in partnership with the Johnstone Fund for New Music, presents Culture in the Time of Corona, a series of 6 free live-stream concerts taking place at The Streetlight Guild on Sunday afternoons at 3:00 p.m. in April, May and June. The purpose of these performances is to provide musicians with much-needed income, as many of them have experienced cancelled gigs due to public health concerns, and to provide the public at large with much-needed musical therapy during an unprecedented time of crisis.
LIVE STREAM LINK
To watch these performances live, please visit streetlightguild.org.
RECORDED PERFORMANCES LINK
To watch recordings of these performances, please visit streetlightguild.org.
SCHEDULE
April 26: Cameron Leach (cleachmusic.com)
May 10: Tower Duo (towerduo.weebly.com)
May 17: Starlit Ways (starlitways.com)
May 24: Pendulum Duo (facebook.com/PendulumDuo)
May 31: Robert Mason (robertmason.bandcamp.com)
June 7: Janus Quartet (janusstringquartet.com)

The Future is Female
2020-06-05 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual, United States
Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, will perform The Future is Female as a livestream performance presented by Old First Concerts. This concert will be available to watch with a suggested donation. All donations received before and during this concert go to support two organizations which have been severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown – Old First Concerts and Compass Family Services, which provides a wide variety of human services to homeless families and those at risk of homelessness.

The Future is Female is a curation and performance project featuring more than sixty compositions by women around the globe, ranging from the 18th century to the present day. Cahill describes it as “a ritual installation and communal feminist immersive listening experience.” For this performance, Cahill presents an evening-length version of the project with the following pieces, focusing on music from the 20th and 21st centuries:

Gabriela Ortiz: Preludio y Estudio 3 (2011)
Margaret Bonds: Troubled Water (1967)
Germaine Tailleferre: Partita (1957)
Elizabeth A. Baker: Four Planes (2015)
Sofia Gubaidulina: Chaconne (1965)
Lois V Vierk: Yeah Yeah Yeah (1990)
Grażyna Bacewicz: Scherzo (1934)
Betsy Jolas: Tango Si (1984)
Elena Kats-Chernin: Peggy’s Rag (1996)

With this physical manifestation of her lifetime dedication to supporting the artistic work of women, Cahill illuminates works by women composers worldwide – Chinese, Azerbaijani, Afro-Cuban, African American, Czech, Lithuanian, Polish, and Venezuelan, among others – some who are alive and prolific and others who have passed but live on through their music. The San Diego Tribune describes Cahill as “a vessel through which musical ideas can pass, a communicator whose technique is put at the service of empathy and understanding.”

Cahill is scheduled to perform the marathon of The Future is Female at BAMPFA on October 1, 2020. Other recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include North Dakota Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Carlsbad Music Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, the University of Iowa, and the Barbican Centre.

About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill has commissioned and premiered over sixty compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Yoko Ono, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a Champion of New Music by the American Composers Forum for 2018.

Recent appearances include the Interlochen Arts Festival, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Boston Institute for Contemporary Art, a performance at Alice Tully Hall with the Silk Road Ensemble, Stanford Live, Le Poisson Rouge, and concerts at San Francisco Performances, Sacramento State’s Festival of New American Music, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the United Kingdom, and Toyusu Civic Center Hall in Tokyo.

Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Other Minds, Tzadik, Albany, Cold Blue, Other Minds, and Pinna labels. In September 2017, she released her latest album, Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley, a box set tribute to Terry Riley, on Irritable Hedgehog Records. The four-CD set includes solo works by Riley, four-hand works with pianist Regina Myers, and world premiere recordings of commissioned works composed in honor of Riley’s 80th birthday.

Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8 to 10 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory. For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.

NEWMUSICBOX LIVE: NEW MUSIC GATHERING
2020-06-01 20:00 (America/New_York)
a conversation on Livestream with New Music Gathering’s
Lainie Fefferman, Daniel Felsenfeld, Mary Kouyoumdjian,
Jascha Narveson, and Angélica Negrón
with Frank J. Oteri
followed by an audience Q&A
The concept for New Music Gathering was born in an online forum. Perhaps it is appropriate that in our time of physical distancing, the in-person extravaganza has been reimagined for virtual space – allowing creators, interpreters, and aficionados to gather from the comfort of their own homes.
We’ll speak with the composers behind NMG about how this intimate live experience will transform for an online environment, and their thoughts about what’s next for the new music community.

Will you Stay On It?
2020-06-01 11:00 (America/New_York) | Virtual, United States
Presented by Lincoln Center, The Dream Unfinished will premiere a video performance of Stay On It by Julius Eastman (1940-1990), a composer whose music explored his identities as a gay man and as a Black-American. Stay On Itis dedicated to blue-collar essential workers such as grocery employees, public transit operators, custodians, and other professions overwhelmingly occupied by people of color. This is the first classical music tribute to essential workers of color in the United States.

Organ Colossal Listening Sessions
2020-05-31 15:00 (America/New_York)
The Organ Colossal Listening Sessions is an online series that brings two artists together through individual performances and moderated conversation. The idea is to draw connections.
Events are free with donations for the artists accepted. Donations are tax-deductible.
Kyle Rapps is an American hip hop artist and slam poet, formerly based in Harlem and Mexico City, now living in Los Angeles. He is co-founder and producer of Mayhem Poets. His hip-hop styles and theatrical presence have earned him poetry slam victories across the nation, and brought him all the way to the Grand Slam finals at the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City. As a rapper, Kyle has recorded with the likes of Action Bronson, Talib Kweli, KRS-One, and Joell Ortiz.
Emily Pinkerton’s driving force as a songwriter and ethnomusicologist is to explore the musical and social ties that bind the Americas. For two decades, she has traveled between the U.S. and Chile, playing fiddle, banjo, guitar, charango and guitarrón. She divides her time between performing, teaching and composing, including recent projects — Rounder Songs, a chamber piece featuring voice and old-time banjo; The Early Mays, an award-winning, all-female folk trio; and Looking for Violeta, an original score for a play by Quantum Theatre about Chilean artists, and siblings, Nicanor and Violeta Parra.

Lean On Me: Jazz/Cabaret/Musical Theater Concert
2020-05-30 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Chicago)
The OmniArts Foundation is proud to present: Lean On Me: A Virtual Concert Series for COVID-19 Relief.
Join us on May 30, 2020 at 4pm EDT for the Jazz/Cabaret/Musical Theater Concert, the second of three virtual, request-driven concerts to benefit freelance artists and the families of essential workers affected by COVID-19, and the charitable organizations providing emergency funds to those in need.

Featured Artists:
Fred Hersch – Host
Mary McDonnell – Visual Artist
Taisiya Pushkar – Staff Pianist
Christian Sands – Pianist
Guy Mintus – Jazz Pianist/ Composer
Ray Suhy – Electric Guitar
Cree Carrico – Soprano
Benny Benack – Trumpet
Emmet Cohen – Pianist
Lauren Jelencovich – Soprano
Gregrory Omar Osborne – Dancer
Amy Owens – Soprano
Teresa Tucci – Soprano
Victoria, Olivia, and Gloria Manning – Voice
Alexander Scheuerman – Tenor
Scott Joiner – Composer/ Pianist/ Tenor
Jessica Fishenfeld – Soprano
Ayanna Witter-Johnson – Encore Artist

Tech Support Happy Hour
2020-05-29 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Chicago)
Slam Academy’s Free Tech Support Happy Hour!
Are you an artist that has been forced into the world of working online?
Are you a music or art educator that is struggling with your online teaching options?
Or are you just curious how all of this stuff is supposed to work?
Join us for a free pop-in meeting to chat, and get tips, ideas, and solutions from our tech ninjas.
Every Friday 5 – 6pm CDT.
Event Link
Beverages optional.
about slam academy
Slam Academy is devoted to creating a non-competitive, experiential learning environment to anyone who seeks it. We believe that each of our students has something valuable to say, and our ultimate goal is to empower them with the ability to release it through music.
When it comes to electronic music education in the Twin Cities, there are two options: 1. YouTube, and 2. College Programs. While we at Slam Academy are big fans of a college education, there seemed to be a gap in options. On the one hand was a free and completely unsupervised, non-reactive medium (YouTube), and on the other a highly focused (and fairly expensive) college education. In our opinion, there should be something in between. Something that gives the student one-on-one, personal education at an affordable price.
Since the start of each electronic art form – music, video, digital image making, software development – participation has been reserved for those who can afford the technology. In the last few years, technology has become more and more inexpensive and accessible. Anyone can make great work – all you really need is a computer. If you have a computer, we can show you how to make art on it.

New Music Help Desk
2020-05-29 15:00 (America/Chicago) | Virtual, United States
The New Music Help Desk is a unique opportunity for composers and performers to get face time with Spektral Quartet – to ask pointed questions about notation, feasibility, tuning systems, harmonics, or simply how to stay motivated in the midst of a quarantine.
“Our aim is to use our skills to both build community and keep creativity flowing for artists hemmed in by this quarantine – and to do so at no charge.
For this recurring series, we will select questions in advance and then open the proceedings up to attendees using the Zoom Q&A feature. If a submitted question is not one of the few chosen beforehand, attendees can still ask us their question live during the event. All submissions, regardless of date sent, will be kept in the mix for future Help Desk sessions.
The New Music Help Desk is open to anyone curious about the labyrinth of new music notation, composition, and performance. Priority will be given to student and emerging artists, or anyone currently in-process with a piece. And to bring extra perspective to the discussion, Spektral will be joined by a special guest to help answer queries.
This is frankly a scary time for all of us in the arts. We hope the New Music Help Desk brings at least a little glimmer of hope and assistance to our fellow artists.” – Spektral
