Composers Given Commissioning Grants

Meet the Composer Inc. has announced the 30 American composers chosen for commissioning grants--totaling $366,000 in the final year of a three-year program.

The New York-based organization has also revealed its next long-term project: A $2.8-million commissioning program sponsored again by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, with the assistance of at least $800,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts included, over a four-year period. According to John Duffy, director and president of Meet the Composer, who spoke to The Times from his office in New York City, this amount represents “the largest (in terms of dollars) commissioning program in the history of American music.”

Duffy said Meet the Composer will accept applications from now up to April 15 for the first year of the new four-year program.

One of the strong features of the commissioning program is that each new work is guaranteed multiple performances in different locales. In the first two years of the initial three-year project, according to M. Christine DeVita, president of the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, “Nearly 400 performances and broadcasts have taken place in 100 American cities, from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Mt. Gretna, Pa. Attendance has topped 5 million. This addresses a primary goal of the fund: bringing the arts to the widest possible audience.”

Composers chosen for the final year of the first Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest commissioning program are: Eric Stokes, Michael Daugherty, Olly Wilson, William Kraft, Roger Reynolds, Joan Tower, Martin Bresnick, Bunita Marcus, Linda Bouchard, Julia Wolfe, Terry Riley, Earl Kim, Eleanor Hovda, Dumisani Maraire, Michael Torke, Daniel Lentz, Roberto Sierra, Diamanda Galas, John Lewis, George Russell, Craig Harris, Steve Lacy, Mary Watkins, Spencer Barefield, Muhal Richard Abrams, Mark Helias, Leo Smith, Hamiet Bluiett, David Murray and Oliver Lake.

Californian Reynolds, a 1989 Pulitzer Prize winner in music and for 21 years a member of the faculty at UC San Diego, will write a 20-25 minute piece for full orchestra, to be played by the San Diego Symphony (which submitted the proposal to Meet the Composer), the American Composers Orchestra in New York, the Cabrillo Festival orchestra, the Albany (N.Y.) Symphony and the New Hampshire Music Festival orchestra.

From his home in La Jolla, Reynolds said that, after some years away from writing for full orchestra, “Now I seem to have a surfeit of opportunities” to compose in the symphonic vein.

Before he gets to the Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest commission, Reynolds revealed he will complete two other large pieces, one commissioned by the Suntory Foundation in Japan, the other by the Koussevitzky Foundation, on behalf of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The Suntory commission will become one in a series of “Symphonies” the 56-year old composer has been writing over the years. The title of this work, now being completed, will be “Symphony (Myths).” The next large-scale piece, for the L.A. Philharmonic, due Sept. 1, 1992, will be called “Symphony (The Seasons of Life).”

ARTS/MEDICINE: A world congress on Arts Medicine has been announced to take place in the Hague, Sept. 29-Oct. 4, 1991, and the call is out for contributions related to: the relationships of arts and medicine--phenomenology, philosophy, aesthetics, neurosciences, biology, bioengineering, etc.; medicine for artists--specialized medical and allied health care for performing and visual artists, aiming to diagnose, treat and prevent their occupation-related or job-threatening disorders; arts as medicine--numerous applications of the arts as treatment, namely music therapy, dance therapy and other creative arts therapies. For information, write Hoboken Congress Organization, Erasmus University, P.O.B. 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

BRIEFLY: Anne Marie de Angelo, has been appointed artistic director of the new Ballet de Monterrey in the Mexican city (in the state of Nuevo Leon). De Angelo’s first assignment: as stage director and principal dancer in “Nutcracker” performances to be given during the Holiday season. A former principal at Joffrey Ballet (1972-83), De Angelo spent a year with Frankfurt Ballet before starting her own, New York-based company in 1984. As a choreographer, she has created a number of works for her company and for the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. . . . Carl St. Clair, incoming music director of the Pacific Symphony, and Kenneth Jean, music director of the Florida Symphony, have been named the two 1990 recipients of the prestigious Seaver/NEA Conductors Award. The cash prize, given every two years, and said to be the largest such award to conductors in the world, is $75,000 to each recipient, to be drawn over a four-year period. St. Clair and Jean were chosen from a field of 50 candidates for the awards. . . . An international conference and festival celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu will be held at Washington University in St. Louis, Oct. 22-29. More than 30 Martinu scholars from Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, England, Germany and Switzerland are expected to participate.