ASCAP "Adventurous Programming" Awards

It's Edvard Grieg's birthday today!  I've had the opportunity to play his Peer Gynt Suite #1 (perhaps too many times), and I've conducted the sparkling Holberg Suite.  As much as I love the work of this late-Romantic composer, I am really excited by new music as well.


The ASCAP "Adventurous Programming" Awards were announced just a few days ago.  Whenever I hear about "new" music, innovative programming, and ways to make concerts more lively and engaging, I get all goose-bumpy.


The awards are designed "to salute those orchestras who have a commitment to the music creators of our time.”
Of course, the usual suspects were on the list, orchestras with mammoth budgets and superstar conductors.  But here! here! for the The Alabama Symphony, the "grand champion," taking the  John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music.  
I was excited to see my old conductor from Brown University, Paul Phillips, recognized for his commitment to contemporary music as Music Director of the Pioneer Valley Symphony.

Glad to see the Richmond Symphony has some morsels of contemporary music on the plate for this coming season:  Steven Stucky's "Dreamwaltzes," "Musica Celestis" by Aaron Jay Kernis, and William Bolcom's "Commedia for (almost) 18th-Century Orchestra."  In recent seasons we have seen music from locally-grown composers, as well.  Mason Bates springs to mind.  Wonder if it's time to launch a new music commission, something in our high schools and colleges to encourage the craft's youngest practitioners.