Premiere Commission | Commissions

Artists and Works Commissioned and/or Premiered by
Premiere Commission, Inc.:

Milton Babbitt: "A Waltzer in the House" (ballet)

The compositional and intellectual wisdom of Milton Babbitt has influenced a wide range of contemporary musicians. A broad array of distinguished musical achievements in the dodecaphonic system and important writings on the subject have generated increased understanding and integration of serialist language into the eclectic musical styles of the late 20th century. The recipient of numerous honors, commissions, and awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize Citation for his "life's work as a distinguished and seminal American composer," Babbitt is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Angelo Badalamenti: "Snapshot: Prague, 1986"

Though his jazzy, sometimes nightmarish compositions have earned Grammy Award-winning film composer Angelo Badalamenti a special place in the David Lynch canon, the tireless musician has also found success with such world-renowned filmmakers as Jane Campion (Holy Smoke, 1999) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (The City of Lost Children, 1995). A native of Brooklyn, NY, who spent his childhood enjoying the lavish auditory pleasures of opera and classical music, later studies at the Eastman and Manhattan Schools of Music found the lifelong music lover coming into his own as a composer.
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Gordon Beeferman: "Phenomena"*

Gordon Beeferman a composer, pianist and improviser based in New York City. His works - orchestral, solo, chamber, and opera - have been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Quartet New Generation recorder collective, eighth blackbird, pianist Winston Choi, soprano Lisa Bielawa, NYC-based Anti-Social Music and many others. The Chicago Tribune praised Beeferman for his "masterly orchestral craftsmanship; odd, refreshing sonorities and expressive speech." The Albany Times-Union described his work as "chilling... unpredictable... brutal." The New York City Opera presented an excerpt from his chamber opera-in-progress "The Rat Land" on the VOX 2007: Showcasing American Composers series.
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Lisa Bielawa: "The Lay of the Love and Death" bielawa

Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa often takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and from close artistic collaborations. A graduate of Yale University with a BA summa cum laude in Literature, her music explores the ritual and phenomenological nature of music-making and listening, employing instrumental forces in ways that are both dramatic and intimate in their use of time and space. Bielawa's The Lay of the Love and Death, written for violinist Colin Jacobsen and baritone Jesse Blumberg and based on an epic poem by Rilke, premiered at Alice Tully Hall in March 2006. Hurry, for soprano and chamber ensemble, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered in 2004 as part of Dawn Upshaw's Perspectives series.
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William Bolcom: "New York Lights" bolcom

William Elden Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, three Grammy Awards, and the Detroit Music Award. Bolcom is a professor of music composition at the University of Michigan. In 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. James Levine and the Vienna Philharmonic premiered the Fantasia Concertante for viola, cello, and orchestra in 1986 at the Mozarteum in Salzburg; the Fifth Symphony was premiered in 1990 by The Philadelphia Orchestra and Maestro Davies. Also under Davies' baton, Bolcom's first opera, McTeague - starring Ben Heppner in the title role and Catherine Malfitano as his wife Trina, was premiered by the Lyric Opera in Chicago on October 31, 1992, and subsequently played to nine sold-out houses. The University of Indiana at Bloomington presented four performances in February and March 1996. Maestro Davies also presided at nine sold-out performances of A View from the Bridge in October and November 1999 in Chicago, as well as at The Metropolitan Opera in December 2002. He is married to mezzo-soprano Joan Morris.
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Regina Carter: "Praia Dos Carnieiros"

Born in Detroit, Regina Carter grew up listening to Motown, but also studied classical violin. Carter found artistic freedom in jazz by exploring the melodic and percussive possibilities of the violin. She was diligent in her pursuit of musical excellence, and Carter.s creative genius in composition and improvisation soon became a formidable combination on the jazz scene. Having appeared with greats like Wynton Marsalis and R&B diva Aretha Franklin, Carter continues to gain the respect of critics and fans alike for her musical diversity. Carter has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship Prize.
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Justine Chen: "Ancient Airs and Dances"

A native of Brooklyn, New York, composer/violinist Justine Chen has been the recipient of many prestigious awards and commissions. Organizations and performers who have commissioned, presented and performed her works include Premiere Commission, Inc., The Juilliard School, New York City Opera, The New Juilliard Ensemble, New York Choreographic Institute, the Washington Ballet, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the FLUX Quartet, the Elements Quartet, the Vinca Quartet, the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Concertante, The Arial Wind Ensemble, the Chamber Dance Project, and the Broyhill Ensemble. She received her violin and composition training at The Juilliard School, and her ballet training at the School of American Ballet.
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John Corigliano: "Circa 1909"

John Corigliano is one of the finest and most widely recognized American composers. Among the dozens of citations, doctorates, and other honors he has received are included all of the most important music awards - several Grammy's, a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 2 (2001), a Grawemeyer for his Symphony No. 1 (1991), and an Academy Award for his score to Francois Girard's 1997 film "The Red Violin." Corigliano's work has been performed by some of the most visible orchestras, soloists and chamber musicians in the world, and recorded on the Sony, RCA, BMG, Telarc, Erato, Ondine, New World, and CRI labels.
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Sebastian Currier: "REM" and "Departures and Arrivals" currier

The music of composer Sebastian Currier has been performed worldwide in major cities such as Paris, Rome, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, London and Toronto. In the United States, his works have been performed in Carnegie Hall in New York, Symphony Hall in Boston, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. Sebastian Currier received the 2007 Grawemeyer Award, the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and several awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, His works have been performed by such orchestras as the National Symphony, Gewandhaus Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony. Sebastian Currier holds a DMA from the Juilliard School.
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Curtis Curtis-Smith: "Ghost" and "Passacaglia" Etudes

An internationally recognized composer, he is the recipient of over 100 grants, awards, and commissions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Koussevitzky Prize at Tanglewood, the Prix du Salabert, and grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, and most recently commissions from the Barlow Endowment and the Harvard University Fromm Foundation.
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David Del Tredici: "Innocence"; "Three Gymnopedies"*; "Ballad in Lavender""

Generally recognized as the father of the Neo-Romantic movement in music, David Del Tredici has received numerous awards (including the Pulitzer Prize) and has been commissioned and performed by nearly every major American and European orchestral ensemble. "Del Tredici," said Aaron Copland, "is that rare find among composers - a creator with a truly original gift."" In May 2005 Robert Spano conducted the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus in the premiere and subsequent recording of Paul Revere's Ride, recently nominated for the 49th Annual Grammy Awards as the Best New Classical Composition of 2006. Among past recordings were two best-sellers - Final Alice and In Memory of a Summer Day (Part I of Child Alice); the latter work won Del Tredici the Pulitzer Prize in 1980.
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Paul Festa: "The Apparition of the Eternal Church"**

Paul Festa is a writer, film director, and musician. He studied violin at The Juilliard School and literature at Yale. Paul Festa still claims that he is a die-hard agnostic, but when he first Messiaen's Apparition he was driven to extreme heights of spiritual and erotic ecstasy and he immediately decided that he had to share Messiaen's piece with others and document their reaction to the music. He acquired a video camera, grabbed a pair of headphones and cornered every fascinating individual he could find - playwrights, poets, Wigstock drag queens, Scissor Sisters, professional models, documentary filmmakers, pianists, performance artists, and everyone from Harold Bloom to Lemony Snickett to John Cameron Mitchell - and forced them all to listen to Messiaen's 10-minute piece straight through, asking that they describe its effect on them as the video tape rolled. The result is a surprising, exhilarating and often hilarious collective interpretation that Karl Bartos (the founder of Kraftwerk) aptly called "one of the best movies about music I have ever seen." Upon hearing Apparition all of them are deeply affected and they vividly express their churning emotions with eloquent, witty, and candid personal disclosures. The music and its interpreters conjure something like what William Blake famously called "the marriage of heaven and hell."
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Philip Glass: "A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close" and Suite from "Dracula" glass

Philip Glass is one of the most important and influential artists of our time. He has composed for dance, film, opera, orchestra, and theater. His 1976 operatic collaboration with Robert Wilson, Einstein on the Beach, is considered a landmark in 20th century music theater. He has worked with many prominent artists, including David Bowie, Alan Ginsburg, Erroll Morris, Martin Scorsese, Ravi Shankar, Paul Simon, and Twyla Tharp. Born on January 31,1937, Mr. Glass graduated from the University of Chicago at age 19 with degrees in mathematics and philosophy and then studied at The Juilliard School with Vincent Persichetti and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. While in Paris, he was hired by a filmmaker to transcribe the music of Ravi Shankar. He absorbed the techniques of Indian music and, after researching music in North Africa, India, and the Himalayas, began applying Eastern techniques to his own work. This eventually led to a musical breakthrough using a style that came to be called Minimalism. Glass's works have evolved, however, in both musical complexity and length in a way that can hardly now be called just "minimal". While certain principles remain constant, Mr. Glass utilizes greater rhythmic and thematic variations to evoke even deeper fields of sound and emotion.
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Daron Hagen "Snapshot: Gwen and Earl's Wedding Day, December 20th, 1951"

The composer of four major operas, as well as numerous orchestral, chamber, choral, and lyric compositions that have received numerous performances worldwide, Daron Hagen's catalogue continues to grow dramatically as prominent orchestras and musicians, including the New York Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Gary Graffman, and the Kings Singers, continue to commission and record new works. Along with his service as President of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation in New York City, Mr. Hagen is a Lifetime Member of the Corporation of Yaddo. Awards and fellowships include two Rockefeller Fellowships, the Camargo Foundation Fellowship, Charles Ives scholarship, ASCAP-Nissim Prize, Barlow Prize, Bearns Prize, and the Kennedy Center Friedheim Prize. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music.
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Wendell Harrington: "Snapshots" (film)

Designer Wendall K. Harrington has won the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and American Theatre Wing award for The Who's Tommy. Broadway credits include In My Life, The Good Body, Vincent in Brixton, Amy's View, The Capeman, Ragtime, Freak, Company, The Will Rogers Follies, The Heidi Chronicles, My One and Only, They're Playing Our Song. Opera and ballet credits include Turn of the Screw, Nixon in China, A View From the Bridge, The Photographer, The Magic Flute, Anna Karenina, Othello, Ballet Mecanique. She has also worked with Simon & Garfunkel, John Fogerty, Chris Rock, and the Talking Heads.
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Zhou Long: "Gazers"

Zhou Long is a Chinese-born American composer of orchestral, chamber and vocal works that have been performed throughout the world. Mr. Zhou studied piano as a child, but the Cultural Revolution interrupted his musical progress in 1966. He later studied composition with Wu Zu-qiang at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing from 1977-83. He then studied composition with Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky at Columbia University and there earned his DMA in 1993. His honors include First prizes in the Ensemblia in Mönchengladbach (1990, for Ding [Samadhi]), d'Avray (France, 1991, for Dhyana), Barlow (1994, for Tian Ling), and Masterprize (1998, for Two Poems from Tang) competitions, as well as many earlier prizes in national competitions in China. Most recently, he received the Adventurous Programming Award from ASCAP (1999, for Music from China), a Grammy Award (1999, for the Teldec CD of his Words of the Sun and works by other composers) and the Academy Award in Music for lifetime achievement from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2003). He has lived in the USA since 1985 and is married to the composer Chen Yi.
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Paul Moravec: "Vince and Jan: 1945"

Paul Moravec is the composer of over seventy orchestral, chamber, choral, and lyric compositions as well as several film scores and electro-acoustic pieces. His music has earned numerous distinctions, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, a Fellowship in Music Composition from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters as well as many commissions. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University, he has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Hunter College and currently heads the Music Department at Adelphi University.
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John Patitucci: "Joan Patitucci"

Born in 1959 in Brooklyn, New York, John Patitucci began playing the electric bass at age ten. He quickly moved from playing soul and rock to blues, jazz and classical music. John began composing and performing at age 12. At age 15, he began to play the acoustic bass and at age 16 began the piano. His eclectic tastes caused him to explore all types of music as a player and a composer. Since 1985, his association with Chick Corea has brought him worldwide acclaim and put him at the forefront of the jazz world. His many recordings with Chick Corea's Elektric Band and Akoustic Band, and his six solo recordings for GRP Records have brought him two Grammy awards (one for playing and one for composing) and eight Grammy nominations. In addition, his first solo recording, JOHN PATITUCCI, went to number one on the Billboard Jazz charts.
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Lenny Pickett: "String"

Lenny Pickett came to the forefront on the 1973 breakout album, Tower of Power. His solos are simply as good as they get. He worked with Tower for about a decade and returned to do a series of solos on the 1993 CD, TOP. Pickett's studio work can be found on a plethora of CD's. Currently, he leads the Saturday Night Live Band.

Peter Quanz: "A Waltzer in the House" ( ballet )

Born in Canada, Peter Quanz' choreographic talent was nurtured by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School. Following his graduation, the Stuttgart Ballet engaged him with a focus on his choreographic development. In March 2005 the Chemnitz Ballet in Germany premiered his first full evening work, Charlies Kreuzfahrt (Charlie's Cruise). In 2005, Mr. Quanz created a new ballet, "Kaleidoscope", for American Ballet Theatre and, in 2007, the new ballet "Suspended Aria" for the Mariinsky Theatre, premiered by Valery Gergiev as part of the White Nights Festival. He has also choreographed for the Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, as well as young choreographers' evenings with the Stuttgart Ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.
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Wolfgang Rihm: "Brahmsliebewaltzer" rihm

Wolfgang Rihm is one of themost important composers of his generation and the best-known representative of the neoexpresionist German musical movement called "New Simplicity". Born in 1952 in Karlsruhe, he was composing by age eleven; his early teachers included Eugen Werner Velte, Wolfgang Fortner, and Humphrey Searle. He attended the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1970 and studied with Stockhausen, Klaus Huber, and Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht. He won the City of Stuttgart Prize in 1974 and the City of Mannheim Prize in 1975. His influences include Webern, Feldman and Stockhausen as well as Helmut Lachenmann and Luigi Nono. Notable works include the operas Oedipus (1987), with texts by Rihm after Sophocles, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Müller; Die Eroberung von Mexico (1991), after Antonin Artaud; and the violin concerto Gesungene Zeit, recorded by Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under James Levine. Rihm has served as composer in residence at the Luzerne, Salzburg and Strasbourg Festivals.
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Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez: "Waves"

Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez was born in Mexico City in 1964 and now lives in the New York Tundra, where he teaches composition at the Eastman School of Music. He studied with Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Steven Mackey and Henri Dutilleux at Yale, Princeton and Tanglewood, respectively. He has received many awards in the field (e.g. Guggenheim, Fulbright, Koussevitzky, Fromm, American Academy of Arts and Letters.) He likes machines with hiccups and spiders with missing legs, looks at Paul Klee's Notebooks everyday, hasn't grown much since he reached adulthood at age 14, and tries to use the same set of ears to listen to Bach, Radiohead, Ligeti or Deep Purple.
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Paul Schoenfield: "Cowbird"

Paul Schoenfield, a native of Detroit, was born in 1947. He began studying piano at age six and wrote his first composition the following year. He eventually studied piano with Julius Chajes, Ozan Marsh, and Rudolf Serkin. He holds a degree from Carnegie-Mellon University, as well as a Doctor of Music Arts degree from the University of Arizona. Mr. Schoenfield has received commissions and grants from the NEA, Chamber Music America, the Rockefeller Fund, American Composers Forum, and many other organizations. His compositions can be heard on the Angel, Decca, Innova, Vanguard, EMI, Koch, BMG, and the New World labels.

Jonathan Sheffer: "25.VI.95"

Jonathan Sheffer, founder of the Eos Orchestra, is a prolific composer of music for theater and film. Mistake). His opera, Blood on the Dining Room Floor, with text by Gertrude Stein, received the Richard Rogers Production Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Mr. Sheffer has also conducted the recording of scores for several Hollywood films, including Batman Forever, Interview With the Vampire, A Time To Kill, Heat, Batman and Robin, and Sphere. He most recently conducted the recording of the score for the Julie Taymor film, Titus. His orchestral compositions include a ballet (which he also conducted) (October 1993); a Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Orchestra, which premiered in Stockholm in November 1996, with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; and Six Piano Pieces, written in 1996. His orchestration of Francis Poulenc's Appolinaire Songs was performed at the Poulenc Centenary Celebration at the 92nd Street Y in October 1999. A native New Yorker, Mr. Sheffer graduated from Harvard University where he studied with Leonard Bernstein and Leon Kirchner. He also attended the Juilliard School and the Aspen School of Music.
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Hollis Taylor: "Corfu '72"

Hollis Taylor is a unique figure in music. Once the youngest member of the Oregon Symphony (in the violin section at age 18) and concertmaster/soloist at Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC., she went on to win the Oregon State Fiddle Championship. Since then, she has continued to defy categorization. Her playing is featured in the films, "My Own Private Idaho" and "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." Her CD "Twisted Fiddle" received international acclaim. As a composer, Taylor also blurs the lines of classical, jazz, and folk. European folk music in compound meter inspired Unsquare Dances, composed in Budapest, Hungary in 1995. Two works make up the CD Frames and Boxes: Trail Mix for Five Scordatura Violins and Box Set for Solo Violin, a re-take of the J. S. Bach Solo Violin Partita in B minor reflecting Afro-Cuban, bebop, blues, and funk sensibilities.
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Gregg Wramage: "Seven Solitudes"

Gregg Wramage was born in Belmar, New Jersey on June 13, 1970. He received his B.M. and M.M. from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied on scholarship with Richard Danielpour. In addition to being selected as a finalist in the ASCAP Young Composer Awards on three separate occasions, Mr. Wramage has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and scholarships from the Bowdoin, Brevard, Aspen, and Norfolk music festivals and the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. In 1998, he was awarded the New Music for Young Ensemble's Josef Alexander Award for his wind quintet, Brilliant Mirrors, which was premiered by Pentasonic Winds in December of 2000 and sponsored in part by a Meet the Composer Fund Grant. Mr. Wramage's orchestral work Deep Midnight was selected by David Zinman for the Aspen Music Festival Jacob Druckman Composition Prize (2000).
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Charles Wuorinen: "Heart Shadow"

Charles Wuorinen (b. 1938, New York) is one of the world's leading composers. His many honors include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize (the youngest composer to receive the award). His compositions encompass every form and medium, including works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, soloists, ballet, and stage. His newest works include his Fourth Piano Concerto for Peter Serkin and James Levine, commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Heart Shadow for Bruce Levingston, and Ashberyana, chamber settings of poems by John Ashbery. His opera, Haroun And The Sea Of Stories, based on the novel of Salman Rushdie, was premiered by the New York City Opera in Fall 2004. Wuorinen has been described as a "maximalist," writing music luxuriant with events, lyrical and expressive, strikingly dramatic. His works are characterized by powerful harmonies and elegant craftsmanship, offering at once a link to the music of the past and a vision of a rich musical future. Both as composer and performer (conductor and pianist) Wuorinen has worked with some of the finest performers of the current time and his works reflect the great virtuosity of his collaborators. Wuorinen is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Chen Yi: "Burning"

As the recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2001-2004), Chen Yi* has been the Lorena Searcey Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor in Music Composition at the Conservatory of the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1998. Born on April 4, 1953, in Guangzhou, China, into a family of doctors with a strong interest in classical music, Chen Yi started studying violin and piano when she was only three, with Zheng Rihua and Li Suxin, and music theory with Zheng Zhong. Ms. Chen has received music degrees from the Beijing Central Conservatory (BA & MA) and Columbia University in the City of New York (DMA). Chen Yi became the first woman to receive a master's degree in composition in China in June 1986, when she gave a whole evening concert of her orchestral works in Beijing. Honors include a Grammy Award, the Lili Boulanger Award, the Sorel Medal (New York University), the 2001 ASCAP Concert Music Award, and the 2002 Elise Stoeger Award from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. A composer and ambassador for the arts who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries, she writes music that reaches a wide range of audiences and inspires people with different cultural backgrounds throughout the world.
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*co-commissioned with Concert Artists Guild

** co-presented with Rooftop Films and St. Bartholomew's Church

PHOTOS: William Bolcom: Katryn Conlin; Currier: Leah Reid; Wuorinen: Nina Roberts; Rihm: Schott-Archiv / Peter Andersen