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Established for the Eleventh Competition in 2001, the American
Composers Invitational seeks works by living American composers for
performance by a new generation of pianists.
Composers are nominated by a committee of industry professionals
and invited to send recent works for jury review. Up to five works
are selected and sent to competitors who are asked to choose one
for inclusion in their Semifinal Round recitals.
Mr. Bates' work, White Lies for Lomax, which was
selected by the greatest number of semifinalists, received the
grand prize of $5,000.
Composers whose works are performed will receive a cash award of
$2,500. Lowell Liebermann (2001) and Sebastian Currier (2005) were
the grand-prize winners of the first two Invitationals.
Thirteenth Competition (2009)
- Mason Bates, White Lies for Lomax
COMPOSER NOTES: It is still a surprise to discover how few
classical musicians are familiar with Alan Lomax, the
ethnomusicologist who ventured into the American south (and
elsewhere) to record the soul of a land. Those scratchy recordings
captured everyone from Muddy Waters to a whole slew of anonymous
blues musicians.
White Lies for Lomaxdreams up wisps of distant blues fragments,
more fiction than fact, since they are hardly honest recreations of
the blues - and lets them slowly accumulate to an assertive climax.
The seemingly recent phenomenon of sampling - grabbing a sound-bite
from a song and incorporating it into something new - is in fact a
high-tech version of the very old practice of allusion or parody,
and the inclusion of 'Dollar Maime' at the end is a nod to that
tradition.
- Derek Bermel, Turning
COMPOSER NOTES:Turningis a work in the form of theme and
variations that I originally wrote at the Tanglewood Music Center.
It is dedicated to French composer Henri Dutilleux for his 80th
birthday, and to pianist Christopher Taylor (1993 Cliburn
laureate), who gave the premiere at Studio Raspail in Paris. A
simple hymn is followed by a pentatonic echo, a mirror of the
musical duality - East vs. West-which I experienced when returning
from studying Lobi gyil (xylophone) music in Ghana.
In Nightmares and Chickens, the first variation, the hymn is
pecked out, culminating in a schizoid frenzy of pointillistic
clucking, and eventually evaporating into the top registers of the
piano. Kowií« at Dawn is a portrait of a small village in northwest
Ghana. The third variation, Passage, harmonizes the pentatonic
theme chromatically, and the hymn slowly reemerges, this time
tinged with a gospel slant. In Carnaval Noir, Latin music mixes
with the occasional ragtime twist. The carnival segues into the
coda, in which an inverted rendition of the hymn returns in the top
registers of the piano. The pentatonic echo returns as the work
spirals backwards into a hazy reflection of the opening song.
- Daron Hagen, Suite for Piano
COMPOSER NOTES: The first movement, Toccata, is a virtuosic
rondo whose first theme is a fugue subject I wrote as a student at
Juilliard during the early eighties and always wanted to have some
fun with, as well as a jazzy little riff based on an octatonic
scale. The second movement, Sarabande, is written in the spirit of
Leonard Bernstein'sAnniversariesand is a musical portrait of my
mother. Aria began as the very first sketch for my operaAmelia; in
the story a little girl sings this music as an apostrophe (ode) to
the stars. The final Medley takes a fragment of the traditional
Irish ballad The Croppy Boy and subjects it to some brutal
compositional chiaroscuro as it is intercut with ideas from the
previous movements. I am a pianist, so I set myself specific
challenges for each movement: the first highlights touch and
velocity, the second voicing, the third a long singing line and
pedaling, and the last dramatic shifts in color, tempo, and
dynamics.
- John Musto, Improvisation & Fugue
TheImprovisationis a rumination on the blues. Most of the
musical material in this movement is generated by the first eight
bars. It is cast in four progressively faster sections, finally
returning to the theme. TheFuguesubject is a fusion on several
elements of the improvisation, ending in a brief recollection of
the original blues motif.Improvisation and Fugueis dedicated to my
friend Mark Horowitz, who participated in the Van Cliburn
Foundation's third International Piano Competition for Outstanding
Amateurs in 2002.
Twelfth Competition (2005):
- Sebastian Currier, Scarlatti Cadences +
Brainstorm
- Jennifer Higdon, Secret & Glass
Gardens
- Daniel Kellogg, scarlet thread
- Jan Krzywicki, Nocturnals
- Ruth Schonthal, Sonata quasi
un'improvvisazione
Eleventh Competition (2001):
- C. Curtis-Smith, Four Etudes
- Lowell Liebermann, Three
Impromptus
- James Mobberley, Give 'em Hell!
- Judith Lang Zaimont, Impronta
Digitale
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