United States's blog

Three members of the American Music Center staff—CEO Joanne Hubbard Cossa, Membership and New Music Services Director Deborah Horne and Composer Advocate/NewMusicBox editor Frank J. Oteri—participated in the 2009 Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute in Minneapolis in November.

The American Music Center (AMC) has awarded Composer Assistance Program grants totaling $31,000 to 28 American composers based in 12 states and ranging in age from 24 to 78. AMC annually awards grants that assist composers by helping them realize their music in premiere performances.

The American Music Center, in celebration of its 70th anniversary this month, is holding its first-ever online auction. The auction is now open and will run through November 20, 2009.

It's now been a little over seven weeks since the American Music Center moved its offices to Suite 1401 of an attractive Art Deco building located at 322 Eighth Avenue. We're actually still on West 26th Street in Manhattan (New York City); we only moved two and half blocks west, not even half a mile. But still, it is quite a physical change for us.

Gunther Schuller, La Monte Young, Albany Records, and the New World Symphony were honored for their exceptional importance in contemporary American music at the American Music Center's Annual Membership Meeting and Awards Ceremony, which was held at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York City on May 4, 2009.

May 2009 is the tenth anniversary of the American Music Center's web magazine NewMusicBox (www.newmusicbox.org).

Steve Reich has been awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Double Sextet. The award, for distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the previous calendar year, comes with a cash prize of 10,000 US Dollars.

The American Music Center and American Composers Forum are pleased to present Taking Note: A Study of Composers and New Music Activity in the United States. Taking Note is the first major undertaking of its kind in decades, and was conducted by the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Teachers College, Columbia University.

American mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died on July 3 at home in Santa Fe. She was 52. Widely praised by critics and audiences, her superior musicianship and unassuming personality made her a much loved and respected colleague.

Composer Fang Man has won the American Composers Orchestra's 2006 Underwood Emerging Composers Commission.

In late May, fifty young composers were honored by the charitable foundation branches of American performing rights organizations ASCAP and BMI. Both organizations collective distributed approximately $60,000 in scholarships, grants, and cash awards which were divided among all of the winners.

Honorees of the American Music Center's annual awards are announced; professional development workshops are held in New York and Minneapolis; AMC publications available online; NewMusicBox marks its seventh anniversary.