The program will identify emerging American orchestral composers, provide composers with professional-level working experience with orchestras from every region of the country, and increase awareness of these composers and access to their music throughout the industry.

A key priority of EarShot is to build partnerships with orchestras around the country to establish and promote a national network of New Music Readings that will introduce audiences to and provide professional advancement for American composers and their work. Other EarShot projects will include workshops, residency design, commissioning consortia, consulting, and related composer development programs.

EarShot is coordinated by American Composers Orchestra in collaboration with the American Music Center, American Composers Forum, Meet The Composer, and the League of American Orchestras. It brings together the artistic, administrative, marketing, and production resources and experience of the nation’s leading organizations devoted to the support of new American orchestral music.

In collaboration with partner orchestras around the country, EarShot will help plan, announce, and coordinate readings; handle the processing and adjudication of submissions; and make available mentorcomposers, conductors, supplementary workshops and technical assistance. EarShot will provide production subsidies directly to participating orchestras to help cover direct production expenses. The New Music Readings planned around the country will be built on the highly successful models ACO’s annual Underwood New Music Readings, the Minnesota Orchestra’s Composer Institute and others.

“Promoting the music of the time in which we live is among the worthiest endeavors, and EarShot brings together the organizations which do this every day, brings them together in the service of helping EarShot – National Orchestral Composition Discovery Network Announced orchestras keep the repertory vital and alive,” added Joanne Hubbard Cossa, Chief Executive Officer of the American Music Center.

“Orchestras around the country are clearly ‘getting it’,” says ACO Executive Director Michael Geller. “Never before has there been so much interest in living, breathing, working American composers. But we’ve found there’s a lot of ‘reinventing the wheel’ going on. In bringing together EarShot we’re hoping to share knowledge and experience, facilitate communications, and remove the hurdles that orchestras face when undertaking programs with contemporary composers,” Geller said.

Jesse Rosen, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of the League of American Orchestras added, ‘The League is pleased to be a partner in this coordinated effort that leverages the work of multiple organizations on behalf of emerging American composers.”

“The American Composers Forum is delighted to be part of this national network, and we look forward to ever more exciting discoveries of great new work from today’s talented composers,” said John Nuechterlein, President and CEO, of American Composers Forum.

“EarShot offers a new and innovative approach to forging energetic new connections and nurturing key partnerships for the benefit of composers, orchestras, and audiences alike,” said Ed Harsh, President of Meet The Composer.

EarShot is working with orchestras around the country (including Baltimore Symphony, Denver Young Artists, Memphis Symphony, New York Youth Symphony, and South Dakota Symphony), providing consulting, production, and administrative support for these organizations to undertake their own readings, residencies, and related composer-development programs in their communities. Additional activities with multiple orchestras are now under discussion.

EarShot is a project of the New Strategies Lab, a program of EmcArts, made possible with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support has come from the New York State Council on the Arts. -- www.americancomposers.org