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SONiC--Sounds of a New Century: A Festival of 21st Century Music by Composers Age 40 and Under

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LAUNCHES at Carnegie Hall on Friday, October 14, 2011 with American Composers Orchestra's Season Opening Concert featuring Five World Premieres

TWO FREE SONiC SMARTPHONE APPS NOW AVAILABLE: Thicket: SONiC (iPhone/iPad) & UrbanRemix (iPhone/Droid)

PLUS RE:SOUND—a partnership with WQXR's Q22 Music

New York, NY: SONiC—Sounds of a New Century—a festival of 21st century music by more than 100 composers age 40 and under, will take over New York from Friday, October 14 through Saturday, October 22, 2011. Events will range from a daylong marathon to an electronic music night, from a free symphony concert at the World Financial Center Winter Garden to collaborations between emerging choreographers and composers. SONiC concerts will take place at eleven different venues throughout New York. SONiC is a production of American Composers Orchestra (ACO) and The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, co-curated by composer Derek Bermel and pianist Stephen Gosling. SONiC is presented in partnership with Carnegie Hall and Miller Theatre at Columbia University. Q2 Music, the contemporary online music stream of WQXR, New York's premier classical radio station, is the media partner and digital venue.

SONiC includes music by more than 100 composers from five continents including premieres by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead and Bryce Dessner of The National (who will perform with Aaron Dessner and the American Composers Orchestra in a FREE concert on October 22 at the World Financial Center Winter Garden as part of WNYC's New Sounds Live, which Q2 Music will present as a live, international audio webcast), as well as composers from across the United States, and from Australia, Portugal, China, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Lithuania, Canada, the UK, Germany, Brazil, Poland, and Korea.

Ensembles performing include ACO, eighth blackbird, ICE, Alarm Will Sound, JACK Quartet, NOW Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, the Imani Winds, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, the Young People's Chorus of New York City, Argento Ensemble, Ensemble Klang (Netherlands), Camerata Aberta (Brazil), Either/Or, and many more. Venues where SONiC concerts take place include Carnegie Hall, Miller Theatre, Symphony Space, 92YTribeca, Joe's Pub, Roulette, Joyce SoHo, The Kitchen, Americas Society, The Stone, and the World Financial Center.

From October 10 through 16, Q2 Music will launch a multimedia companion festival devoted to exploring the radical and vibrant sound worlds of many of the featured SONiC composers. Through in-depth interviews with Q2 Music host Nadia Sirota, archival interviews and shows, and world-premiere audio webcasts of new commercial recordings and live concerts, Q2 Music will present a full sensory immersion into the sounds of these composers, age 40 and younger, who are charting the course of 21st century music.

SONiC aims to present a snapshot of the broad array of new music being composed today—from serialism to minimalism, world music aand jazz to indie rock, string quartet to electric guitar quartet. SONiC co-curator and composer Derek Bermel explains, “The festival is a window into the vast and diverse worlds that musicians are exploring today. There are no more aesthetic or stylistic barriers out there; SONiC is offering a whirlwind showcase for the boundless creativity of our contemporary composers."

American Composers Orchestra's Season Opening Concert Launches SONiC

SONiC opens on October 14 at 7:30pm with American Composers Orchestra's Orchestra Underground: 21st Firsts, presented by Carnegie Hall at Zankel Hall, with an all-world premiere program featuring music by five up-and-coming composers: Kenji Bunch, who premieres his own fiddle-inspired, dazzling concerto for amplified viola and orchestra; Montana native and winner of ACO's 2010 Underwood Emerging Composer Commission Christopher Stark, whose piece ...and start west is inspired by the laandscapes of his upbringing and takes its title from a line in William S. Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch; Alex Temple, whose music lies somewhere between Surrealism and Pop Art, contributes a piece for luminous soprano Mellissa Hughes with live electronics; Andreia Pinto-Correia, a rising young composer identified through ACO's national EarShot new music readings network whose music is deeply influenced by Arab-Andalusian poetic forms, has written Elegia a Al-Mu'tamid, an homage to the forgotten king-poet; and Wang Lu, whose multimedia work for video and orchestra tells the story of the ancient Chinese instrument, the Qin. The program will be led by ACO Music Director George Manahan.

Announcing SONiC: Interact—FREE Opportunities for the Public.

SONiC takes place not only on the stage, but reaches beyond the concert hall with three interactive elements that bring the public into the SONiC experience.

Thicket: SONiC is a FREE app for iPad and iPhone that allows users to create original, kaleidoscopic audio and art. The Thicket app is a mobile audiovisual world of texture, movement, line and tone that is part art piece and part toy. Thicket: SONiC is a special free version of this award-winning app created by Interval Studios. Thicket: SONiC will be on display at most events during the festival and will be featured at Electronic SONiC, a SONiC: AfterHours concert on October 21 at Roulette.

UrbanRemix is a FREE app for both iPhone and Droid systems, that allows anyone to record found sounds in their environment and submit them for archiving on the UrbanRemix site, available via an interactive map. The found sounds can be manipulated and mixed online at UrbanRemix.com. Sounds submitted through UrbanRemix will be showcased by the electronic duo exclusive/or in their original compositions performed during Electronic SONiC at Roulette. In addition, UrbanRemix is the focus of several in-school workshops as part of ACO's Music Factory education initiative. UrbanRemix is a project of the Music Technology and Digital Media programs of the Georgia Institute of Technology and is directed by Jason Freeman, Carl Disalvo, and Michael Nitsche.

Re:Sound asks audience members to make their voices heard by voting and commenting on which piece from each concert they would most like to hear again. Q2 Music will broadcast recordings of the pieces that receive the most votes during two special program dedicated to SONiC on October 19 and 26, 2011.

For updates, behind-the-scenes scoops, and dialog with several of the composers and ensembles, audiences can follow SONiC on Twitter, Facebook and can participate in the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #SONiCfest

See the complete SONiC schedule below and at SONiCfestival.org.

Ticket Information & SONiCpass Discount Offers

Tickets are available from the venues where SONiC concerts take place and range from FREE to $50. See the SONiC schedule below for ticket information for each concert.

SONiCpasses for the entire festival provide discounts of at least 20% on all ticket prices, reserved or preferred seating at the free events, and other free items and perks. SONiCpasses are $25 and are available at www.SONiCfestival.org or 212.977.8495.

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