Interrupted: Classical Movements’ New Music Commissions

13 World Premieres across the Globe Postponed Due to COVID-19

Through the Eric Daniel Helms New Music Program, Classical Movements had planned a remarkable season of new music – with 13 new works now postponed due to COVID-19, of 14 originally planned for the year. Our 2020 season of new music included composers from all over the world, including six women, and would have featured premieres in cities including Seoul, South Korea; Tokyo, Japan; Prague, the Czech Republic; Hanoi, Vietnam; Cap-Haitien, Haiti and all across the United States, including Alexandria, VA and five powerful new works in Washington, D.C. as part of Classical Movements’ 2020 Serenade! Choral Festival, honoring the women whose bravery and perseverance finally secured the vote.

With tours and concert seasons cancelled and the date when live performances can resume still uncertain, we’re celebrating the pieces we’re disappointed will also have to wait – works for orchestras, choruses and chamber ensembles that were not only written for our clients to take on tour, but also for one of our hometown orchestras to perform with its own El Sistema-inspired education program or for an admirable initiative bringing high-level training to young musicians in Haiti, as well as for our own choral, opera and orchestra festivals.

Portraits of Pioneers, Progress and Purpose

With the cancellation of 10th annual Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival, we have had to delay our plans to celebrate “World Voices for Women: Pioneers, Progress, Purpose” in honor of the centennial of the ratification of the 19^th Amendment.

Classical Movements commissioned 5 brand-new choral works celebrating the legacy of five key suffragists, important figures whose roles in the movement have often been overlooked:

• E. Boykin - Stand Up, in Honor of Mary Church Terrell

Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) was an educator, advocate for civil rights and the founding president of the National Association of Colored Women. Terrell began campaigning for suffrage during her undergraduate studies at Oberlin and continued to be active in the National Association Woman Suffrage Association, where she befriended Susan B. Anthony. Throughout the years leading up to the ratification of the 19^th Amendment, Terrell pushed for the involvement of black women in suffrage advocacy. In the years after, Terrell continued to draw public attention to injustices, particularly those faced by black Americans.

“What a reproach it is to a government which owes its very existence to the love of freedom in the human heart that it should deprive any of its citizens of their sacred and cherished rights.”

• Arianne Abela - Now We Can Begin, in Honor of Crystal Eastman

Crystal Eastman (1881-1928) was a lawyer, founder of the ACLU and an active supporter of a range of progressive social causes, including workers’ rights and women’s suffrage. She was a founding member with Alice Paul and others of what would eventually become the National Woman’s Party. Even after the passage of the 19^th Amendment, she continued to advocate for women’s rights, drafting with Paul the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment.

“What is the problem of women's freedom? It seems to me to be this: how to arrange the world so that women can be human beings, with a chance to exercise their infinitely varied gifts in infinitely varied ways…”

• Melissa Dunphy - Mabel Lee, 1912, in Honor of Mabel Ping-Hua Lee

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee (1896-1966) was an activist, writer and religious leader, particularly known for mobilizing support for women’s suffrage among New York’s Chinese immigrant community. Lee was outspoken in her support for women’s rights throughout her undergraduate and graduate career; Lee became the first woman to receive a PhD from Columbia University and soon after assumed leadership of the Baptist mission in Chinatown, to which she dedicated herself for the rest of her life.

“…the feministic movement is not one for privileges to women, but one for the requirement of women to be worthy citizens and contribute their share to the steady progress of our country toward prosperity and national greatness.” 

• Adolphus Hailstork - Greatness of Nations, in honor of Mary Burnett Talbert

Mary Burnett Talbert (1866-1923) was a lecturer, educator and activist, involved in a range of causes and particularly committed to voting rights – for both women and African-Americans. Talbert earned a university degree at a time when that wags still exceptionally rare for black women and dedicated her considerable talents as a writer and speaker to lecturing persuasively in support of social causes, including suffrage. She served as president of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs and was involved in the short-lived, but influential Niagara Movement.

“It should not be necessary to struggle forever against popular prejudice, and with us as colored women, this struggle becomes two-fold, first, because we are women and second, because we are colored women.”

• Evelyn Simpson-Curenton - Ode to Ida B. Wells

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) was a groundbreaking journalist, whose investigative reporting exposed some of the most egregious injustices faced by African-Americans. Wells’s campaigning for women’s suffrage was deeply tied to her continued efforts towards the rights of African-Americans; Wells founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in 1913 and was fiercely critical of racism within the broader suffrage movement.

“I am not taking this stand because I personally wish for recognition. I am doing it for the future benefit of my whole race.”

Other 2020 premieres that have been postponed:

As part of Classical Movements support of the 2019 Chorus America Commission Consortium, shared by 28 youth, treble and mixed choruses across the country:

• Norwegian Ola Gjeilo – “Roots” (Premiered in virtual performance)
• America J. Reese Norris – “This Is Who I am”

For the William & Mary Choir and Botetourt Chamber Singers, Jamie Armstrong, conductor: 

• South Korean Hyowon Woo - Jubilate Deo
• Japanese Teruaki Suzuki - Two Postcards

For the Haitian Orchestra Institute, Thierry Fischer, conductor:

• Haitian Sydney Guillaume – Lavil Okap in honor of the 250th birthday of Beethoven
• The Haitian Orchestra Institute is a program started by musicians of the Utah Symphony Orchestra and BLUME Haiti, which Classical Movements has supported since 2018. HOI provides instrumental and orchestral training for students in Haiti, including opportunities to train with members of the Utah Symphony and other prestigious ensembles and to play under world-renowned Maestro Thierry Fischer

For the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra and ASO Sympatico, James Ross, conductor

• American Brian Prechtl – Tribute in honor of the 250^th birthday of Beethoven
• ASO Sympatico is the Alexandria’ Symphony’s El Sistema-inspired education program; as part of Classical Movements’ support of the ASO, we also sponsored Sympatico’s expansion to its second school in 2019

For the Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vänskä, conductor:

• Vietnamese Do Hong Quan - Ruoc Truong for orchestra and dan bau
• Vietnamese Tran Manh Hung - Khai Xuân M? H?i
• In honor of the 25^th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the USA and Vietnam

For the 2020 Prague Summer Nights: Young Arts Music Festival:

• Czech Sylvie Bodorová – Silymabum for string quartet

About the Eric Daniel Helms New Music Program

Since 2006, Classical Movements has commissioned 97 new works of music for orchestra, choir and chamber ensembles by 94 composers from 30 countries, two-thirds being women and/or composers of color. Composers commissioned by the New Music Program include well-established and emerging names, such as Kinan Azmeh, Therese Birkelund Ulvo, John Corigliano, Paquito D’Rivera, Reena Esmail, Libby Larsen, Mokale Koapeng, Jessie Montgomery, Tania León, Christopher Rouse, Caroline Shaw, Christopher Theofanidis and Joan Tower. Commissioned composers have won a combined total of 5 Grammys, 4 Pulitzers, an Oscar and a MacArthur Grant.

About Classical Movements

Classical Movements is an industry-leading international concert tour and project management company for orchestras and choruses. For more than 27 years, we have established a network across 145 countries on 6 continents and focus particularly on bringing world-class orchestras and choruses not only to the world’s great concert halls, but also to destinations often overlooked by touring ensembles, including the first tours to Russia, China, Cuba, South Africa, Vietnam and Croatia in the early 1990’s. Classical Movements organizes more than 60 tours every year, producing some 200 concerts every season.  Classical Movements was centrally involved in the Minnesota Orchestra’s historic tours to Cuba in 2015 and South Africa in 2018 and have taken on a number of other challenging, significant projects including bringing the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra to Washington, D.C. in 2003 and organizing the inaugural Cuban American Youth Orchestra in 2019.

Winner of Americans for the Arts’ BCA10: Best Businesses Partnering with the Arts Award and named one of Musical America’s 2017 Movers & Shapers, since its founding in 1992, as a truly global company Classical Movements remains committed to facilitating cultural diplomacy across the world through the medium of music.

Press Contacts

Adam Jackson
Artistic Planning and Executive Assistant to the President
1 (703) 683-6040, ext. 201
Adam@classicalmovements.com