New Music USA Announces 2023/24 Amplifying Voices Program

Fostering racial and gender equity in new orchestral music, the program will continue to present various orchestral premieres performed by acclaimed ensembles

Created in 2020 to increase support and promotion of under-represented composers and create opportunities for their works to be programmed worldwide, New Music USA’s Amplifying Voices program facilitates co-commissions and showcases existing repertoire by BIPOC and female composers.

The program has since involved over 45 orchestras, nationally and abroad, and will present 10 premieres across the U.S. over Spring 2023, and more in 2024. By the current season, Amplifying Voices will have hosted 13 orchestral premieres in London and the U.S.

The program’s 11 participating composers are Clarice Assad, Katherine Balch, Valerie Coleman, Juan Pablo Contreras, Vijay Iyer, Tania León, Jessie Montgomery, Brian Raphael Nabors, Nina Shekhar, Tyshawn Sorey, and Shelley Washington. 

Amplifying Voices’ upcoming concerts include Nabors’ Upon Daybreak with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on April 27-29, 2023, and Contreras’ MeChicano with the California Symphony on September 30-October 1, 2023. 

“This groundbreaking work will help to lay the foundation for barriers to be broken and [for] the eradication of stigmas that have plagued our field for many years,” said Nabors. “To be part of that change is an affirmation of everything I’ve worked for and continue to work for.”

For the 2023/24 season, works by Assad, Balch, Coleman, and Montgomery will be performed by a minimum of four orchestras over the course of three years. Their upcoming performances will be held across January, March, May, and June 2024, respectively.

Participating ensembles include the American Composers Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony, and Louisville Orchestra, and Richmond Symphony, among many others. Featured artists include cellist Inbal Segev and saxophonist Timothy McAllister.

For more about each composer and the list of partner orchestras, click here.

As part of its mission, Amplifying Voices contributes to the diversifying of orchestral repertoire, which from 2015 to 2022, featured an overall increase in music by women composers and composers of color from 4.5% to 22.5% — according to the Institute for Composer Diversity’s 2022 Orchestra Repertoire Report.

Supported by The Sphinx Organization and other foundations, Amplifying Voices works to create racial and gender equity in the music industry, and is the next step in New Music USA’s 20 years of support for the orchestral sector in the U.S.  

Over the last 10 years, New Music USA has offered support to innovative artists and organizations creating impact in the music sector. In 2020, the organization was awarded the “Gold Baton” from The League of American Orchestras, its highest honor, for outstanding work in the industry.