The 2004 PMP awards range from $15,000 to $120,000 and total $593,150. Fifteen grant recipients were selected from twenty-nine applicants:
 

• Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia— $23,150  • Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia—$30,000  • Curtis Institute of Music—$15,000  • Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia—$30,000  • Montgomery County Community College— $25,000  • Network for New Music—$60,000  • Opera North—$25,000 (first-time recipient)  • Orchestra 2001—$30,000  • Painted Bride Art Center—$120,000  • Philadelphia Chamber Music Society—            $50,000  • Philadelphia Singers—$20,000  • Piffaro, The Renaissance Band—$30,000  • Prince Music Theater—$80,000  • Relâche—$30,000  • Sruti, The India Music and Dance Society—$25,000

All of these awards reflect the full funding amount requested by each organization to ensure that projects of the highest caliber realized at the scale envisioned by the grantee. Opera North is a first-time recipient of a PMP grant. 

Funded proposals will yield a total of 147 events, including the commissioning and performance of 36 new works, the world premiere of one additional work, and the regional premiere of 4 works; 58 residency and educational activities; and over 80 public performances encompassing 32 chamber music, 9 orchestral music, 6 choral music, 59 new music, 18 world/folk music, 20 jazz, 10 early music, and 17 musical theater, as well as 4 opera performances. Funded activities are expected to benefit 416 local artists and 489 guest artists and to reach nearly 35,000 live audience members in the five-county region and more than 315,000 regional radio audience members through broadcasts on Philadelphia’s WRTI and WHYY. National audiences will gain exposure to funded events through broadcasts on NPR. 

“In its fifteen-year history, PMP has funded a compelling range of music programming that has captured the imagination of Greater Philadelphia audiences,” according to. “The 2004 awards are notable for their focus on the creation of new repertoire,” Philadelphia Music Project director Matthew Levy. “2004 grantees will undertake an unprecedented 36 commissions and world premiere performances of compositions spanning classical, jazz, and world music.”

PMP grants are awarded on a competitive basis and are selected by a panel of artists, scholars, and administrators from around the country with expertise in various aspects of music as well as a broad knowledge of the field.  The Philadelphia Music Project is one of several regional initiatives of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Culture Program. 

Download more information on the Philadelphia Music Project 2004 grant recipients.

18-year-old Armenian wunderkind tosses off the Sibelius with a dazzling display of sheer virtuosity and delivers a much deeper, more sober reading of his fellow countryman's bouncy  masterpiece than we are accustomed to hearing.  Eye-opening performance and a performer to watch.

Re-issue of an inspired 1978 
performance of the symphony many consider Shostakovich's best by conductor Kurt Sanderling with the Orchestre national de France. Composed immediately following Stalin's death and premiered on 17 December 1953, this massive work seems to sum up the experience of the Soviet people under the dictator's tyranny,  especially in the terrifying Allegro which evokes a machine that grinds men down, before a more optimistic finale that the composer conceived in the spirit of Haydn.

Tony Banks, founder of the rock band Genesis, goes "classical"  with this seven-movement suite, each of them an orchestral sound picture using its title to set the mood.  The result is an extremely well-recorded bag of ambiant musical noodles that are less frivelous than they might have been and, in any event, less painful to the ears  than listening to Phil Collins sing.
 

During the German occupation of Denmark in World War II,  Herman D. Koppel, who was Jewish, and his family had to flee to Sweden, where they met a childhood friend of Koppel who had become a baroness. In her house Koppel could compose in peace and quiet. The Third Symphony is dedicated to her.  Despite his own safe surroundings, Koppel’s experience of the war, and of the execution of his Polish-Jewish family in German concentration camps, had a profound impact on his works from this period.  These are works of anguish that explore the depths of the composer's emotions--a final liberation from the bloodless influence of his teacher Carl Neilsen--and the birth of major, overlooked 20th century music figure.

One of many important large-scale fragments left uncompleted by Schoenberg at his death, the oratorio Jacob's Ladder was finished by Winfried Zillig, once a student, at the behest of Schoenberg's widow after his death.  Schoenberg wrote the libretto between 1915 and 1917 based on the book of Genesis, overlaid with elements from Strindberg's drama Jacob Wrestles, and Balzac's novel Seraphita. He wrote a large of chunk of the music shortly after but was called to the army and never got around to finishing it.  This is a brilliant, committed performance that captures a little-known masterpiece by one of the 20th century's greatest composers at the height of his creative powers.

When composing his music for Belisa, Poul Rovsing Olsen was deeply inspired by Spanish poet Federico García Lorca's drama and by the passionate and demanding character of Belisa herself. The opening scene of the opera is the wedding night of Belisa and Don Perlimplin, where the young bride takes 5 lovers in front of her decrepit groom that is sound asleep. The drama develops from stylized opera buffa into the ambiguous and surreal with an unexpected ending, and Poul Rovsing Olsen's music reflects Lorca’s drama like a sensuous kaleidoscope with French and Oriental overtones. 

Beth Anderson's unabashedly romantic "swales" are as pure as a Kentucky mountain spring,  frisky as a new-born colt rolling in bluegrass, and infectious as a third-grade measles outbreak.  They are light, without being lightweight, and conquer the ear by their deceptively easygoing charm.  If you like Paul Schoenfeld's brand of Americana, you'll like these pieces a lot.
 

No one has done more to champion guitar music by contemporary composers than the brilliant guitarist and co-founder of Bridge Records, David Starobin.  This CD includes solo and chamber works written between 1992 and 2000  by Gunther Schuller, Michael Starobin, Richard Wernick, Melinda Wagner, David Liptak, and Paul Lansky--all in premiere recordings. Volume Six also contains George Crumb's "Mundus Canis"--with the composer performing (and whispering and yelling) on percussion. To conclude the disc, Elliott Carter's fantastically inventive sextet, "Luimen" is performed by Speculum Musicae, New York City's virtuoso new music band.