“There are three facets to the mentoring – artistic, practical, and career development,” says composer Steven Mackey, director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra Edward T. Cone Composition Institute. “If you’re writing for your friends, it’s one thing. When you’re dealing with an orchestra, it really becomes a big business. Orchestral rehearsal time costs so much. Gaining the trust of an orchestra to get your music played is already a huge endeavor. It requires a lot of people to put their faith in you.”

For four composers at the beginning of their careers, the institute is an invaluable experience – six days of intensive evaluations and consultations, culminating in a live performance of their music by a major symphony orchestra under a world-class conductor. The program, now in its third year, brings together the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and the Princeton University Department of Music to promote new music and emerging composers.

This year’s participants include James Anderson, Matthew Browne, William Stackpole and Jung Yoon Wie. An NJSO concert made up of each composer’s music will take place on Saturday at 8 p.m. at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium.

The orchestra will be under the baton of David Robertson, who in the fall will begin his 12th season as music director of the St. Louis Symphony. Robertson is also chief conductor and artistic director of Australia’s Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Mackey’s “Turn the Key,” written in 2006 for the New World Symphony on the occasion of the opening of the Miami Performing Arts Center, will conclude the Saturday concert.

Also on the program will be Anderson’s “Places with Pillars,” a metaphorical reflection on the search for meaning in our lives; Browne’s “Farthest South,” a tone poem inspired by the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration; Stackpole’s “… Ask Questions Later,” a meditation on gun violence and the permanence of consequences; and Wie’s “Water Prism,” inspired by the phenomenon of light passing through a prism to create a rainbow.

You can read more about the institute – and tomorrow night’s concert – in my article in today’s Trenton Times.

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/07/classical_music_njso_performin.html

Participants in this year’s NJSO Edward T. Cone Composition Institute: Jung Yoon Wie (top); left to right, James Anderson, William Stackpole and Matthew Browne