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American Modern Ensemble Interview
Posted on Tuesday, October 10, 2006. © Copyright 2004-2008 David Bruce
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C:T talks to Robert Paterson, composer and Artistic Director of American Modern Ensemble
Tell us something about your background.
I am a composer, percussionist and more and more these days, a conductor, although I would say that I am more a composer who conducts rather than a full-fledged conductor. Victoria, my wife and Managing Director, is a professional violinist.
Tell us about American Modern Ensemble, how it was formed, it's raison d'etre.
Over the last few years we've noticed that there are a lot of great ensembles that play new music, but not a lot that focus exclusively on American music, and even fewer that offer a wide variety of styles. We formed AME with this goal in mind: to program the widest possible repertoire by American composers, especially works written by living composers. Each season, we choose one American composer to feature on a program devoted to his or her music. AME is also dedicated to education and outreach programs that expose communities to American music, and particularly to new music written by living composers.
We also have personal reasons for forming this ensemble. We both love playing new music, and since Victoria mostly performs in orchestras and on Broadway and I am a full-time composer, we have few outlets for performing new music. AME gives us an opportunity to play music we love and keeps us sane!
Does the group focus on playing specific types of music?
We only program American music and mostly new or "modern" music, primarily from the U.S. and occasionally from Canada, but in the future we also plan on including music by composers from Central and South America. We try to include all styles, and we have programmed or will program works that are Neo-romantic, Neo-classical, Minimalist, 12-tone, Uptown, Downtown, part of the "New Complexity" genre and everything in between.
How do you go about programming your concerts?
Every program we present has a theme. So many groups present concerts consisting of random works, and we want to get away from that by providing a focus for each concert. We fee that programming is an art, and everything from instrumentation, length, style, when the work was written, titles and extra-musical meanings influence our programming.
Right now, we're primarily playing works that use subsets of the entire ensemble—solos through sextets. As our audience grows and we secure more funding, we will program larger works. Our ensemble consists of a Sinfonietta-sized, core membership of fifteen players, with a few instruments doubled or tripled (we currently have three pianists in the group).
How do you respond to unsolicited work- do you give feedback? Do you ever commission new work yourself?
AME accepts unsolicited submissions on an ongoing basis (see our website for details). We do not give feedback unless we are interested in a work and might be able to find a spot for it on a future program. If a composer is very young or just starting out, we might offer a few constructive comments, but we generally avoid giving feedback unless specifically asked for.
We feel strongly that one of the main responsibilities of any chamber group is to play music of our time, especially by living composers, and hopefully through commissioning new works. We will eventually begin commissioning at least one new work each year, and hopefully more, but in order to do it properly, we need funding, which we hope to acquire by the next season.
Interview by David Bruce © Copyright 2004-2008
 Comments by other Members
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