From LC:
The Library of Congress Music Division and Q2 Music, the online stream of contemporary classical music presented by New York-based public broadcaster WQXR Radio, today announced a collaboration that will make more than 20 pieces of contemporary classical music commissioned by the Library available to listeners free of charge via general rotation on Q2 Music’s continuously available stream of new music and on-demand at the website www.q2music.org.
Works available will be listed on the site May 1.
The Library of Congress has solely or jointly commissioned scores of works in the contemporary classical-music canon since the 1920s. Among the pieces to be listed on Q2 Music are works by composers John Adams, Caleb Burhans, Sebastian Currier, Chaya Czernowin, Mario Davidovsky, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jefferson Friedman, Stephen Hartke, Michael Hersch, George Lewis, Chiel Meijering, Harold Meltzer, Nico Muhly, Marc Neikrug, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Kaija Saariaho, Lalo Schifrin, Simon Shaheen and Ezequiel Viñao and George Walker. In addition, four pieces premiered at the Library will also be made available—by David Bruce, Irving Fine, George Walker and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky.
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The Library’s commissioning of new music grew out of its relationship with Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (1864-1953), a donor and aficionado of chamber music who provided the funding for the Library’s acoustically famous Coolidge Auditorium and also provided funding for works by world-famous composers that premiered there. In 1925 she established the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation at the Library for the promotion of chamber music through commissions, public concerts and festivals.
The Coolidge fund still provides for new commissions. The Library has also been graced by the establishment of several funds for the creation or promotion of music, including the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation, the McKim Fund, the Dina Koston and Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music, the Kindler Foundation Trust Fund, the Anne Adlum Hull and William Remsen Strickland Fund and others.
More works commissioned by the Library of Congress are to be added to the Q2 Music live streaming library and on-demand playlists in coming months.
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