“It’s really great that Subito offers its Composer Fellowship program.” Composer Loren Loiacono shares some thoughts about being chosen as this year’s Subito Composer Fellow. Loiacono was chosen from among seven composers who were chosen as part of the 2015 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. Curated by Kevin Puts, the institute culminated with Osmo Vanska leading the orchestra in its “Future Classics” concert which featured Loiacono’s orchestral work Stalks, Hounds.
Stephen Culbertson, Subito Music’s Founder and CEO, offers some insight into the program. “We created the Subito Composer Fellowship as a mentoring program so that composers could gain an in-depth understanding of the classical music publishing world. This isn’t generally part of the composition studies curriculum. We’re happy to provide Loren with the insights and tools to help her cultivate a practical knowledge of today’s publishing industry with on-site, hands-on training that relate the business of music to the art of creating music.”
Loiacono continues. “For me, the score-production session — in particular — was an incredibly fruitful experience. Throughout my compositional development, I’ve found that getting feedback on musical matters (both craft and aesthetics) is relatively abundant. When you walk into a composition lesson, the focus is on what the piece will eventually sound like. However, unless you’ve made a glaring error, feedback on how a score should look is a lot rarer. The art of score-making is still something that many composers are expected to just kind of ‘pick up’ along the way — engraving and formatting is quite often the most frustrating part of composing to begin with. To actually get a chance to sit down one-on-one with an engraver with Subito’s production manager David Murray and learn from his level of experience and professional expertise is incredibly rare. What was especially helpful was that beyond the discussion of what a score would look like, David was able to teach me ways to simplify my engraving process. Those tips alone will make the entire engraving process 300% more manageable for me as I continue to grow as a composer. The business side of the whole ‘being a composer’ thing, while definitely addressed in some festivals and institutes, is still pretty daunting. Programs like the Subito Fellowship are important to a composer’s development, and I’m honored that I could take part.”
A native of Stony Brook, NY, Loiacono’s music has been performed at Carnegie Hall’s Stern and Zankel Halls, the DiMenna Center, Orchestra Hall (Minnesota), the SONiC Festival, National Sawdust, and on WQXR and WSHU. In addition to the Minnesota Orchestra, her woks have been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, Eastern Con
necticut Symphony Orchestra, New York Youth Symphony, Forecast Music, 5th House Ensemble, and the Argento Ensemble. She has served as a composer fellow at the Tanglewood Music Festival; a young composer residency at the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival and the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival; participated in Copland House’s CULTIVATE program, and in the Sibelius Academy’s Creative Dialogues. Her awards include: multiple ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, the Aspen Music Festival’s Susan and Ford Schumann Fellowship, the New York Youth Symphony’s First Music Commissioning Program, and the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts.
Loiacono is currently pursuing her doctorate at Cornell University and earned her undergraduate and masters degrees from Yale University. Her 2015-16 season features commissions from the Albany Symphony Orchestra, New York Virtuosi Singers, and cello-percussion duo New Morse Code. Loiacono is a founding member and current development director of Kettle Corn New Music.