A New Era of Future Classics
In the Minnesota Orchestra’s 122-year history, there have been few concerts quite like the one on December 1, 2006, at which performers and audiences alike sensed the great degree to which something utterly new, important and more than a little audacious was happening. For the first time, the Orchestra’s Composer Institute concluded with a public concert, with then-Music Director Osmo Vänskä leading nine new works that had never been performed by a major orchestra, written by nine little-known composers at the start of their careers.
At that time it was atypical, if not unprecedented, for a major American orchestra to present an entire program of new music by upstart composers—particularly with the music director on the podium, rather than an assistant or guest conductor—due in part to the challenge of attracting an audience more accustomed to the “classics.” In a successful drive to fill seats, the Orchestra’s marketing team billed the concert as “Future Classics,” suggesting that although the music was new, it would have long staying power. Thus the Composer Institute—previously a behind-the-scenes initiative of workshops and private reading sessions—was reinvented as a public celebration of today’s newest orchestral music and a high-profile launchpad for many of the composers who are charting classical music’s course in the 21st century.
TURNING A NEW PAGE: THE 2025 COMPOSER INSTITUTE
Thirteen more Composer Institute-capping performances have followed in the 19 years since. The one on April 25, 2025, will have an extra element of newness, as Thomas Søndergård, now nearing the end of his second year as Minnesota Orchestra music director, leads his first Future Classics concert. The performance caps the first Institute since 2022 in what will now be an every-other-year event, in rotation with the Orchestra’s Listening Project, an initiative to program and record the music of historically underrepresented composers. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts is hosting the concert and providing overall leadership of the program, with 2025 marking the 10th anniversary of his role as Composer Institute director. The selected composers for this year’s Institute are Elise Arancio, Andrew Faulkenberry, Soomin Kim and Benjamin Webster—whose works will be shared on April 25 along with a piece by Puts.
“These composers have such unique, disparate voices, and they write with great imagination and color,” says Puts. “I look forward to working with them as they hear their creations played so masterfully by the Orchestra. This incarnation of the program will be somewhat different from previous years in that I will be interviewing each composer from the stage myself, pointing out certain things for the audience to listen for, with musical examples played by the Orchestra. I hope this will give our audiences more insight into the creative decisions that these young composers make. It’s wonderful to have this program embraced by Thomas Søndergård and sustained by the Orchestra to support a new generation of composers.”
The 2025 Institute also includes a new partnership with Universal Music Publishing Classics & Screen and Ricordi New York as part of the launch of their RicordiLab US Program, designed to support the careers of young composers. Ricordi will assist with preparing scores and instrumental parts and offer mentoring support to the composers.
As part of their Institute experience, Arancio, Faulkenberry, Kim and Webster are participating in a multi-day immersion into the artistic life of an orchestra, attending work sessions with Søndergård and Puts, meeting with Orchestra music library staff and Ricordi/Universal Music Publishing professionals, honing their skills in public presentation, filming with the Orchestra’s digital team, and learning more about orchestral programming cycles from artistic staff. The Future Classics concert also offers each composer the onstage spotlight to introduce themselves and their composition to audiences. Each work will be filmed, and the performance subsequently released by the Orchestra on its YouTube channel for free access.
A TRADITION OF EXCELLENCE
The Composer Institute, first held in March 2002, grew from the Minnesota Orchestra’s Perfect Pitch program, an annual series of new music reading sessions for emerging Minnesota composers launched during the 1995-96 season in collaboration with the American Composers Forum. In 2002 the program was reformulated as the Composer Institute and opened to composers from across the country, Pulitzer Prize-winner Aaron Jay Kernis became its director, and the program added seminars with industry leaders and Orchestra musicians, mentoring and other activities.
As of April 2025, 159 emerging composers have participated in the Composer Institute and Perfect Pitch. Many have since gone on to impressive careers, earning prestigious commissions and high honors. Several have had their music programmed at Minnesota Orchestra subscription concerts, including Henry Dorn, Missy Mazzoli and Anna Clyne during the upcoming 2025-26 season.
The program’s influence has spread throughout the music world via the success of participants such as 2004 alumnus Andrew Norman, winner of the 2017 Grawemeyer Award and a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Music; 2006 alumnus Anna Clyne, a 2015 Grammy nominee; fellow 2006 alumnus Missy Mazzoli, a trailblazer in the field of contemporary opera; and film and TV composer Trevor Gureckis, a 2007 alumnus whose recent projects include scoring the 2021 M. Night Shyamalan movie Old and the Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room and Servant.
In 2018 both of the finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Music were past Institute participants: 2016 alumnus Michael Gilbertson and 2008 alumnus Ted Hearne; in 2021 Hearne was again a Pulitzer finalist. At the 2022 Grammy Awards, violinist Jennifer Koh won the award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for an album that included short works by 40 contemporary composers, 10 of whom are Composer Institute alumni, among them 2022 participants Adeliia Faizullina and Nina Shekhar.
Several past Composer Institute participants have fostered connections with other Minnesota ensembles and institutions. Perhaps most notably, 2022 Institute participant Henry Dorn is now an assistant professor of conducting and composition at St. Olaf College in Northfield, where he is the conductor of the St. Olaf Band and teaches composition. Texu Kim, a 2015 Institute alumnus, has revisited Minnesota numerous times, most recently in April 2025 for a performance of his music by the Bakken Ensemble.
In addition, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, which was conducted from 2000 to 2023 by William Schrickel, the Minnesota Orchestra’s assistant principal bass, has commissioned two alumni to each compose their first symphony: 2010 participant Polina Nazaykinskaya and 2015 participant Matthew Peterson; the latter’s Symphony No. 1: The Singing Wilderness was co-commissioned with the St. Olaf Orchestra and Northern Symphony Orchestra. The MSO also commissioned and premiered Nazaykinskaya’s large-orchestra revision of Fenix and has performed three additional works by her in the years since she participated in the Institute, all with Schrickel conducting.
Schrickel commented on the connection and its origins: “When I performed Polina’s Winter Bells with the Minnesota Orchestra as part of the Orchestra’s 2010 Composer Institute, I was immediately impressed by the strength and beauty of her writing for full orchestra. I immediately arranged with her to conduct the piece with the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra the following season, and the MSO and I have since performed three more of her works, including the premiere of her Symphony No. 1 in 2017. I believe that in ten years the world’s major orchestra will be competing to perform Polina’s compositions, and I’m proud and excited to champion music of such depth and power.”
Other composers who have maintained connections to Minnesota include 2019 Composer Institute alumnus TJ Cole, who was commissioned to compose a new work for Edina High School’s Concert Band, and 2016 participant Matthew Peterson, who returned to the Twin Cities in 2018 to record his chamber opera Voir Dire at Minnesota Public Radio’s studios in St. Paul. Local audiences had a chance to hear music by another Institute alumnus in 2019, where 2016 participant Emily Cooley’s Slow Song for Mark Rothko was performed by Orchestra musicians Greg Milliren, Brian Mount and Anthony Ross, with Stephen Yoakam narrating poetry by John Taggart. This new work was commissioned by the late former Minnesota Orchestra Concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis through The Michael Steinberg & Jorja Fleezanis Fund—which previously financed a work by 2008 Institute participant Justin Merritt, and has continued to commission new chamber works in the years since Fleezanis’ passing in 2022.
REFLECTIONS FROM THE COMPOSERS
Composer Institute alumni Texu Kim and Missy Mazzoli have both offered in-depth reflections on the Institute and the lessons they took from the experience.
“Participating in the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute in 2015 was a pivotal moment of my growth as a composer, for which I will be grateful forever,” says Kim. “The performance of my piece, Splash!!, went superbly, although it was highly demanding. I was more ambitious, wanting to use as many composition techniques and fancy effects I had learned as possible. Working with these supreme musicians made me realize what (and how much) I asked for from individual performers and the entire group. I was so grateful that I began thinking more deeply about honoring their life-long endeavor with my music. I am still learning (and my music is still demanding), but shifting to a more humane and humanitarian mindset was crucial in my growth as a musician.”
Kim continues: “Another significant insight I gained through the Institute is understanding the ‘industry’ and how composers can serve better. The Institute was efficiently designed for the participants to interact with and learn from essential parties in concert-making (in addition to the composers and performers), including staff from various departments (artistic, communications, etc.), public relations and copyright specialists and audience members. And, of course, I gained much from the insightful guidance of the composer and conductor mentors (Aaron Jay Kernis, Kevin Puts and Osmo Vänskä). Again, knowing how much work and how many people go into the process was a revelation, and it prepared me to collaborate with other orchestras later, especially when I became the composer-in-residence of the Korean National Symphony Orchestra. I am pleased to report that I initiated and facilitated the Korean National Symphony Orchestra (as its ex-composer-in-residence) to create the Composers’ Atelier program in 2021, primarily modeled after the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute!”
Mazzoli offered these thoughts about the Composer Institute: “It was the first time I’d heard one of my works performed by a professional orchestra and it was life-changing…I learned so much about how to communicate effectively with players—everything from what adjectives to use in a violin part to what to say in a stressful rehearsal.” Although she states that the Future Classics concert is her best memory of the week, others have stuck as well: “I remember going bowling with the other composers, and not dressing properly for the frigid Minnesota weather.”
Attend the Future Classics concert on April 25, 2025, and watch the Minnesota Orchestra’s YouTube channel for recordings from this year’s concert as well as the 2022 edition.
