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The American Prize Independence Day HONORS, 2023: Conductor & Ives Scholar
James Sinclair—NATIONAL ARTS AWARD
Renowned American conductor and Charles Ives scholar JAMES SINCLAIR has been selected as the 2023 winner of The American Prize National Arts Award, honoring a lifetime of Ives scholarship, the first of several Ives commemorations The American Prize will make in recognition of the 150th anniversary of Charles Ives birth year in 2024. (The American Prize is based in Ives' hometown of Danbury, Connecticut.)
The American Prize National Arts Award is a new category of recognition limited to a very few artists or organizations whose philosophy and/or professional accomplish
O.N.E. Announces the Release of a New Naxos Charles Ives Recording
On June 9, 2023, Naxos Records released the world premier recording of the Complete Sets for Chamber Orchestra, recorded by Orchestra New England in March of 2022 under the baton of Maestro James Sinclair.
Though Charles Ives wrote large-scale works, he also thrived on miniatures. Ives’ Sets for Chamber Orchestra are largely based on his songs, and display a panoply of style and technique that proves to be among the most colorful and creative of his entire compositional life. The Sets are rife with allusions and borrowings, notably hymn tunes, and reuse several pieces in slightly altered treatments. Set 9 includes The Unanswered Question in its original form. Ives was willing to embrace substitution of instruments, and this recording contains premiere recordings of new realizations and editions.
According to Maestro Sinclair, a world-renowned Ives scholar, "This album is a demonstration of, and tribute to, the remarkable breadth of Charles Ives’ imagination. A composer of wide-ranging orchestral works, he was also a master of miniatures. Well-focused, short ideas were a perfect fit for Ives’ busy double life as an insurance executive and weekend composer. Many of his songs are strikingly brief (for example At Sea and Luck and Work) – their average length is barely a minute-and-a half. And it is on his songs that the Sets for Chamber Orchestra are largely based. The Sets vary in their brevity from No. 3’s three-movement two-and-a-half-minutes to No. 1’s six-movement nine minutes. But in those brief spans, Ives creates a breath-taking panoply of style and technique. As a whole, these Sets may be the greatest showcase of his kaleidoscopic creativity, and the most colorful outings
in all of his output."
Click here for more information about this CD and the recording process.
Click here for more information about Charles Ives' Complete Sets for Chamber Orchestra.
Join Us for our 50th Anniversary Season
Our 2023-24 season will be our 50th. We'll present our annual Colonial Concert on November 25th at United Church on the Green in New Haven, our 50th Anniversary Celebration in early March, and a festive concert featuring world premieres by Joseph Russo and Jan Swafford in April.
Look for our brochure in the early fall!