Pacific Symphony Gets $15,000 Recording Grant

The New York-based Aaron Copland Fund for Music has awarded Pacific Symphony a $15,000 grant to record Lukas Foss’ First and Second Piano Concertos on the Harmonia Mundi label.

Pacific music director Carl St.Clair is scheduled to conduct the Santa Ana-based orchestra in the two Foss concertos Oct. 26 and 27, 2000, in Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Jon Nakamatsu and Yakov Kasman, gold and silver medalists, respectively, in the 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition medalists, will be the soloists.

The recording will be made the weekend after the live performances. A release date is still to be decided.

It will be the orchestra’s 11th CD. Others include St.Clair and the Pacific recordings of works by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu and American composer Elliot Goldenthal for Sony Classical, and American composers John Corigliano and former Pacific composer-in-residence Frank Ticheli for Koch International Classics. The orchestra also recorded for Pro Arte under the baton of founding music director Keith Clark, among others.

The $15,000 Copland grant is the orchestra’s first from the New York organization. It is part of $403,950 distributed by the fund this year.

The Pacific was chosen from among 154 recording projects by an independent five-person panel appointed by the fund.

The fund was established in 1990 to support mostly nonprofit organizations that perform or record new American music. Copland, one of America’s most seminal composers, died in 1990.

The fund is administered by the American Music Center, a national service organization founded in 1939 by Copland and other prominent composers to promote the creation and performance of American music.