The Quad City Symphony Orchestra (QCSO) is one of 30 orchestras nationwide that’s part of the League of American Orchestras’ Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program.

The unprecedented national consortium ensures that new works by women composers, each commissioned by the League, will be infused in orchestra seasons to come, with multiple performances throughout the country, according to a QCSO Friday release.

The consortium’s initial six lead orchestra-composer pairings were previously announced, with more than eighty orchestras applying for the additional 24 spots.

The QCSO will partner with composer Angel Lam for a performance of her new work on its final Masterworks concert of the 2024 season, scheduled for April 6-7, 2024.

Conductor Mark Russell Smith leads the Quad City Symphony.

“We are proud and grateful to be a part of this year’s unprecedented 30-orchestra consortium and we are looking forward to bringing Angel Lam’s music to the Quad Cities,” orchestra executive director Brian Baxter said in Friday’s release.

“Orchestral music is a living, breathing art form and this collaboration that stretches across the U.S. is a clear demonstration of the powerful voices actively making statements with and connecting communities through the orchestra today.”

“We are thrilled to share Angel Lam’s music with our community,” QCSO music director Mark Russell Smith said. “Every season, we offer a diverse and varied menu of music from many traditions and epochs. Being part of the Toulmin Commissions Program greatly assists us in continuing to explore and espouse the music of living and underrepresented composers – a hugely important endeavor.

The QCSO, with choir and soloists, performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on Oct. 1, 2022 at the Adler Theatre (photo by Jonathan Turner).

“We are so very grateful for the opportunity to work with Angel Lam and bring her incredible artistic vision to life,” he said. The new consortium is comprised of orchestras from 19 U.S. states and Canada.

Angel Lam is a Grammy-nominated composer who is commissioned to write new works for five American orchestras in the 2023-24 season.

Lam is a Grammy-nominated composer who received three Carnegie Hall commissions before she was 29.

She received three New York Carnegie Hall commissions before the age of 29, including a cello concerto dedicated to Yo-Yo Ma and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Spano. Lam also wrote a classical crossover piece for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble.

They toured the work for many years worldwide at numerous prestigious venues, including Lucerne Festival in Switzerland and the Royal Albert Hall in London. This year she is a guest composer at Yale University’s Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, where she is commissioned by the Musical Bridge Project to write a new work for superstar pipa virtuoso Wu Man and artistic director Melvin Chen.

For more information on Lam, click HERE.