Scott Wheeler's ASCAP Foundation Commission Premiere

(l-r) ASCAP's Michael Spudic, Cia Toscanini & Frances Richard with composer Scott Wheeler (center), pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson and tenor Dimitri Pittas with Marilyn Horne at the Carnegie premiere of Scott Wheeler's commission, Heaven and Earth.

The Marilyn Horne Foundation and The ASCAP Foundation / Charles Kingsford Fund commissioned Scott Wheeler to compose a song cycle on texts of William Blake. Heaven and Earth received its world premiere in New York on January 23rd, 2008 at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, as part of the Marilyn Horne Foundation festival, The Song Continues. A professor at Emerson College in Boston, Wheeler is music director in the theater department. His honors include the Stoeger Award from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Wheeler's one act opera The Construction of Boston with words by ASCAP member Kenneth Koch, has just been released on Naxos American Opera Classics, chorus and orchestra of the Boston Cecilia, conducted by Donald Teeters.