The Alvarez Chamber Orchestra is a London-based organisation dedicated to the promotion and performance of contemporary classical music. Its Honorary President is Sir Colin Davis.

It holds an annual composition competition, "Plucked from Nowhere", for new music for harp

Harp

The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...

 and chamber orchestra. American composer Molly Kien is the author of The Song of Britomartis

Britomartis

Britomartis , was the Minoan goddess of mountains and hunting. She is among the Minoan goddess figures that passed through the Mycenaeans' culture into classical Greek mythology, with transformations that are unclear in both transferrals...

, the winning entry of the 2009 competition.

Artists who have worked with the orchestra include Nicholas Daniel

Nicholas Daniel

Nicholas Daniel is a British oboist and conductor. He won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition at eighteen and has since become one of the United Kingdom's most distinguished soloists...

, its Honorary Vice President Zygmunt Krauze

Zygmunt Krauze

- Biography :Polish composer and pianist , who studied composition and piano at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He is known as a composer of unistic music, based on the theory of unistic art adopted from the painting of Wladyslaw Strzeminski...

, and guitarist Timothy Walker.

In 2008, the orchestra was invited to introduce its Autumn season Northern Ayres: An Anglo Polish Celebration at St John's Smith Square in the Polish Embassy in London.

History

The ACO was active from 1979 to 1985 as a student and semi-professional orchestra that consisted of musicians from the NYO, RAM

Royal Academy of Music

The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...

, and the City of London School

City of London School

The City of London School is a boys' independent day school on the banks of the River Thames in the City of London, England. It is the brother school of the City of London School for Girls and the co-educational City of London Freemen's School...

. It performed a wide range of classical and contemporary chamber works, until it was disbanded when its founder, Geoffrey Álvarez

Geoffrey Álvarez

Geoffrey Alvarez is a British/Nicaraguan composer and conductor.He chairs the annual international composition competition run by.He studied composition privately with Giles Swayne, then with Paul Patterson at the Royal Academy of Music as a Leverhulme scholar, and later at the University of York...

, left London in 1985. In 2007 the ACO was re-formed as a professional orchestra and charitable trust, with the goal of performing music by contemporary international composers, who are little known in Britain, alongside that of their better known British colleagues.

Repertoire

The ACO specialises in international music, commissioning and performing new works by artists who are little known outside of their homelands. In its first professional season (2008) the focus was upon the music of England and Poland, and this included various pieces by Aleksander Tansman. The orchestra performed the London premières of the Tansman Clarinet Concerto with clarinettist Alison Turriff

Alison Turriff

Alison Turriff is a Scottish folk fusion clarinetist, recording artist, researcher, composer, producer and Artist for world leading clarinet makers Buffet Crampon.-Early life:...

, his Second Sinfonietta, and Diptyque. The ACO has also commissioned works by Boguslaw Schaeffer

Boguslaw Schaeffer

Bogusław Julien Schaeffer is a Polish composer, musicologist, and graphic artist, member of the avantgarde "Cracow Group" of Polish composers alongside Krzysztof Penderecki and others...

, Diana Burrell

Diana Burrell

Diana Burrell is an English composer.-Life and career:She was born in Norwich and attended Norwich High School for Girls before studying music at Cambridge University. She began her career as a viola player, but soon became well known for her compositions and became a full-time composer.Her first...

 and Paul Patterson

Paul Patterson

Paul Patterson is a British composer and Manson Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music.Patterson studied trombone and composition at the Royal Academy of Music. He returned there to become Head of Composition and Contemporary Music until 1997, when he became Manson Professor of...

, and has also performed works by its founder and conductor Geoffrey Álvarez

Geoffrey Álvarez

Geoffrey Alvarez is a British/Nicaraguan composer and conductor.He chairs the annual international composition competition run by.He studied composition privately with Giles Swayne, then with Paul Patterson at the Royal Academy of Music as a Leverhulme scholar, and later at the University of York...

.

ACO in St John's, Smith Square