Their professional pairing is priceless

In old Hollywood biopics like "A Song to Remember" (about Chopin), the composer's life looks awfully seductive: a mélange of romance, travel and champagne, with bursts of mad scribbling.

The reality is different. Most noncelluloid composers struggle not only to get their music written but also to get it heard. This can bring them into conflict with performing institutions, often precariously funded and hence risk-averse, and with concertgoers, many of whom believe that the only good composers are dead ones.

For today's composers, the world of the professional orchestra, prestigious but exclusive, can be particularly hard to crack. Cautious boards of directors, compressed rehearsal schedules and marketing departments with sales targets to reach -- not to mention the anointed musical "greats" of old -- all seem to conspire against an untried composer.

Enter the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. Launched in 1995-96, in partnership with the St. Paul-based American Composers Forum, as an unadorned reading session for local composers, the talent-nurturing program became regional and then national, adding a weeklong series of professional seminars en route.

Last season it acquired a public face: a culminating concert for a paying audience. Dubbed "Future Classics," the concert is led by music director Osmo Vänskä, whose conspicuous involvement has raised the program's profile.

The first edition of "Future Classics" drew 900 enthusiastic listeners to Orchestra Hall; the second, with seven new works on the bill (including four premieres), is today at 8 p.m., and will be broadcast live by Minnesota Public Radio.

Competing for inclusion

"It's tough for younger composers to find professional-level opportunities," said Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis, noting that there were 172 applicants for seven places this year. "The lack of contact with professionals limits their artistic growth. We're trying to help them past that bottleneck."

Kernis, the Minnesota Orchestra's new-music advisor, co-directs the Institute with the orchestra's Beth Cowart, who says the program is here to stay.

Daniel Bradshaw, who describes himself as "still pretty fresh out of graduate school," said being selected for the Institute is "kind of a dream come true." Now teaching in Hawaii, he is realizing how much he didn't learn about the music business while earning a doctorate in composition. "All of a sudden you're a professor and everyone expects you to know everything," Bradshaw said. "Maybe that's why I'm hungry for a little more education. Getting back into a mentored environment sounds really good to me."If you're thrust into a professional setting without all this mentoring, you can really step on a land mine," said Elliott Miles McKinley, who completed his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota in June.

Orchestra as dinosaur?

If the orchestra is no longer the preeminent medium for these composers, neither is it the dinosaur that critics sometimes allege. "We 21st-century composers have a broader array of sonic possibilities at our disposal than our predecessors did," McKinley says. "The orchestra is one of them. It's still a very beautiful way of mixing instrumental colors, and it's fun to write for. But I don't know how many orchestral pieces I'll end up writing, because I'm going to put my energy into efforts that yield performances."

McKinley is eager to work with the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra. "They know their instruments a lot better than you ever will," he says. "They know how to get past the imperfections of the notation -- to make your music sound the way you wanted it to, even if you didn't succeed in writing it that way. When they talk, you listen."

Asked about the institute's impact on previous participants, Kernis cited Missy Mazzoli, an alumna of last year's program. "She'd had no experience with a professional orchestra, and thought the medium was outdated," he said. "It was moving to watch her transformation. Meeting the musicians, working with a conductor who has a real commitment to communication and a rich emotional connection to the music -- it turned her around."

Probably none of tonight's composers, whose ages range from 24 to 38, think of themselves as writing "classics," future or otherwise. McKinley suggests that such loaded terms be set aside. "My hope is simply that people will come to the concert with ears open, " he says. "It's all just music."

Larry Fuchsberg writes frequently about music.