NEW MUSIC: The 10th annual Cone Composition Institute Concert brings the music of four emerging composers, played by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, to Richardson Auditorium on Saturday, July 20. Pictured here are the participants in a past Institute program.

By Anne Levin

In the first year of the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute’s one-week summer program pairing promising composers with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (NJSO) at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium, 30 people applied for the four available slots.

That was a decade ago. Applications for this year’s session, which is underway and will culminate in a concert on Saturday evening at 8 p.m., numbered more than 200. The reputation of the Institute, which is presented in collaboration with the University’s music department, has clearly grown.

Deciding who to include in the tuition-free program is not easy. Each applicant, said Institute Director and University Music Professor Stephen Mackey, would be perfectly qualified to attend. The selection process starts with a panel of players from the NJSO, who whittle the 200 down to about 20.

“Then, the conductor [Christopher Rountree] and I have the very difficult job of going through those 20,” Mackey said. “They are all good. The orchestra would love to play all of their music.”

But only four make it to the final selection. This year’s winners come from the U.S., Brazil, the Philippines, and New Zealand. “For me, the litmus test is that these are pieces that only these composers could have written,” Mackey said. “They have to come from a personal point of view. They have very different backgrounds, different influences. They’re not trying to win a competition.”

In addition to works by the composers Leigha Amick, Santiago Beis, Paul Cosme, and Jessie Leov, a piece by Mackey, himself an accomplished composer, is also on the program. The participants are spending the week on campus, hearing their music rehearsed and performed by members of the NJSO, and getting invaluable feedback.

When it was first established, the Institute resembled existing programs held by the Minnesota Symphony and the American Composers Orchestra, Mackey said. But it has since been tweaked and refined.

“We’ve made it more of a holistic professional development thing,” he said. “On Thursday, they go to New York, which is the seat of contemporary music culture, and meet with music publishers, radio stations, and an advocacy group for new composers. We also provide a public speaking coach to meet with them early in the week, to develop their spiel, because we ask them to speak from the stage to introduce their work. It’s an important part, especially for contemporary composers.”

The Institute was named for Edward Toner Cone, an American composer, music theorist, pianist, and philanthropist who taught at Princeton University and lived from 1917 to 2004. The Institute for Advanced Study holds an Edward T. Cone Concert Series each year. Mackey arrived at Princeton after Cone’s time there, but Cone has been an influence on his work.

“I grew up reading his articles. He retired the year I was hired, so we never crossed as colleagues,” Mackey said. “He was an heir to a fortune, and was always very modest about his own compositions. This would have been perfect for him. He had orchestra music in his dresser drawer that was never played. He just never did it.”

When deciding which composers to attend the Institute, Mackey and Rountree also take the final concert into account. “We think about variety and shade,” Mackey said. “They are all so different. Leigha Amick, who is from Curtis [Institute of Music], takes a very strong, conceptual approach, but is a very practical musician. She plays violin and piano, music that sounds like a film score. And that means it’s so honest about human emotions.”

Beis’ Brazilian background is reflected in his piece, “combined with a kind of intellectual, egghead, abstract approach,” Mackey said. “I couldn’t have written his piece. And Jessie Leov’s piece — she is from New Zealand, and I told her that her piece is very likeable, like people from New Zealand.”

Tickets to the concert are $20, available online at njsymphony.org/events/detail/new-scores-2024-edward-t-cone-institute-concert. The audience is invited to a post-concert reception to meet the composers and sample a special Cone-inspired ice cream flavor crafted for the occasion by the Bent Spoon.

“None of these composers are writing pieces that I would call student pieces,” said Mackey. “Nobody is emulating famous composers. It’s all just them.”