Frank J. Oteri to step down as NewMusicBox editor

After 24 years helming the pioneering online magazine, Oteri moves on and joins the full-time faculty of The New School this fall 

New Music USA—the leading national resource dedicated to advancing new music in all its forms—announces today that Frank J. Oteri, editor of its multi-media publication NewMusicBox, will be stepping down from his position at the end of August after joining the full-time faculty of The New School’s College of Performing Arts (which includes the Mannes School of Music). Oteri has been editor of NewMusicBox since it was launched in 1999 at the American Music Center as the first-of-its-kind web magazine, covering the creation of new music across the US by providing a vital platform for creators to speak about issues relevant to them in their own words. NewMusicBox, which has been a program of New Music USA since the merger of American Music Center and Meet the Composer in 2011, has published over 7,000 stories in the 24 years since, featuring artists from across the musical spectrum, and in written, video and audio formats. Oteri, who is also an accomplished composer, has been teaching part-time at The New School since 2022, leading courses in music history, which he will continue to teach when he joins full-time this fall. 

New Music USA will use this period of change to celebrate the vast accomplishments of the publication’s past, as well as look toward its future. A selection of meaningful works from the NewMusicBox archives will be shared throughout the fall, as New Music USA staff spend time reflecting on the publication’s important role, and asking the organization’s diverse community of creators, organizations and NewMusicBox readers for feedback on how this resource can best serve them going forward.  

“We at New Music USA are excited for Frank and the New School students who will benefit from this next stage in his career, but we will all miss him enormously,” says Vanessa Reed, President and CEO of New Music USA. “We are eternally grateful for the knowledge, insights, humor, and generosity that Frank has consistently brought to our organization, and for the extraordinary collection of articles and interviews documenting new music creation in the US that he has brought to life in partnership with the talented editors, composers, and writers who have worked on NewMusicBox over the past two decades.”

“When I was hired to come up with a format for and then serve as editor for what we eventually named NewMusicBox,” Oteri shares, “I believed strongly, and still do, that practitioners should be the people who speak and write about this music since they have the most intimate knowledge of it, the greatest passion for it, and need their own outlet to disseminate information about it. I am extremely grateful to all the extraordinary musical visionaries we have spoken with and all of the articulate and inspirational artists/writers whose words we have published over these many years. I also want to state that, despite serving as NewMusicBox’s titular Editor, I eschew hierarchy and the people who worked with me along the way deserve a great deal of acknowledgement for making NewMusicBox what it has been for all these years. The strength and significance of NewMusicBox in our field is because by design it has been a collaborative project.”

Oteri continues, “When I was offered a chance to develop my own curriculum for a contemporary music history class at The New School and told that I could and should cover all genres of music, it was an offer–like the offer to create a web magazine for contemporary American music–I couldn’t refuse. Many of my musical heroes have ties to either The New School and/or Mannes and the students I’ve taught thus far have been a constant source of inspiration to me. I am overjoyed that having a full-time faculty position will give me more opportunities, just like at NewMusicBox, to share with others as broad a range of new music as possible and to work with future generations to help shape its future.”

Fittingly, Oteri has published an essay reflecting on his time as editor for NewMusicBox, “Waking Up From the Dream Job,” which can be read here.

Since NewMusicBox launched in May 1999, it has published in-depth interviews Oteri conducted with many of America’s most significant musical creators of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Elliott Carter, Ornette Coleman, Meredith Monk, Tania León, Willie Colón, Du Yun, and Jeanine Tesori. Numerous articles commissioned by NewMusicBox from artist/writers from around the country have received ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor Awards and other accolades. Content published on NewMusicBox has been frequently cited in books, newspaper articles and scholarly journals from around the world and is also frequently assigned by music teachers at universities.  

The first interview Oteri conducted for NewMusicBox in 1999 was with Bang on a Can founders Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, which can be read here. All articles and interviews from the publication’s expansive history, including recent series such as the SoundLives podcast and Different Cities Different Voices can be found on the NewMusicBox site here. 

About New Music USA 

New Music USA nurtures the creation, performance, and appreciation of new music in all its forms to build a vibrant and inclusive future for creators and listeners across the US. We empower and connect US-based music makers, organizations, and audiences by providing funding through our grants; offering support and fostering new connections through our programs; deepening knowledge through our online magazine, NewMusicBox; and working as an advocate for the field. New Music USA envisions a thriving and equitable ecosystem for new music throughout the United States. Learn more at newmusicusa.org 

About Frank J. Oteri

Frank J. Oteri is a composer, musicologist, journalist, and educator whose compositional style has been described as “distinctive” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. His musical compositions include the pandemic-inspired Already Yesterday or Still Tomorrow, premiered by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Delta David Gier in 2021, and the performance oratorio MACHUNAS, inspired by the life of Fluxus-founder George Maciunas, which was created in collaboration with Lucio Pozzi and staged at the Contemporary Arts Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania, as part of the Christopher Summer Festival in 2005. Among Oteri’s other works are: Fair and Balanced?, a quartertone saxophone quartet premiered and recorded by the PRISM Quartet; Imagined Overtures, for a rock band in 36-tone equal temperament recorded by the Los Angeles Electric 8; the ASCAP Foundation Charles Kingsford Fund commissioned song cycle Versions of the Truth for dual-voiced singer and piano premiered by the Cheah Chan Duo; and the 13-limit just intonation clarinet solo Spurl which was awarded UnTwelve’s 2018 Micro-Cosmos (Mikrokosmos) Microtonal Pedagogy Award. In addition to his composing activities and work for New Music USA, Oteri is the Vice President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and a member of the board of directors of the International Association of Music Centres (IAMIC). In demand as a freelance journalist and annotator, Oteri has written for BBC Music, Chamber Music, Symphony magazine, and has written the program notes for dozens of CD recordings. A graduate of New York City’s High School of Music and Art (subject of the motion picture Fame in which he has a cameo) and Columbia University (where he ran WKCR’s classical music and world music departments), Oteri is a committed educator who has taught in New York City public high schools and as a member of the Residency Faculty for the Vermont College of Fine Arts Graduate Program in Music Composition. Oteri received the 2007 Victor Herbert Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), the 2018 Composers Now Visionary Award, and the 2021 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Broadcast/Media Award. Learn more at his website: fjoteri.com. 

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