About ACA

Publisher - Distributor - Concert Presenter - Archivist

The American Composers Alliance was established in 1937 by a group of composers (including Aaron Copland and others), who sought to professionalize their work, and to seek out and generate revenue from their compositions.

We continue this mission of ACA, now as an educational, charitable public corporation, with every effort and hope that the body of American music we have collected and managed for more than 70 years will be made more widely known to new audiences, and be distributed to performers and libraries around the world in various formats, with efficiency and ease.

We offer fair pricing for materials we hold in modern and historical print formats.  Because of its low overhead, and support received from corporate, private, and foundation donors, ACA is able to extend support to its members and customers, to foster activities that encourage public performances of American concert music.

Today, ACA is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to providing its composer members a unique variety of services including representation of all unpublished works, registrations for performance tracking and royalties, print publication and promotion, and library archiving of materials, while bringing fresh and vibrant American music to performing artists and to the general public through its searchable online database and annual summer festival of concerts.

The ACA catalog, licensed for performance through BMI, contains orchestral and chamber works from the early 1900s to the present, and is one of the most comprehensive and diverse collections of American music in the entire world. Historically, the collection includes a considerable number of important works by African-American and women composers.

The original and continuing mission of ACA is to publish and distribute the music of its composer members of the past and present, and to support and promote performances of their works.

As a nonprofit, there is no single owner of ACA. It is governed by an elected Board of Governors, and all proceeds and contributions are recycled back into the organization’s general operations and special projects. As such, members are encouraged to participate in discussions, live meetings, decision-making, and to join or organize committees of members to promote and encourage performances and recordings of ACA-published works, and in turn, become part of the legacy and active history of the organization.

ACA currently publishes music by  T.J. Anderson, Elizabeth Austin, Elizabeth Bell, Barney Childs, Robert Evett, Miriam Gideon, Robert Helps, Otto Luening, Robert McBride, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Daniel Pinkham, Ronald Roseman, Dane Rudhyar, Elliott Schwartz, Halsey Stevens, Elias Tanenbaum, Joan Tower, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Karl and Vally Weigl, and many others.

ACA composers’ works are performed around the world, including most recently, by the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Greater Bridgeport Symphony, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the University of Utah Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony, The Cleveland Institute of Music, the Concord Orchestra, The Center for Contemporary Opera, The Winnipeg Orchestra, the iO String Quartet, the Avalon String Quartet, the Zukofsky Quartet, duo Parnas, Second Instrumental Unit, Ensemble Kolot, the New York Virtuoso Singers, renowned baritone Jan Opalach, clarinet virtuoso Esther Lamneck, violist Rudolf Haken, the New Juilliard Ensemble, Justin Montigne, Lunatics at Large, and the Arizona West Honor Choir, among many other chamber groups and solo performers.

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info [at] composers [dot] com