Composer Roberto Sierra, the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Cornell, has been selected to compose the inaugural work for the Sphinx Commissioning Consortium. The consortium is an alliance of 12 American orchestras -- including the Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit and Philadelphia orchestras -- established to encourage major compositions by black and Latino composers. Currently, works by black and Latino composers account for less than 1 percent of the classical music performed by American orchestras each year.

Sierra's commissioned work will be scored for full orchestra and featured in the repertoire of each consortium member during the 2009-10 season. The group of Sphinx nominees consisted of one composer from each orchestra.

"We are honored and excited to commission this piece by Roberto Sierra as the inaugural project of the Sphinx Commissioning Consortium," said Aaron Dworkin, founder and president of the administering Sphinx Organization. "Roberto will be the first in what I envision as a long line of talented composers of color whose work the SCC will support through this historic effort."

"To receive the first Sphinx commission is a great honor," Sierra said. "I am thrilled by the prospect of writing a large symphonic work to be performed by so many of our most prestigious orchestras."

Sierra was born in Puerto Rico and recently was appointed chair of the Department of Music at Cornell. He has previously been a composer-in-residence with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Puerto Rico Symphony and the New Mexico Symphony.

For more on Sierra, visit: http://www.arts.cornell.edu/music/faculty/Sierra.html.

For more on the Sphinx Commission, visit: http://www.sphinxmusic.org/.