We do not claim that our definitions of artivism are monopolistic. There are probably as many ways to define artivism as there are to define music, performance art, jazz, or growing your own food. We share our experiences after years of an activist-infused practice, such as performances at the U.S.- Mexican border outside of migrant detention centers, at an environmental conference in Northern Iraq, and at the founding of an Ecosocialist International in Venezuela. We feel the Artivist must go beyond critiquing the moment in which they were born.
Urgency is an important ingredient in everything Lucy Dhegrae does—whether singing music by Eve Beglarian, Joanna Newsom, Jason Eckardt, Gabrielle Herbst, and many others, or curating Resonant Bodies, a three-day festival of contemporary vocal music that takes place annually in New York City and which has now had iterations in Chicago as well as in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. Urgency is also what fuels her life’s mission: to be empowered as a singer and to empower other singers which, aside from a desire to make musical experiences fairer, yields better performances.
Musicians are uniquely positioned to convey the following simple message that we should all, as artists, understand: no matter who you are, where you are from, how much money you have, or what language you speak, you have inherent worth.
Paul Elwood explores a fundamental question: If it’s not passion in the 50+ age category (and, in his mind, that’s debatable) what is it that keeps us going in our work—especially if, like him and countless others, huge success hasn’t come knocking?
When your life falls apart, you learn to build a new one. Likewise, when your vision collapses, you learn to see things through a different lens. Josh Armenta has used these experiences to transform how he works and to embrace citizen-artistry with a new found defiant zeal.
The need for a plurality of voices within our field has become dire. If we do not begin to represent our communities and the world around us, our institutions cannot continue to evolve. As organizations across the nation attempt to deal with this issue, many continue to face roadblocks, despite incremental efforts. How do we break the cycle and move the culture of classical music into the 21st century?
After struggling with depression and anxiety, Josh Armenta tried adjusting his lifestyle and even moved to a new city, hoping that the changes would help alleviate these problems and allow him to better focus on his composition. Eventually he took the step to try medication, however, and for the first time in years could see that things would be okay.
There was perhaps no more important a “yes” in my career than when I accepted Frank J. Oteri’s offer to come and work on this crazy thing called NewMusicBox 18 years ago. It has been a beautiful adventure.
It is essential for any composer who wants to write opera to have an extensive background as a dramatist, wordsmith, orchestrator, and musician. But currently, this expectation is also impractical, unreasonable and highly exclusionary. In order to cultivate a diverse generation of talent, we must find a way to overcome the existing limitations of accessibility to sufficient training.
How are albums adapting and changing in the digital world? James Moore is looking for clues as to where the art form might be headed.
When composer Josh Armenta took a job in Silicon Valley to pay the bills, he quickly felt completely disconnected from his field and craft. However, after opening his mind to the environment he was immersed in, he was able to take away three lessons that would become incredibly important to moving his music career forward.
Established in 1945, the Ditson Conductor’s Award honors conductors who have a distinguished record of performing and championing contemporary American music.
In bypassing institutional gatekeepers, conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya outlines how these conductors have brought relevance, vitality, and an expanding number of previously unrepresented voices into the field and argues that they could help bring the revitalization that the classical music industry so desperately seeks.
A discussion with Executive Director Andy Kozar
What I didn’t realize was that I had become so distracted by following the rules across my whole life that I had lost sight of who I was, artistically and as a human being.
Like so many American experimentalists, Ben Johnston (1926-2019) was stylistically multilingual. His conceptual achievement leaves Boulez and Stockhausen in the dust, but moment by moment the music can sound as mild as Ned Rorem.
Juliana Hall has given her almost completely undivided attention to composing art songs for over 30 years, and her love for poetry and the voice has only grown stronger.
I am on a mission to bring us toward a place where the art and its communities are woven around and within each other… art is not separate. Such a thing could take many forms; I hope to make it happen in a new kind of community I am co-creating, called Terrarium.
Most NewMusicBox readers probably already know that Vivian Perlis founded Yale’s Oral History of American Music (OHAM) and was the co-author of Aaron Copland’s biography as well as an award-winning book about Charles Ives, but here are a few things you might not know about her.
In this post I want to talk about time: time in our musical relationships with others, and time in the creative process. I’ll start out with the Greek concepts of time, chronos and kairos. For musicians, chronos is metronome time; it can be objectively and quantitatively measured. Kairos, on the other hand, happens when we lose ourselves in the creative moment, and all measures of time are lost.
I have not found a social media platform that fits what I need and what I believe others need, particularly as artists helping to build culture-sustaining communities. So in seeking to create a high-quality, high-trust, human-centric, art-incubating community on the internet, I launched Life in Septuple Time, a small-scale, private, peaceful social media space centered around a thrice-weekly email I send to a limited list of friends and colleagues, with an option for group discussion using Trello software.
Sometimes I open up a conversation about gender balance in concert programming with those who have a record of performing or programming only or primarily works by men. After some back and forth, those reluctant to program equitably inevitably arrive at some version of: “But surely you wouldn’t want your music played just because you’re a woman? Surely you would want it played because you’re good?” As if this is some kind of novel and amazing trump card. The thing is: surely I do want my music played… and I don’t really care why!
I have performed in the percussion section of bands, on and off, since the seventh grade. Over a span of 25+ years, this includes performing in a wide variety of groups, from junior high to high school, intermediate and advanced college bands, and community bands. I have seen the worst of the worst in percussion parts, and also some of the best. I hope to provide some very practical writing advice for those looking to write for band, as well as for those who may want to fix their major sins and/or minor transgressions ex post facto.
Interacting online is not inherently poisonous, and online interactions are no less meaningful than talking face to face. Different, yes, but just as valuable. If we experience problems relating to each other online, I believe it’s because we’re doing it wrong. The internet provides fertile soil to grow intimate, genuine communities and to foster a connected, organic kind of art-making within such communities.
