Last November, the Open Source Music Festival debuted in New York City to a sold out house, exceeding all of our expectations for success. I want to express my sincere gratitude and thanks to each of the many performers, composers, and panelists who participated, and also to the people who generously contributed their work to make the Open Source Music Festival a reality. It required a tremendous amount of effort, but totally worth it!
I created the Festival to illuminate how composers and performers take inspiration from the music that came before them, and build upon it in new ways. The creativity unleashed by the open source movement of today – in which thousands of creative minds come together to forge great accomplishments – is also present in the music industry, and in the very fabric of musical composition itself, via the infinite derivations of past musical ideas now present in today’s music. Hence, our slogan: “Music Reimagined“.
One of the signature events of this year’s Festival was a panel discussion of experts that explored relevant themes to artists in the open source era. In particular, how creative digital rights are empowered by new innovations, and how in the near future, creators will be able to precisely control how freely their digital content is shared. I hope we will continue to examine and educate our creative community about all of these possibilities.
At the heart of the OSMF was an all day concert event that presented a diverse range of artists from contemporary, electronic and jazz who expressed what open source means to them. The JACK Quartet (“new music super heroes”), jazz guitarist Ben Monder, who improvises upon an original musical concept, electronic artists Teengirl Fantasy and ADR, who performed jointly, singer Jeff Gavett (of loadbang and ekmeles), cellist Jeffrey Zeigler (a pioneering instrumentalist formerly of the Kronos Quartet), the forward-thinking percussion trio TIGUE, and the septet the cellar and point, who seamlessly fuse classical music, jazz, and alt-rock.
We also commissioned a 45 minute piano suite that I premiered, called Couplets, written by four pairs of married composer couples: Augusta Read Thomas & Bernard Rands, Evan Ziporyn & Christine Southworth, Anthony Cheung & Wang Lu, Julia Wolfe & Michael Gordon. This marvel of 21st century piano composition now takes its place among the significant works of new music that have been recently written.
Each of the four individual works in Couplets is inspired by a pre-existing composition, with influences that ranged from Elliot Carter and Chopin, to pop music. I wanted to explore the tension and interplay of relationships in a collaborative, creative process, and demonstrate the meaning of re-imagination for these acclaimed composers. (For more about Couplets, please read the associated blog post).
My hope is that the Open Source Music Festival is just the beginning, and that in the future, we can expand its theme to include other art forms – visual art, filmmaking and perhaps even food. Indeed, preparations are now underway for our next Festival, which will focus on the vast lineage of music that is inspired by the master Romantic composer, Frederic Chopin.
My takeaway from our Festival? I will continue creating and performing inspiring and unique recital programs that explore the influences and inspirations of music across history and cultures from around the world. To date, audiences have heard my performances of Couplets paired with the Liszt Sonata, and works of Chopin, Chinese, South American and Middle Eastern composers on WQXR in New York, KING in Seattle, and at my recitals in Washington DC, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, to just name a few places that I’ve performed at recently.
Stay in touch, and I look forward to hearing from you soon!