Music pervades our world, yet the men and women who create the sounds we hear are often unsung. Composers Now is a weeklong festival presented collaboratively by a number of organizations citywide offering concerts, lectures, conversations, and other activities that highlight the contribution composers make to the cultural fabric of our lives. Composers Now puts a public face on the vitality, diversity, and innovations that composers bring to our communities.

Composers Now: The origins

Composers Now was born shortly after the 2008 collapse on Wall Street when composers Tania León and I were having dinner, and the conversation veered from the recession to Cuba after Castro to the show at the Met to Michelle Obama’s hairstyle to the challenges that each composer faces when he or she is alone, facing the empty manuscript page, and wondering, “What am I going to say in this piece??” We talked about how invisible composers are in the societal and cultural fabric as compared to writers and visual artists.

Composers are the invisible members of the musical ecosystem. We see the performers who play the music, but we almost never see, talk to, and get to know the people who created the music being performed, the people whose stories are being told. Most of us never meet the composer who lives next door to us, sits next to us on the subway, stands ahead of us on the line at the deli, or works out with us at the gym.

Tania said that composers need what the poets have: a whole month and a Poet Laureate. People know that poets write words that touch us. Nobody thinks about composers; they just think the music is there without thinking about where it came from. We need to do something about this. Read More »