Embracing What's Next

An e-mail dropped into my inbox this afternoon from one of our hardworking artistic staffers, Beth Cowart, detailing the schedule for this year's edition of the Minnesota Orchestra's Composer Institute. I blogged about the Institute last fall, shortly after we launched the Inside the Classics site, and every year, I'm amazed by how much work the composers we feature and our staff guiding them go through in a single week.

The public only sees one night of the institute - the final performance of all the featured works - but the composers are here for eight days or more, attending a dizzying array of seminars, Q & As, and training sessions on everything from how to write idiomatically for bassoon to how to deal with copyright and licensing issues. And somewhere in there, they get to hear their work rehearsed, picked over, and performed by a major orchestra.

Earlier this year, the American Composers Forum, which is based in St. Paul and has been a major partner in making the Institute what it is today, put together a video showing some of last year's highlights, as well as interviews with the composers, Osmo, and our concertmaster, Jorja Fleezanis, who is well known as a major advocate for new music. It's well worth a look...