New Music Gathering, an annual three-day conference dedicated to the performance, production, promotion, support and creation of new concert music, has gone digital for the June 2020 conference. Two of its five organizers, composers Mary Kouyoumdjian and Angélica Negrón, join CP to discuss moving to an online format, making space within the community and balancing their own creative practices with their commitment to NMG.

Moving Online

Classical Post: How much was the 2020 New Music Gathering programming altered when moving from an in-person to an online festival? How has switching to an online gathering presented creative opportunities and challenges?

Mary Kouyoumdjian & Angélica Negrón: When moving NMG2020 to an online format, we really had to gauge the comfort level, available resources, and availability of our participants. Some folks, very understandably, could no longer participate while navigating circumstances surrounding COVID-19. Others found exciting ways to make creative use of digital forms, allowing the medium to be an invitation in exploring new ways to present their work. What you can expect to see from our reimagined NMG is much of the originally curated panels and discussions reworked for a wider audience, footage of performances that best represent artists’ work, newly created films by music makers in these past couple months in which folks observed social distancing (or even playing together long distance), and livestream performances. We’re eternally grateful for everyone’s flexibility in adapting their work for the internet, so quickly, and in such a complicated time.

Roles Within Organization

CP: Do each of the five NMG organizers have distinct roles regarding planning and programming? If so, what are each of yours?

Mary Kouyoumdjian & Angélica Negrón: For the most part, each of us are pretty fluid in our roles, and we take turns carrying various responsibilities in different waves during pre-production through production itself. That said, we’d like to give a special shout out to the minds of Jascha Narveson and Lainie Fefferman, our superhero problem solvers who do infinite amounts of work behind the scenes coordinating our technical production and structure of events while making all of the work seem easy (which it’s far from). As far as wishes for the organization, tone, and impact, those are hopes that we dream together and challenge each other to dream more widely with each collective conversation.

NewMusicBox LIVE: New Music Gathering

New Music Community

CP: NMG is a space for New Music. Is the intended concert audience specifically musicians within the new music community? Since the 2020 gathering is online and accessible to all, do you hope to reach a broader audience?

Angélica Negrón: While our panels and conversations are mostly focused on topics that are relevant to the new music community, it’s our hope that our audience goes beyond new music composers, performers, presenters and even new music listeners. This year we’re gathering online, and we’re hoping we can reach even more people that might not even be familiar or interested in new music. I’ve already heard from family in Puerto Rico who wouldn’t normally be able to come to an NMG event that they have been watching some of the concerts and enjoying them a lot. That’s the cool thing about new music, and what we try to showcase at NMG is that there is so much range in the multiplicities of creative expression that there’s something for everyone. We’ve also had kids joining us for some of the Zoom sessions and people that otherwise might not have been able to come to Portland, where we were supposed to be this year. This is making us consider new possibilities in terms of accessibility and continue to reimagine how we can invite more people into our gatherings.

New Music Gathering Organizers on Zoom, photo courtesy of NMG

Modeling the Conference

CP: NMG is based on the conference model. Mary, as a cofounder of NMG, how did you adapt this model to create NMG? How has it been effective and where has it needed to be altered?

Mary Kouyoumdjian: This always feels like such a funny question to me, because I’ve always had an allergic reaction to conferences (you can read about my relationship to them in connection to NMG here). The things we wanted to take away from conferences were the exchange of ideas between creative minds, entering a space with a genuine curiosity to learn, and the coming together of friends old and new – creating a sense of community that grows together. Where we’ve altered the model tends to center around formality – you won’t see merch tables, you won’t see individuals reading excerpts from articles or dissertations word for word, and you’ll see an active push to include voices beyond only academia and institutions.

CP: NMG is free of a paywall and many of the discussions/presentations seem geared towards emerging musicians. How does NMG function as an educational and connection building opportunity for musicians outside of traditional higher-education and festivals? Why is accessibility and connection crucial, now more than ever?

Mary Kouyoumdjian & Angélica Negrón: This year especially we were granted the chance to make New Music Gathering free and available to as many people as possible, which caused us to give a lot of thought to how, going forward, we could continue that trajectory even when we are again able to be in rooms together. In previous years, it seems that, while the concerts, panels, and lectures were well-attended and well-thought-of, it was the interstices--the spaces between where people could chat and meet and dream together--that were remembered most fondly. It is something we absolutely will take into consideration as we move forward.

As to being for emerging musicians, I hope that we do not leave out other types of musicians--those who are mid-career, those who are more accomplished and seeking other directions, and, most importantly, those who feel left out of the big places and thinking that has been the de-facto core of our industry. It has to include anyone who wants to be there, and we have to keep expanding our purview.

Encouraging Conversation

CP: How does NMG seek to create space and encourage conversation within the new music community?

Mary Kouyoumdjian & Angélica Negrón: By getting people in a room together, and making a place that is comfortable and brave, where everything from inclusivity to funding models to musical notions can be candidly discussed, conversation can run directly from that--we hope. But even more, the event, being a gathering, is about conversation, about meeting one another, and even virtually, it is about the idea that we can work together toward a shared goal as a community.

CP: If a NMG participant walked away learning one thing from the gathering, what do you hope that it would be?

Mary Kouyoumdjian & Angélica Negrón: That it’s our shared responsibility to create and advocate for the community we want to see and that no matter what it is that you do, you can always install change and motivate action that will impact others and make this a more equitable field. That the field is wider and more connected than they might have thought - both within itself and to the larger society in which we exist - and that they can help to increase and strengthen those connections.

dóabin by Angélica Negrón, performed by Loadbang Ensemble

A Balancing Act

CP: NMG is volunteer-organized by five working musicians, including both of you. Doing volunteer work is a big commitment as a working musician. How do you each balance your creative work as composers, the work of planning New Music Gathering and any other work that you do?

Angélica Negrón: This is really challenging and as the newbie in the group I have to confess I have no idea how the other co-organizers have done it for the past few years. For me what has helped is thinking about the bigger picture and realizing that there are many ways to be active and engage in your own creative craft and that contributing in any way I can to the community is something very valuable that will inevitably make its way back into my own creative work.

Creating is not only composing, it’s building community, it’s listening to each other, it’s exchanging ideas with others, it’s laughing together, it’s problem solving with others, it’s challenging my own notions of what music means for me and thinking deeply about things that might never come up if I were in a studio by myself just “composing”. And those are all things we do at NMG.

Mary Kouyoumdjian: Balance – this is a skill that I have yet to have figured out! I’m sure a lot of arts administrators will feel similarly, but I always find myself prioritizing my work in organizations I’m affiliated with over my own personal creative work. In other words, I will always prioritize projects that include a responsibility to other people or are at the service of community, because I truly believe that music making is about human connectivity, and that’s where a lot of my own personal joy and inspiration stems from. This said, there is absolutely no way that anything in NMG would get done if it weren’t for the collective and tireless efforts of Angélica Negrón, Lainie Fefferman, Danny Felsenfeld, and Jascha Narveson, not to mention all of our collaborators who volunteer their time and resources. It truly takes a team effort grounded in generosity and excitement for New Music Gathering to happen.

Listen to Playlist (New Music Gathering)

New Music Gathering

(courtesy of their site)

Even in a culture that thrives on connectivity, the ancient idea of simply being in the same place at the same time to exchange ideas continues to be the most effective, and New Music Gathering fills that need.

Following the conference model, New Music Gathering is an annual event: three days of performances, presentations, and discussions. It is volunteer-organized by five working musicians – Lainie Fefferman, Daniel Felsenfeld, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Jascha Narveson, and Angélica Negrón – so its focus is on meeting the needs and desires of the community in ways that are increasingly direct and diverse.

New Music Gathering is based in a different city every time. Aside from bringing together those who write, perform and promote New Music to meet, talk, and develop collaborative relationships, the Gathering will also seek to showcase the beauty and idiosyncrasy of the work made by the population specific to each year's region.