Chatter

Belinda Reynolds is a composer, educator, and organizer that focuses on bringing new music to a variety of audiences and communities. Her music has been performed and recorded both nationally and abroad by top professional and amateur ensembles. You can read more about her at heshemusic.com.

What is it about being a teacher that makes so many composers shy away from that part of their identity? Recently I was part of a discussion of how those of us writing new music make a living. Even though all who were present were current or former teachers, I was the only one who had it as part of my job label. For most of my colleagues, though, it was either referred to as their day job or not mentioned as part of the various professional occupations they did as a musician.

Why do so many composers shy away from declaring themselves pedagogues? Does it have to be an either/or? And, in order to be both, do you have to diss one? Do we actually believe that “those who can’t do, teach”?

For many of us, becoming a teacher is not initially part of the vision of being a composer. It is only as we creep through our graduate studies that we begin to realize the unsaid expectation that teaching will be a primary component of some of our careers, whether it is as a professor in higher education or as a private studio teacher. And once we find ourselves in that position, we are not quite sure of how to integrate it into our definition of ourselves.

Perhaps we fear being known more for our pedagogical skills than for our compositional chops? I have heard more than one colleague bemoan how their institutions neglect acknowledgement of their composing careers, yet fawn over other composers when they’re in town. Similarly, I have seen some students litter their bios with names of luminaries they met at festivals but drop those of their primary teachers, seemingly ignorant that their mentors are also working composers worthy of being noted in their programs.

Consciously or unconsciously, we might also not respect this most important of all professions. Whether it is in music, medicine, or in the home, our society pays lip service to education, but never to educators. We scream that we must improve the quality of our schools, but derail the teachers who are instrumental to changing the status quo.

Maybe we also have some resentment, and fear that teaching sucks up all of our creative brain cells, leaving little to use for composing. I admit that to teach effectively takes a lot of time, thought, and creativity. However, I have found that teaching actually helps stretch my compositional chops. Helping a student solve or learn something requires the same skills needed to tweak or conceive of a piece. In fact, it has been the other jobs I’ve tried or simply daily life that has tended to leave me feeling dead and empty of any creative thought. (There is that pile of dishes again.)

I admit that I fell into teaching. I’ll also admit that I need to take time off from teaching to compose. And I’ll admit that I do fear being known only as a teacher. But, at the same time, I admit that I fear being known only as a composer. I am damn proud that I am a teacher, and I hope all of us who are teachers could be, too.

Reprinted with permission from American Music Center’s NewMusicBox.org.

Belinda Reynolds is a composer, educator, and organizer that focuses on bringing new music to a variety of audiences and communities. Her music has been performed and recorded both nationally and abroad by top professional and amateur ensembles. You can read more about her at heshemusic.com.
Recently I have been dealing with a very talented young composer whose visions are well beyond his chops. This is a young teen who skips Spanish class so he can study Stravinsky scores. (How can you criticize that? I skipped class to practice and compose.) While he loves every kind of music imaginable, his heart is set on writing symphonic theatre works. Every week he comes to his lesson with a new large-scale piece, complete with a detailed drama and scene layout. Although his text writing skills are remarkable for his age and his musical material imaginative and compelling, he lacks the compositional skills to successfully execute such pieces in terms of form, orchestration, and vocal writing.

How do you give such students the fundamentals without squelching their imagination? Do you rein them in? Do you let them run wild?

In this case, I am trying to do both. Each week we focus in on one large scale work he has written to use it as a canvas from which to get his feet wet in orchestration, form, and the like. At the same time I assign smaller composition assignments in a systematic order to assure he will have no holes in his compositional chops. As for the huge overflow of music he is compiling, he shares with me these pieces and I make general comments. We then file them away for more analysis later.

One may call my pedagogical approach a bit too eclectic. Yes, this teaching style leaves some of my student’s works in an unfinished state, since it leaves sections of them in need of refinement while others are skillfully polished. However, this method at least gives the young composer a taste of what he can eventually do, while at the same time giving him an opportunity to learn some basic techniques. Furthermore, these lessons can easily be transferred to smaller-scale works. The skills may not be at the level needed to harness a large work, but they are stronger than they would have been had we solely directed our lessons to writing music exercises. It’s like dumping language students into the country that speaks the language he or she is learning. They may flail sometimes, but they will learn more effectively through such an immersion technique than through taking a language course in a class.

So, in helping a budding composer compile a toolbox of techniques, I’d rather use whatever motivates him/her and trust that I will be able to use it to achieve my pedagogical goals for that person. For, at this stage, is this not the time for young musicians to try anything, when they are in the safe confines of being students? Otherwise how will they ever really learn how to write music beyond that of a polished, yet derivative nature? In this case, at least this kid has had the opportunity to follow his muse and at the same time learn some of the rules.

Reprinted with permission from American Music Center’s NewMusicBox.org.

Belinda Reynolds is a composer, educator, and organizer that focuses on bringing new music to a variety of audiences and communities. Her music has been performed and recorded both nationally and abroad by top professional and amateur ensembles. You can read more about her at heshemusic.com.
I finally got an iPod! To set up my new plaything, I decided to check out others’ little mobile music machines to help me learn to navigate my own. In doing so, I found there is nothing more revealing than borrowing colleagues’ MP3 players. It is like opening their closets and going through old yearbooks or letter boxes. It can be a revelatory window into their psyches, not only for what they listen to, but how they listen and organize.

For instance, one performer had playlists for walking, gym, shopping, and driving. Each of these contained an eclectic mix of styles from jazz to ambient to reggae to showtunes to rock. Not one piece of “classical” or “new” music existed in any of these collections. Instead the musician had parsed out a separate library for these works, dutifully creating categories for each time period, genre, and composer. Within these sections there was no ordering of the pieces beyond that of an arbitrary historical placement of the works. It was like all of a sudden being forced to listen to an audio book of a music history survey class. Unlike the creative eclecticism of popular styles found in this musician’s utilitarian playlists, the “serious” music was put aside for “serious” listening, categorized in such a way as to negate the individuality of each piece. It seemed like a Berlin Wall had been built between professional and personal music.

So why do some of us feel the need to segment off music we deem to be serious? Must we place it in a gilded cage? Can’t the music we write and play be heard alongside the music we most often hear outside of the concert hall? Does that lessen its significance for us? Are we afraid it will?

Personally I find listening to all types of music in all sorts of situations to be an enlightening, enjoyable experience. In fact, one of the best features of my iPod is the shuffle mode. In this setting, selections are played at random from one’s complete MP3 library. Thus, within one hour I can hear everything from Beethoven to Xenakis to my Spanish lessons to works for my students to my students’ works to my own pieces. With each new ordering, I find myself listening differently to music I have heard for decades, simply because of what it has been programmed alongside it on my machine.

Shuffling is not a new technology. Years ago in my own house my husband set our old 5-CD player on shuffle for our daughter to listen to throughout the day. He also took this idea live when Common Sense produced a show in which the program order of the performances was based on shuffling the pieces before each set. Inspired by this, composer/performer Pamela Z took this concept even further. Using her tech savvy, she hooked a 300-CD player to a 400-CD player then created a shuffle that crossfaded the all the tracks from the 700 CDs into one another!

Each of these shuffle situations had some limits imposed on them, allowing the shuffler to contain within the programming only selections he or she wanted. However, with the iPod, it has yet to make distinctions with its shuffle. You cannot single out selected playlists, but must accept hearing anything at anytime. It is all or nothing. I love it. I hope they never fine tune this feature for it is the only outlet where all the music in my life can finally co-exist on an even playing field.

Reprinted with permission from American Music Center’s NewMusicBox.org.

Belinda Reynolds is a composer, educator, and organizer that focuses on bringing new music to a variety of audiences and communities. Her music has been performed and recorded both nationally and abroad by top professional and amateur ensembles. You can read more about her at heshemusic.com.
How many of us lament not getting the second performance of a work? We sweat for months, sometimes years, over a piece, only to find it gathering dust after its premiere.

In discussing this with a friend of mine who is a performer and a regular commissioner of new music, she commented that she felt composers look in all the wrong places for repeat performances. Before shopping it around, she felt composers needed to first go to the players who premiered the piece and get their honest feedback about what worked and what didn’t in the music. She also commented on how frustrating it can be to raise the money to fund a piece and then put months of preparation into it, only to discover upon performing it that it needed some adjustments in order to be a playable, successful work. However, time after time, she felt she wasn’t allowed to give any commentary on what could be done to the actual piece to facilitate its chances of getting a second hearing. Thus the music would sit in her ensemble’s library, frustrating both the performers and composer because her group did not perform the piece again.

So, is our inability to get performances our fault? Do we give lip service to our respect for performers, only to dismiss them like yesterday’s news? Do we wine and dine them, but not listen to them? What is it that gives so many of us this blind spot?

Ironically, as a composer, I have experienced the opposite. I am one of those composers who thrives on performers’ input, and jokingly call my premieres “beta tests.” But many times I have encountered performers who look at me dumbfounded when I ask for their suggestions and opinions. Some look terrified, others stupefied, and some with contempt. It is as if I had asked them to fly to Mars—they have never thought of saying what they thought about the music out loud.

Perhaps it is more complex than simply blaming performers’ or composers’ communication skills. When talking to one composer, he suggested it is more a problem of the infrastructure of how we teach and perceive music coming from the classical tradition. Composers and performers are not taught to speak out to one another during the rehearsal of a new piece. They do not learn the art of give and take. Thus classically trained musicians tend to think that once the double bar is written, the music is permanently fixed in that final form. In other art forms this is not the norm. Authors have editors, playwrights have directors, choreographers work with dancers to revise their dances. And film? Rent any DVD and you get an idea of how many options directors try and toss from watching the outtakes. Even in the visual arts, painters and sculptors sometimes tweak a work after it has been shown to the public.

With other music genres this is not even an issue, but somehow composers and performers coming from the classical music tradition still have reservations about letting a work evolve into its final form. So has something in our training indoctrinated us to treat our music like it is the literal word of God? Do we need to rethink how we treat premieres so that we can hear our music again?

Reprinted with permission from American Music Center’s NewMusicBox.org.

Belinda Reynolds is a composer, educator, and organizer that focuses on bringing new music to a variety of audiences and communities. Her music has been performed and recorded both nationally and abroad by top professional and amateur ensembles. You can read more about her at heshemusic.com.
What must we do to really make inroads into how new music is learned and appreciated beyond the concert hall? Recently I had lunch with an extraordinary group of people who are tackling this issue head on. They are working in ways that turn upside down how most of us approach teaching the skills deemed necessary to be a musician of the Western Classical Tradition. I am talking about the teachers and staff of the Walden School. For those of you not familiar with this entity, Walden is a young composers dream—a five-week intensive summer camp for students ages 9-18 with a mission to foster the exploration of one’s creativity through the medium of music. Previous compositional experience is not required. In fact, it is not necessarily a “camp for composers”: the only real music requirement is to have studied an instrument for at least a year.

For over thirty years the Walden School has had huge success with its approach to educating young musicians through their innovative approach of learning harmony and other elements by taking things out of context. Chords are not taught in terms of function but as isolated intervals, in line with the harmonic series. Voice leading is learned not by memorizing rules and examples but evolves out of a series of improvisation games and other sandbox play. From day one, the students are encouraged to explore music by making it up, diving right in and attempting to create sound regardless of the outcome. Through this process, by summers end students attain high proficiency in musicianship skills mastered through the process of composing and improvising works which fellow campmates and resident professionals then perform. It squarely puts into question the assumptions made about Western art music—that in order to master it we must study the way composers have treated it before we can use the materials ourselves.

Even though the final product is not their goal, the results are amazing. Anyone who has met a Walden kid can tell you that the quality of music composed is astounding, showing an originality and technique rarely seen in a pre-collegiate musician. In fact, many of the school’s graduates go on to successful music careers as composers and performers. More importantly, those who do not enter the arts as a profession are instilled with a love for creativity and an appetite for classical, new music, jazz, and indeed all music. It sticks with them throughout adulthood and is passed to their children and students, as evidenced by the high percentage of support and participation Walden receives from alumni decades after their last campfire.

Walden has started a one-week intensive Teachers Training Institute where any musician— whether performer, composer, teacher, or amateur—can experience the teaching techniques used in their musicianship program. As a participant, one essentially becomes a Walden student and dives deep and quick into the game of learning by doing. All are encouraged to leave at the door any previous assumptions or goals one has about music. By the end of the week, choral directors are improvising short vocal pieces, piano teachers are composing avant garde computer music works, and professors are letting loose and doing performance art.

As one of the participants notes, the effect of the program can be wide-ranging:

Learning the Walden Method in this setting gave me fresh eyes with which to examine my teaching methodology and our curriculum. Being a student for a week reminded me of how much fun the process of discovery really is. My middle school students are now composing on a weekly basis using both “found sound” and more traditional methods. My upper school students are now a more cohesive group because of the exercises I learned while at the Institute. Since my students are already quite adept at technology, they find it really useful in their own discovery/creative process. In our 7th grade classes, I have been able to integrate discussions of the harmonic series with the science department’s discussion of sound waves. They get it!

By starting this Institute, Walden’s goal is to impact music education beyond the doors of the camp and their students. It is, in a way, a sort of “viral marketing.” Instead of increasing the number of students in the summer camp, Walden has decided to show adult musicians how to teach this methodology to their students, in whatever setting they find themselves to be working. Eyes and ears are being opened to the possibilities new music has in education and in the culture. It is daring. It is unsettling. It is freeing. And it is beginning to make a real difference.

Reprinted with permission from American Music Center’s NewMusicBox.org.

Belinda Reynolds is a composer, educator, and organizer that focuses on bringing new music to a variety of audiences and communities. Her music has been performed and recorded both nationally and abroad by top professional and amateur ensembles. You can read more about her at heshemusic.com.
Recently I saw a former student at a concert. In catching up on things, she asked me if I ever encountered being labeled a woman composer. She and another fellow student had been discussing how they never identified themselves that way and felt frustrated because another colleague had done so. I was surprised, relieved, and somewhat saddened to hear her story.

I have a number of conflicting feelings about the label “woman composer.” As my contemporaries and I progress in our professional lives, I see very few women following us. It seems that there are fewer women entering formal studies in composition. I have noticed how colleagues are at a loss to find more than one or two qualified candidates to enter their composition programs who are female. There are even some schools with no women composers at all. Ironically, at a time when there are more female role models, mentors, and opportunities, the number of women entering composition looks as if it is drying up.

So, what has changed? When I entered college, it was the opposite. I entered graduate school in the early ’90s, when government affirmative action was still in and the first Iraq war had yet to begin. At that time, I knew of only a handful of professional composers who were women. But not one female composer was ever mentioned in any of my music history classes. In fact, in an attempt to find some music by a woman composer, I went to the local record store. I found nothing until I finally got to the letter Z, where there was one lone bargin-price record of music by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

However, in school I thrived. Even though all my teachers (save one guest) were male, they never singled me out for being a woman. I almost always had wholehearted support for my work, and when I didn’t, it had nothing to do with my gender, but with my style. In fact, the ratio of male to female student composers was 60-40 at my one of my schools. It was not the only one. As I began to go to festivals and conferences I encountered other young colleagues who also came from schools that had a significant number of female students.

Yes, I have encountered stereotypical sexism and discrimination from time to time. But that’s true for most professions, and I have not found it to be unduly more so in music. So while I hate being identified as a woman composer, I still find it necessary. And, while I cheer my younger counterparts for not feeling the need to use that identity, I believe they need to be aware of it. Like it or not, there is still a need to consciously foster and encourage girls and young women to feel free to enter this arena of music. For whatever reasons, women are still a very small minority in the new music field.

Reprinted with permission from American Music Center’s NewMusicBox.org.

Belinda Reynolds is a composer, educator, and organizer that focuses on bringing new music to a variety of audiences and communities. Her music has been performed and recorded both nationally and abroad by top professional and amateur ensembles. You can read more about her at heshemusic.com.

Last week the PBS NewsHour ran a fascinating segment about how the human brain reacts to the stimulus of music. Upon reading the transcript online, I noticed various links to other sites discussing the non-musical applications of music in areas such a mental health, the development of math skills, and the activation of the part of the brain that causes one to experience pleasure from chocolate and sex.

While I find many of these studies to be interesting and illuminating to read, I do question how we as musicians and educators sometime use them to further our desires to keep music in the forefront of students’ lives. I know that, as a teacher, I have succumbed to that impulse to share such material with my students’ parents to prove the value of investing in music for their young. I have copied articles of findings relating higher test scores to students with musical backgrounds. I have shared anecdotal stories relating music training to economic success—almost half of my fellow undergraduate orchestra members went off to careers in medicine, engineering, and other sciences.

Why do we have to justify having music in our lives? More specifically, why do we try to prove its extra-musical worth in education, instead of valuing a musical education for its own inherent qualities? It seems there is this unsaid feeling in our culture that while it is okay to participate in music making, it is not okay to do so in place or ahead of something else. I know of more than one instance in which a teacher has had to allay parents’ fears that their children could wind up on the streets if they take jazz band instead of that extra AP class. Similarly, music educators are often forced by school boards and administrators to alter their curriculum in order to integrate other subjects, from math to history to chemistry.

Music is not the only victim, as other arts are also being pushed to the wayside. It seems that in our country’s frenzy to be competitive in the global marketplace, governments and institutions are madly advocating for the predominance of the core subjects in our schools with the naïve assumption that if our entire population is proficient in the basics, we can out-do the rest of the world in economic prosperity. However, are these efforts creating a generation that is lacking in awareness of its culture as a whole? Is it making a population of Wonder Bread workers, capable of doing their jobs, but not capable of thinking or participating in their communities beyond them? Just like the bread, they may have essential nutrients, but lack any of the real richness, texture, and complexity needed to create a satisfying meal.

So, while I applauded the study of music and its relevance to other fields, I do worry how this data is used outside the respective research from which it comes. History has precedents for using science to dictate social policy. If we are not careful, how we musicians apply these studies to our work may actually hurt our standing in the culture, for it can unconsciously perpetuate the view that music cannot stand on its own two feet.

Belinda Reynolds is a composer, educator, and organizer that focuses on bringing new music to a variety of audiences and communities. Her music has been performed and recorded both nationally and abroad by top professional and amateur ensembles. You can read more about her at heshemusic.com.

Can we let kids run loose? Seems so, at least when it comes to new music. Last month by coincidence one of my student’s endeavors was highlighted in Chatter’s Friday Informer. The project, Formerly Known as Classical, is a new music ensemble comprised and run solely by teens. No one over 18 allowed. The idea has now grown into a full fledged new music concert series that presents music from Adams to Messiaen to crowds of hundreds enthusiastic listeners.

Conceived by Matthew Cmiel, the original concept was to bring together younger musicians to rehearse and play Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round. At first, friends were rounded up for what could be almost called a jam session. There was no performance planned and almost all of the players in attendance had no exposure to new music. But, thanks to the likes of the organizer’s enthusiasm and use of plenty of snacks, the teens took the time to learn the music and got hooked.

As rehearsals progressed, Matthew and the members decided to play a concert devoted to music written after the players were born. From promotion to conducting to producing, my student and his buddies took it all on. They selected works not based on their technical limitations but rather whether they liked them or not. They contacted everyone in the press, blissfully ignorant of the dearth of outlets for the promotion of new music. They emailed everyone imaginable invites to the concert. Matthew even used Facebook, an Internet social networking portal used by students throughout the world, to coordinate production details.

Their efforts paid off. Their first concert was filled with an audience many would envy. The performances had a focus and passion that forgave any technical mishaps that may have been present. Perhaps most intriguing, the project’s success drew in more teens desiring to participate in the learning and playing of new music. Being in Formerly Known as Classical began to be hip among young musicians in the high schools of San Francisco.

So, how come this idea flew and did not fall flat on its face? And, are there lessons from their success that we can take into our own composing, performing, and teaching of new music? In this case, it seems that a “just do it” attitude and a combination of food, friendships, parents, teachers, and blind faith was the trick. Led by a teen passionate about new music, a group of young musicians made their vision happen ignorant of their lack of experience in doing just such a project. No it was not done in a vacuum for, when needed, they brought in adults for advice and help, from the writing of the press release to the procurement of a piano and a concert hall. However, they learned as they went, instead of waiting to learn before leaping.

In discussing this, my husband commented to me how too often it seems in music that there is an unsaid philosophy of needing to know before being allowed to do. This ranges from young composers not being allowed to write music before taking harmony classes, to musicians not being allowed to conduct without first learning formal baton technique. Luckily, in this case, Matthew was not deterred. He came from a background where both his family and education encouraged him to “do” from a very young age. In doing so, he gained a sense of confidence and entrepreneurship that enabled him to bring together like-minded kids to create an innovative ensemble that is turning both heads and ears. He acted fearlessly as only the young (or young at heart) can do.

Belinda Reynolds is a composer, educator, and organizer that focuses on bringing new music to a variety of audiences and communities. Her music has been performed and recorded both nationally and abroad by top professional and amateur ensembles. You can read more about her at heshemusic.com.

Recently I went to a new music concert, where I ran into a close friend and her seven-year-old daughter. After we chatted for a while I went to my seat and realized that I rarely see children at any of the concerts I attend. When I do, it is often not the child of a musician, but that of a “civilian”—the non-musician concertgoer who comes for the sake of the music, not for the sake of professional obligation.

So why are we not taking our own young? I am not talking about towing along one’s toddler to the opening gala of the symphony. I am also not talking about sticking our kid in the greenroom as a daycare center while we do a gig. I am talking about when we as listeners attend music events.

I understand that there is music that is composed to be listened to intently, with the type of concentration and patience that’s difficult enough for adults, and much more so for a seven year old. Yet there are a lot of concerts that youth can experience and enjoy. Perhaps we are overly sensitive to being seen critically by our peers if our offspring act out of line. I know colleagues who found themselves in situations where they had to leave events with their noisy little ones in tow, to the annoyance of those seated around them.

Then again, do our offspring want to try to listen? For some musician parents, encouraging their child to come to a concert is akin to making them go to work with them. Even though it is not a professional event for the parent, the kid still feels like an appendage rather than the focus of the outing. However, I know other stories of composer friends happily surprised to see their young kids at a concert of new music attentive and enjoying the sheer experience, often more honestly and directly than the older listeners around them.

So, how can we integrate our young into the world of live music without it being tagged as a task associated with our careers? How can we foster good concert-going habits without infusing into them what I call the “church pew” mentality: one must be quiet and attentive regardless of the circumstances or God will get you. And, how do we do this without compromising the listening experience of other audience members? Where is the middle ground?

Belinda Reynolds is a composer, educator, and organizer that focuses on bringing new music to a variety of audiences and communities. Her music has been performed and recorded both nationally and abroad by top professional and amateur ensembles. You can read more about her at heshemusic.com. 

Last week, I lamented the lack of institutional support for composers committed to writing music for young players and amateurs. This week, in the spirit of the holidays, I thought I’d share my good cheer and offer a few ideas for how to fund such projects.

First off, believe it or not, there are still arts grants offered by most states to their residents to do specific projects. Likewise, even small to mid-size communities sometimes have government funds to help defray the costs. And, if education is a component, you are often eligible for funding from government educational programs as well. The best thing to do is go on the web and find the contact for the Arts Council and Education Department for your state or community.

Second, if you are working with a school, whether public or private, most institutions have an internal grant fund available to their faculty for projects. Ask the educator you are working with if he or she has access to such funds and offer to help with the grant process, if needed.

Third, try religion. Seriously, there are numerous houses of worship that would love to help host a concert or community event for the local youth. Perhaps your piece could be performed in such a space? I just had a great experience with a church in Oakland, California, that started a concert series that gives half the proceeds to feeding the homeless and the other half to the musicians. They paid the artists fees, professionally recorded the event, and their congregation, all excited about being part of creating a piece of music for a good cause, was a big part of the audience.

Finally, there is power in numbers. How does this sound? I recently devised a venture called the Community Commissions Project. What it entails is that the ensembles I work with get each of their students to raise $50-$100 toward commissioning a piece from me. In exchange, every person who donates is listed as a co-commissioner on the scores, in all PR, etc. In addition, those individuals who give $100 or more get an autographed copy of the score and a recording of the premiere, if available. Modeled after Bang on a Can’s People’s Commissioning Fund, this set-up can be modified and used by any composer and any organization. I feel it is a wonderful way of extending the process of helping create music to the larger community—giving everyone an interest and ownership in helping kids develop skills and love for what we do. Try it.

These are just some things that I have used to help in funding my projects. But with each new music venture comes new needs, and thus I am always trying to think of ways to help what are often first-time commissioners devise a funding plan that is understandable and doable with their resources. Like it or not, as composers we have to be proactive in getting support, both financial and otherwise, for our music, whether it be for professionals or beginners. So, in that spirit, share your thoughts about what you have done to help fund your music for young players.

And Happy Holidays!

Reprinted with permission from American Music Center’s NewMusicBox.org.