76th Season
July 26-August 9, 2020
The Composers Conference, guided for nearly 50 years by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Mario Davidovsky, offers a unique opportunity for emerging composers, professional musicians, amateur chamber players, and conservatory-level instrumentalists and singers to come together as colleagues, audience, teachers and students in an atmosphere of fertile creativity and concentrated, high-level music making. Beginning in 2019, musician Kurt Rohde became the Artistic Director.
The Composers Conference is an inclusive, collaborative environment that promotes exploration and invention. Female, trans, non-binary, queer, and musicians of color are strongly encouraged to apply. Our aim is to create a musical utopia that cultivates, creates, and performs the best contemporary music with the highest artistic standards.
The 2020 Composers Conference will take place at Brandeis University July 26-August 9, 2020. Applications for Composer Fellows, the Chamber Music Workshop, and the Contemporary Performance Institute are now open.
Conference Programs
Through an inclusive, collaborative environment, the Composers Conference offers a unique opportunity for exceptional emerging composers, professional musicians, amateur chamber players, and conservatory-level musicians to come together as colleagues, audience, teachers and students in an atmosphere of fertile creativity and concentrated, high-level music making each summer at Brandeis University. The Composers Conference is a musical utopia that fosters, teaches, cultivates, shares, creates, and performs the best contemporary music with the highest artistic standards. The result allows for exploration and invention with integrity and honesty.
The Composer Fellows participate in intensive seminars, rehearsals, workshops and public colloquia with Artistic Director Kurt Rohde and two distinguished Guest Composers summer. Each Composer Fellow has a work publicly performed and professionally recorded by the Conference Ensemble, in addition to collaborating with CPI participants on new works.
Participants in the Contemporary Performance Institute join the community to study, rehearse, and perform diverse, significant, and far-ranging offerings from the 20th and 21st centuries. They are coached by director Margaret Kampmeier and members of the Conference Ensemble, culminating in public concerts at the end of each week.
The Chamber Music Workshop, directed by Jessica Tong, offers amateur chamber musicians a tailor-made experience that includes daily coachings, workshops, masterclasses, ensemble readings, performance opportunities and evening concerts.
The Conference Ensemble, under the direction of James Baker, is an assembly of the finest new music specialists who work closely with the Composer Fellows, Contemporary Performance Institute participants, and Guest Composers. The concerts by the Conference Ensemble feature music from throughout the ages, including new work by the Composer Fellows and Guest Composers.