All the events from the 2020 Virtual Composers Conference can be viewed in full on our YouTube Channel!
We thank everyone who helped make the 2020 Virtual Composers Conference such a success, and are grateful to all our participants and supporters. Looking forward to the 2021 Composers Conference!
A welcome message from Artistic Director Kurt Rohde
The Composers Conference Statement on Anti-Racism
Founded over 75 years ago, the Composers Conference has sought through learning and adapting, to serve as an inclusive, collaborative environment that promotes the exploration, invention and performance of music at the highest levels. We remain committed to creating an anti-racist culture where Black voices and visions can be seen, heard, and nurtured.
The Composers Conference believes Black lives matter. We will fight against the inequality and injustice towards all Black people. We believe in the power of art to create a more compassionate, ethical, and equitable world.
This summer, the Conference will host an online symposium with four exceptional Black and Brown musicians. The symposium will not center on Whiteness. It will be a conversation among our four guests regarding their significant, meaningful work in the field, and allow them to discuss their practices, interests, and visions. This is a small, first step to more fully realize the environment we strive to create through the practice of anti-racism. Details can be found on CONCERTS and EVENTS page.
-Kurt Rohde, Artistic Director
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 2021 Composers Conference will take place at Brandeis University July 25-August 8, 2021. Applications for Fromm Foundation Composer Fellows and the Contemporary Performance Institute are now closed and open in early 2021. Applications for the Chamber Music Workshop are now closed.
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.
