How Does One Successfully Program Contemporary Music?
These days, one of the biggest challenges facing the classical music industry is figuring out how to successfully program new music. It is no secret that concerts that only feature contemporary composers’ works and none of the traditional favorites—like Mozart and Beethoven—have a hard time filling the seats. So how do performing ensembles draw an audience to hear new music? To find the answer, one needs to look no further than the Cypress String Quartet. Having the pleasure of attending the group’s 2009 Call and Response concert earlier this month in San Francisco, California, I witnessed the talented quartet draw a crowd of diverse youngsters to listen to the premiere of Lento Assai—a newly written piece by contemporary composer Kevin Puts (b. 1972). The secret to the quartet’s successful programming of contemporary music lies in its ingenious Call and Response program. Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, Call and Response was designed to create new music that is based upon earlie
