 So welcome everybody back here to the Martin Segal Theatre Center at the Graduate Center CUNY in New York, Manhattan. And welcome to our viewers on HowlRound. We screened or streamed over the time of Corona almost all our discussions and panels are online. And so I think also the big part of the audience is with us. So thank you for wherever you are watching and everybody here in the audience. And thank you for taking out the time to listen to what we think is a very significant important connection of work. Milo Rau is here with us from the NT Gantt, formerly known as the Vienna Festwochen. And Kristen is here with us, Marcia and Dunjon. So thank you all for coming. And as you can see here, it is called Beyond the 2% Manifesto, Raising the Bar for Women X Composers, and it's a global composer platform. And it's part of what we talked about earlier that when Milo does engage in something, he wants to leave something, he wants to create something. And so today we will talk about what was a shocking discovery you made that inspired you to do this. But to start, maybe Kristen, we start with you and say who you are very briefly, what you're doing and how you are connected to. Hi, I'm Kristen Martin. I'm the founding artistic director of Here Art Center and co-founding director of the Prototype Festival, which is an annual festival of opera and music theater here in New York City. I use She, Her pronouns and I'll pass. Thank you. Hi, I'm Marcia Sales. I use She, Her pronouns and I'm the chief diversity officer for the Metropolitan Opera and assistant general manager for employee engagement, community engagement, government relations. I've now been there three years and it's been an amazing opportunity to see an art form that I really care about. Think about how it's going to continue. Milo Rao, artistic director from the Vienna Festival, he is and I'm here to listen to, I don't know, we have a festival, an institution and a composer. So to listen to the American experience of, let's say, music and music institutions. And I'm Duyun. I am a composer and performer. Yeah, I'm Frank Henschka who runs the Siegel Center here. Tanja Leon is not joining us tonight. Perhaps something in the communication didn't go right, perhaps on our side, so we apologize for this. If you are tuning in also to hear from me, she's a great composer, actually also a member of the faculty or former of the Graduate Center CUNY here and really a brilliant, brilliant mind. Before we come to you, Milo, tell us a little bit why you said I would like to do this panel. Why is that important? Tell us about the two percent. Yeah, perhaps a very small background on this idea and why this is called the Academy Zweite Moderne, Academy Second Modernism. So I said Vienna Festival and it's 150 years of Schoenberg, so the creator of Ato Nahle, Zwölftholmusik, etc., so a bit the hero of modernism. And at one point we said, but this modernism is incomplete. It was very European, it was very male, and it was, of course, super elitist. And then Janne Beckmann, who is in the public, the music dramaturg of the festival, had the idea to make this academy. And so the academy is based on a very simple, arithmetical fact that Arnold Schoenberg, he had a lot of students that are very known today. John Cage, you wouldn't know Hans Eisler, you wouldn't know Alban Berg, of course you wouldn't know, but he also had 50 female students around 50. And because this festival is running for five years, so the period we will be there, perhaps ten, but for the moment for five. So we said every year we would invite ten composers, make an open call and invite ten composers from all continents, or different continents and different ways of conceiving music and composing music, all female, to this academy. And the first call was sent out, I think we had like 150 applications from 49 countries, something like that. And we are very happy to have you in the academy, of course, and nine other people. So this is the first year and there will be the first meeting of this academy in Vienna in June, to then produce work to connect people and to connect other institutions. So we have a lot of institutions or several institutions in Europe, and of course now also in New York yesterday, the Carnegie Hall, for example. We have discussions to see how can we connect, how can we, maybe for example, say, okay, let's make a project together with you, how can we bring in this opera house in this country and this country to raise, and now we come to the 2%, when you look, it's between two and seven, so that bends a bit from the sir way. And this number didn't change in the last hundred years, so historic grade always was more or less this, that of all the composers in concert halls in opera houses, only two to seven percent are female, from the composers represented in our big institutions worldwide. So in Germany it's, or German speaking countries, it's only two percent. In other countries it's seven percent or perhaps it's ten, but we are talking about a percentage that is lower than any other field of the arts, I think, and of society and of everything. And I was asking myself, of course, there is the debt composers, so you have a lot of Wagner and Mahler and so on and so on and so on. So it was a culture that was based on a European male, et cetera, et cetera, you know that. But it didn't change so much in the last hundred years, so we were asking ourselves why. And we want to collect in this first year, we want to start to produce, but also collect experience, institutional experience, how to change it, and perhaps also how to understand why is it as it is from different perspectives of the field. So that's the, let's say the basis of this panel. And of course when Jana, you started to invite people, of course, we searched for kind of different approaches to the field and that's why we are here. Great, so maybe before we come to Marcia, Dion, tell us how did you connect to it? What do you think of that platform? Well, I need to yet need to understand how that platform will hand out. But I think that's that, you know, I think I too am shocked by the number. I think sometimes as a working artist you don't think about those numbers, you just do your work. But if you are a curator and programmer and I worked with Kristin on the prototype festival and I can have her tell you more about the artist that the prototype has been historically represented, which I think most of them are women artists. So when we are looking at numbers in the statistics, you know, Milo, you were talking about that, big organizations, the major institutions, right? But as a working artist you don't really put a lot of differences between the big institutions and a fledgling and no walls. You just really focus on the works. But I was very struck by what you said yesterday morning about we have to start somewhere to understand how the statistics work. And I think that is we need to, even though the number is kind of embarrassing. But I think that at least we are doing something and I know all of the other nine composers. So I know it's already going to be awesome. What are you going to do? Hopefully. So we're going to represent this work with a collaboration work of mine with a Palestinian filmmaker and a visual artist, Halle de Gérald, and the title of the piece is called Where We Lost Our Shadows and it's based on human migrations. Marcia, I don't know if you were here earlier but we talked about institutions, working in institutions and Milo said we have to go inside to be part of it and change it and to enforce what's good and change what's not working. Tell us a bit about your work. I was not aware of your position. Tell us a little bit. And I gathered some of how I got here is because of my relationship with Tonya Leone, who was the director of music for the Dance Theater of Harlem where I was a dancer. That's how I came to New York City in the 70s. So I'm not a composer but I come to this art form through ballet. So part of because of that experience I care very deeply about the classical art form. So when this position opened up, when you say about coming inside, I have, most people who know my work, I've traditionally been more of an institution person, but it also means because you understand how they are built, how they are structured, what some of their goals are, you can also think about what are the ways you might disrupt some of the things that are happening in those spaces that are not, that sometimes have been exclusionary. So it was great to see that the Metropolitan Opera, when I saw the application for the role, was absolutely committed to this idea of bringing in a chief diversity officer at the highest level in terms of reporting directly to Peter Gelb, who's the general manager, and then working with seven other assistant general managers who work in different aspects of the organization so that you can look at all aspects of the organization from what's happening in the actual things that we're putting on our stages, what's happening with the people who are hired and brought in to both work as arts administrators to the people who are actually from building sets to building costumes and thinking of designs for makeup artists to lighting design, as well as what happens and how do you do auditions, how do you have these kinds of conversations and making sure that you're bringing in a range of artists. So it was wonderful that they started it and, I mean, in terms of how the position, but also we're thinking way ahead because for those of you who know opera and particularly more traditional opera companies, you know, planning four or five years in advance, there were already these kinds of conversations about what are those works that we're going to put on the stages and who do we need to do those works because to your point, the earlier composers, mostly all white, European men and dead, how do you then translate a new, not only in terms of new stories, but how do you really translate in terms of music or in terms of ideas, new works. So look to the future. The Met had a collaboration with Lincoln Center for new composers and the three composers are all of color, but two are women and it was absolutely Jesse Montgomery and Valerie Coleman. So now it's also for them in terms of creating those works, as well as had on our plate and conversations with Karen Splanchard and opera companies, smaller opera companies that have already been doing some of that experimental work, but how do we reach out and work with them? We were also just talking about Yvonne Sharon who collaborated with the Met to bring X, Life and Times with Malcolm X by Anthony Davis. We're going to be doing, you know, so part of my job is to get excited and to bring people in, but also to talk to the company, like where are we having these kinds of conversations? How are we bringing in these new works and how are we bringing in the new audiences? Because the other reality for this art form and not just opera, it's happening in quote ballet, symphony orchestras. The generation of people who used to go or had traditionally been going, this isn't to be mean or cruel, it is just, it is sadly math. Unless we find the fountain of youth, our audience is dying. So how do you, in a realistic way, fill the seats? You can't, you know, you don't want to literally see it just empty out. If you really care about it, as somebody said to me, change is hard, extinction is probably harder. So we don't want it to be extinct. We want the art form real, because it has things to say. So we've been doing those. So between who are you putting on the stages and what that is too, how do you bring in the new audience and get them excited? And it can also be in terms of looking at the ticket prices. But even before we began looking at ticket prices, we started looking at organizations that have what we call employee resource groups or affinity groups. And many of those, and these are young men, women, non-binary who have gone to business school or law school or finance backgrounds working in big companies that pay very nice salaries that can afford the price of the tickets we have now. We have done a number of these over the last three years and discovered that some of these groups we bring in, Latinx, African American, even LGBTQ, many have not come to the opera before. They have never come to the Met. They know the building, they know Lincoln Center. One person told us, I mean, they're making six-figure salaries. I just didn't think it was for me. I didn't think it, you know, it didn't speak to me. But now that I've been here, this is great. So we're doing that to build that new audience, as well as one person said, I thought it was only for rich white people, so I would just stay away. Which I also say, I will say, was a sad thing because I started in ballet in 1964 and my mother used to take me to the symphony in Cincinnati, Ohio, a wonderful symphony orchestra, love music hall, and I always thought of that as my place. I mean, I know that I would go and there were not very many people who looked like me there, but I thought, how did we get from just 1964 within my lifetime to 2024 and we still have a generation of people who think this is not for me. So that's, I will say for me, one of the biggest missions of my job to let people know these places are for you. They're yours, speak to it. As my mother said, once you buy the ticket, they can't tell you to leave or they shouldn't. Thank you. Kristen, you're not as old as the 100 years or more of the Metropolitan Opera. You also don't have to work five years ahead. I don't know how far you do. Tell us a bit about the idea of prototype. How has it been, the experience? Yeah, Beth Morrison and I started prototype along with Kim Weitner, Beth's company, Beth Morrison Projects, and Kim at that time was with me at Here Art Center. The three of us were hatching a plot about how to have the composers that we felt really passionate about seen and heard. We felt like they were making this work that was in unconventional spaces, classical contemporary work that wasn't being seen. And we wanted this work to expand beyond the bars and the night clubs and the small black boxes where the work was starting and to be placed into other contexts where it could have a life beyond that. And I think it's speaking a lot to what you're talking about, about having an interest in opera and music theater and about interrogating the line between those things and why some people think opera's not for them and music is or music is for them and opera's not. Like, you know, there are people and our festival, a goal is to like have people see that work in the same conversation and to think differently about what they're seeing. So that was a big part of what we were interested in. We knew a lot of fierce women that we thought would be great. Since the festival started 12 years ago, we've produced and presented 84 works. 59% of those have been by women artists, women-led projects. And the majority of that 59% is women composers. 51% or 52% has been by pop-led projects. So a lot of people are saying that the work is not out there, but the work is out there. People just aren't producing it. And of the work that we've done, 26 were world premieres. So we're really trying to change the canon and include a much broader spectrum of definition. And we're thinking a lot about how there's music that people haven't heard. We've had stuff from, I think it's 16 or 17 countries in our festival and thinking about what it is that we think of when we think of music and how we can expand that definition and understanding. And that's part of what we're super interested in as well. So that was the premise of why we started. And then we've changed curatorially over the years and we were thrilled to have Duyuan with us this year and she'll be back with us next year as a guest composer. Duyuan's world premiere, Angels Bone, we did, gosh, seven. Guest curator. Right. Guest curator. What did I say? Guest composer. Oh, yeah. Guest curator. Yes, as guest curator with us this year and next year. But we had Angels Bone six or seven years ago. And that was, you know, the work that we do is in quite small spaces and quite large spaces. And that's also part of what we're trying to play with that you see an artist that you might usually see in an 800 seat house in a 70 seat house. And then you also see an artist that has never been in such context in an 800 seat theater. So we're really playing with those dynamics as well and valuing all the projects equally despite the size of the house or the scale of the artist's experience. How has the experience been? Do audience come? Do also the audience you want? Yeah, I think that I'll say like I've run here Art Center since 1993 and the here audience is younger than the prototype audience but the prototype audience is younger than a lot of opera going audiences. So the here audience, we used to say they're 20s, 30s. Now I'd say they're more 20s, 30s, 40s. But the prototype audience is going from their 20s up to their 70s and 80s, I'd say. And it's a spectrum and the people are from all five boroughs. There are people who come in from around the country in the world to the festival now because there's an excitement about this contemporary work. So that's been really great to see the growing audience coming from other cities as well to check out what we're doing. It's interesting when you say that we've been also now doing the numbers recently as we're putting on these new works and also even the revivals of older works with new spins like our Lucia and our recent Carmen. And we are actually seeing the numbers in terms of the ages of our audience also moved down towards the mid 40s, which is huge because it had been towards the mid, the sort of aging 50s and 60s. So it's important that we now know that there is an audience for this work who are interested and you have to at least just get them in. And learning from organizations that have been doing this for a while. I think the things that you've added like the Malcolm X reading that you guys did that was so amazing and so many amazing performers participating in that as another entry point that people could come for free into the Met and experience that is like another way that you... And people had never, there were people who had not come to the Met before. Again, it was that same, is this for me? I will say with that, even with the reading, it wasn't only the audience. We had staff members who had been working at the Met. We do have a diverse staff, I think that surprises some people and there are people who've worked there for a long time. There were people who wept because they had not thought the Met really understood them in terms of... But when we did this reading of Malcolm X, they were like, okay, this is real, you get it, you're thinking about how we do it. And that is also part of the work too. The 2% is a real number. I think it was 2020 in Germany, unfortunately, even shockingly enough. We talked about Milo's book this afternoon about reclaiming the future and he talks about the false labels and he talks about old racism and new racism, the old racism. You are a racist. You made racist comments. You made jokes about the people you explored. The new racism, he says, is you go to a sensitivity seminar and you don't say whatever the N word, but nothing has changed. It's still the same, the inside. So it's an incredible question you ask and you are all confronted with. How can it be that 98%, which means 98 of 100 people, men there, only two of them are women? And how can that be cracked? How is it even possible? And then what can be done? Should be done. Well, there are people who are intentionally planning their programming if not thinking about that particular data point but actually intentionally planning a program. So, you know, our music director, Yannick Zetz, again, has been programming and thinking about work, not just of leaving women composers, but he's done a number too with Miss Price, who as a composer of color actually had the opportunity to have her first work, Florence Price having her first work with the Chicago Symphony, but then it sort of went away. But when you have to plan intentionally and the, you know, having more operas by women composers, you know, Jean Tessori will be the opening, her work Grounded will be the opening opera for the Met's season 24-25 and working with composers like Missy Mazzoli, having composing programs that are putting a pipeline. I mean, part of it is not just looking at the data point but then intentionally planning your programming. Like, you intentionally plan, here's what we're going to do. We recognize that there are these women and people of color who have not had their work, here's what we're going to do. That, I mean, I don't mean it to sound simplistic, but it really has to be a mindset that this is what you're going to do. How has your experience inside the institutions, are the doors open or you run into openers or is it complex? I mean, it is complex. I mean, I don't think anybody who takes on this work and I will say as a person who is, quote, physically the embodiment of diversity and having a job with this kind of title, not the chief diversity part. I mean, assistant general manager part because that didn't exist before. People weren't thinking about it. So if the door is open through the chief diversity officer role but then you also have both experience and capacity to look across the organization and the things that it's doing, that's a huge opportunity. And the organization had to say, yes, we're going to do that. And I don't see that I will be the only one and definitely my hope and plan for the work that I do is that I'm not the last one. That there will be people behind me and that we're training them and having them understand both the institution and then there's things that change. I mean, as you mentioned, the Met is over 138 years old. Its premise at one particular point was for two different warring factions of wealthy people to show off their wealth. That has changed considerably because as I said, that demographic is beginning to shift and even for that demographic, their progeny may not always be interested. So they die, the money goes to where? You still have to interest this other group. So I do, the work is hard. It shifts but not impossible. And if somebody doesn't come inside and doesn't raise these ideas and we just let these institutions fall, maybe hopefully something else comes up behind it if that's the case, but if what you want is for the art form to survive, then you have to figure out how you change. Milo, what do you do different than the director of the Vienna Festival home before? What in context to the 2%? Yeah, I think just that we would create these platforms different that we think an institution, I mean, you described it very well for the Met Opera because it's that you use an institution to change the way how you produce art and how you produce audience. Because what I know from opera, for example, in the opera of Geneva, I did two operas as a director. One was Mozart, the other one was a living composer from Catalonia, Hector Parra. And in the audience existing in Geneva, in this Grand Theater de Geno, which is a big opera in Europe, for Mozart you can deconstruct how you want. You can completely destroy it, but you can play it 20 times, you know? Because it's Mozart. And Hector Parra, I mean, I did a quite classical staging and so on and so on. You can do it four times, five times. So the main problem as a composer is that you are alive, you know? So I think you have to change this first and you have to change, I think, the audience that you bring the people that would be interested in Malcolm X or Hector Parra or in these kind of things in your work to these institutions that they understand that these institutions are for them. And I mean, I'm quite new in the Vienna Festival and my experience is mostly from the theater I was before and then again in Belgium. And what interested me a lot is that when we said, okay, we bring from the smaller spaces, the smaller stages, to the big stage, the experimental projects, the projects that you would say, okay, it's a bit kind of a peripheric project, to the center, we found the public without any problem. We found out that the public was waiting for these kind of things, that they came and came and came. So you can really unlearn an institution that you did before and an institution can learn quite fast and of course the public that is linked often to the institution, not even to this or that work. They go there and they are interested in what happens in Vienna Festival. The Vienna Festival is quite a nice example of it. So it's in the crossover field of Europe. It's the biggest festival we have and it's a festival that people would go and buy tickets just because it's in the festival. It might be a bit the same in your festival and this is super beautiful. So you can then start to make a mix and in a positive sense to educate people that they fall in love for your work or for somebody else from the academy and perhaps in the years before they were only watching Mozart. So I think this is quite simple and the last thing is what I found out and I don't have so much institutional experience but I was always impressed because they always, for example, to me they said, Amilo, now you go to Vienna Festival and of course this is super conservative and you will be destroyed. And I mean in short, they say it in a nicer way. And I was impressed how in a very positive and how flexible and how weak these institutions are and how open in the end of the day these institutions are. So it's a very positive, for me, a very positive experience because you think you have to fight it, you have to destroy it, you have to deconstruct it. A bit like you know it from the institutional critique from I don't know the 60s that there is all these old people and they try to destroy you. But it's not like this. I didn't find these people there and I think it's a good... I don't know how you... I mean the Metis really has a long tradition and the Vienna Festival is younger but still and I think it's a very good moment to do what in different ways we try to do. It's a very good moment in our civilization. Of course, demographically it's a good moment. Of course concerning the interest of the public, it's a good moment. And the same thing is for me, I end with it, but of course we were talking about this kind of public that was never going to opera. Before I became a director for opera, I was never going to opera because the seats are too expensive and I thought it's super boring and I don't even have the clothes to go there. So it was even for me who comes really from the European middle class who is kind of the cliche of the guy who would go to the opera. It was just completely out of reach and when I invited my mother to see the Hector Parin opera, she was like, I would invite her to something completely horrific and super boring and then I sent her a little piece of the music and it's a bit like film music somehow. And then she was saying, oh wow, okay, okay, I check it out and then she came and she liked it a lot. And voila. So I mean that's it. So you're going to show each year or present each year 10 female composers for the next five years. So like 50 works? Yeah, I mean, yeah, concept. Yeah, I mean it's too big, it's together with the Klangforum, we play the compositions which is very nice, perhaps in Europe the best, how to say, group of musicians playing modern music. So we do it together with them, we stream it with the first Austrian television, so we really try to to make it, to bring it to 100,000 of people. It's not for, we do it of course, it's a bit like your concept here. Of course, there will be 100 people present or 150, I don't know, but it's for a lot of people. So we try to make it popular and we try to then produce one or two or several, I mean, what will be possible with the permanent sedutions, but inside the festival every year at least two in the year after. So let's say 24, we have you as a guest and we discuss and we see a piece of you, but then in the year after to produce a real work and to have it in the festival and this is the plan. And of course, when we sit here together or we sit together, of course, it's the ideas that then we would think, ah, okay, you already work with her so we could perhaps do this work together and you could bring it to New York and we could, you know, and then we meet somebody from Milano, I don't know, and they would bring it there and so on and then we link people and institutions and right. Because for me, the last thing that I was a bit confused when I saw, when we did this Hector Opera last or two weeks ago, that the Opera of Geneva was investing, I don't know how much money, perhaps two millions, to show it four times and then it goes two times to a festival and they show it six times and then most probably dies. And it's not against manifesto, right? No, not at all, it's a complete, it's complete against all rules of popularizing art, no? It's like you would really bury it and you see the whole institution thinking of they go to a burial, they show it but it's at the same time you feel that it's dying while living. It's very strange. That's funny. So, do you, tell us a bit, you're the artist also on the panel, how was your life experience? How was it for you? Dying while living. To create, to create your work. If 98 of the places were by somebody else, how was that for you and your friends and your community and your composer, how did you experience it? This great divide, this unjust... Well, I want to, can I, like, in addition to the intentional planning I really wanted to add one thing or maybe two things, three things. One thing I really think that, you know, that there are so many talks within institutions and be a small, a big, they would look at artists as not just as a name, but not only as a number and that's the worst, as a number, right? But sometimes the artist's name or the style come with actually a baggage and they would often say, okay, you know, he or she or they or pronouns are not ready for our audience or not ready for our hall. So once someone's voice is too small for our stage or too... this one does too much noise and electronic, you know, like, and for instance, and I think that and if you wanted to programming and championing women, not only women, but BIPOC transgender, like, all that, we really need to, as a curator, as an art director, I think that we need to also think about the creative producing part of it, not just intentional planning because you cannot just put work into your hall or on your stage. You have to really work with the artist and reimagining together and I think that is so important to not have the fear to say that this one is not ready for us because that's, I think, the part of the job as a curator, as an artist director is to make it ready, right? Like, as an artist, to make it ready, to make it however ready, however flexible it is because I think as an artist myself, I make sure that my work is ready to talk about the content that I wanted to talk about and then whatever that format that needs to be, we will work it out together, right? I think that should be a little bit of a format where we need to rethink and re-imagined. The other thing that I wanted to say about this is so great to have those initiatives and all that, you know, but I would hate to encounter this again and again like every festival wake up to a phenomenon this year and then the other, you know, like a Don Ashken festival wants to do the global thing and they do the thing and then the new director comes in, they wanted to do another new thing and what happens is that the artists of people who, you know, you wanted to chairman just feels like they're being dragged along, right? And I think that the success of those kind of initiatives and a platform should be based on profoundly rooted continuum. It has to be on continuum and sustainability. What does that mean? It's that the world premiere productions needs to go out. Not only does it need to go out, we also need to look at new works from the artists and I feel like Portable has been very successful doing that and I think in the countries like Germany because I have worked in Germany it's always lost so many talk of like open up person, you know, serious can that person write music? Like it's just so much of that kind of, you know, but like, oh, but that is like, oh you know, there's the major subscription and then there's the other through through shoulder pad. Anyway, so that was the, that was that like I would say not only my frustration as working artist, because as a working artist I don't feel like I have that, but as artists who trying to also work within our community at large globally and I see that again and again again, not just as a woman, not just as a BIPOC like as everyone embodying that and also traditions and also music traditions practices, not just that kind of style but there are so many things that I would like to address and I think of course like yeah, we can still talk about that number but if we were talking about someone who is outside doing the operatic work and all that things, maybe it's zero points, zero, zero, zero point but it's not about number, it's about like what kind of story we wanted to move forward in for our future generation I'm interested in the current storytelling is our current mind, I don't care about 2%, I don't care about a second I love Schoenberg but when I was reading, you know when I was studying those a textbook, you just think because none of them is part of me and you really think that has nothing to do with you even though you love their music, you love their so I don't think I'm part of any of the percentage but that's not, but it's okay and I think as a artist, maybe it's okay because I'm interested in doing other things that Schoenberg is interested in and I think that is another something that we need to talk about as well like great, heritage is fantastic and I write like Schoenberg too and I can definitely use his set theory and all that but I think I'm just maybe a little bit allergic to when we're just like pitching hold to the numbers and because what I'm caring for is not from Schoenberg even though he is one of my music idols but I don't come from that tradition so that's one of them. I hear you so in a way you say I'm not even part of the 2% which is even said about also to say I don't want to be invited to the table, I would like to choose the evening let's go to the market, what are we going to serve what are we going to cook, what are we going to, you want to be part of the whole institution is that thinkable? Yeah I mean in terms of the conversation about what it really is that I forget who absolutely coin fades but the idea of you know what's true inclusion to your point it's not just getting the invitation but did you get to participate in the shaping of the party and what music and what the dancers are going to look like to your point I mean because the Metropolitan Opera is a large opera house it's also you know a lot of unions lots of I mean lots of structure too and it costs a lot to even start a rehearsal for something on the stage to your point making sure that the work is ready but it doesn't mean oh we won't consider that work because we haven't you know it doesn't fit. A lot of why it takes those five years is the beginning of the conversation if not you know with collaborating opera houses that are smaller or organizations that have worked with particular composers before to think about how do we move that piece from opera St. Louis you know of the opera company of St. Louis where champion and fire shop in my bones first came from those are very small stages you know like you a 3,000 plus opera house with all of the range of people that you have to have in order to fill it that's part of the your to your point that is also intentional how do you bring someone along to bring that work forward and I think that those are things that the Met also in recognizing bringing new work and not and even things that might be experimental to ensure that you bring it so that doesn't have the one time performance I mean fire ship my bones sold out and we're bringing it back again already as a revival and it's not the only this the same is true you know I think as we look at what's going to happen with other operas that we're bringing that are going to be new in the next season it's also to think what will it look like in revival it's not from the standpoint of like what's going on but as we it does it to that point doesn't make sense to spend the money to develop it and then have it only have one opportunity you have to really do that work to grow it and to give and and think about what are the stories that that are going to attract an audience from how do we even retail Mozart or Wagner but how do you also bring the stories that people are telling now tell tell us a bit about your strategy if you feel it's working or what would you love to do if you say this is missing something is incomplete we wish we could do that or what I mean we're we're trying to do things in unusual spaces like our festivals in January and it's freezing in New York City in January but we do outdoor performance so we commissioned a piece for an ice skating rink and so it happened on the ice skating rink and some people skated and some people watched from the outside or we this year we got very unlucky and it was very very cold so we actually made a last minute change to an indoor location but the point of it is to have people have access to the work that wouldn't see it otherwise they might never walk into an opera house or a theater or an art center but they're getting to work in a context and suddenly like they're like oh that was really interesting and that was fun and I want to see more of that how can I see more of that so offering these free performances in unusual spaces is something that we've done which has a lot of complexity to it but is also really fun and watching people's reactions is really fun we've done two pieces in Times Square and had people from all different walks of life gathering around so that's really fun same question to you what would you love to do what are you waiting for as an invitation what would form an institution or a producing organization if you could what do I want it to do what you couldn't do what I couldn't do I feel like I can do a lot of things she can which hasn't been given to invite in a produce on a scale or to work how would it look like so you're asking what my ambition is yeah a vision where you say vision we hear something is missing it's not represented what do you think I'm also working with groups of first generation school children in very far away places in border cities and in China and using like music also looking at living heritage to not only hire the local musicians to teach back their traditions because it's getting lost and it's not using that and to use the new storytelling to give the kids the power of learning arts and also working with special schools including the blinds and autism kids so this actually to me it sounds like you think it sounds like outreach program if you are running institutions but to me that's actually my ambition because I can write orchestra I can write opera I can write and I am writing that I am doing all this other stuff big and small and crazy shit sorry crazy and punk bands but to me like I'm also looking at my power of not only do I have the platforms but also what is the new music means not just to audience in New York, in Vienna in Darmstadt, in Shanghai but really like not just regular people people who live very like access right I'm talking about knowledge access and this is something that I feel that I would love to do more collaborations and engage more artists like and do like on the ground work and this is something is my ambition and I think that this is I feel like what new music can really do like new storytelling can really pushing forward to this tradition and I think we for me I have to think bigger and I cannot and I never because I never think I'm part of the 2% so I never wait for institutions to join their party I am having my own party I mean I think that there's a spectrum of work that can happen that can speak to different constituencies and that's what's and that for that work to exist in a common platform is really interesting like in this prototype that we just finished we had 17 Ukrainians that we brought over to make this incredible work that brought that work to us and it was this phenomenal kind of experimental theater work throwback to some genres of experimental theater in New York but in a contemporary music context and there was lots of nakedness and there was some really loud guitar and people could put their headphones in you know I mean it was this incredible mix this visionary kind of work and then in the same festival we also had Heather Christian's piece which I worked on for the last five years with 36 people on stage and it was an amateur and professional chorus and the work was built over many months and you had this feeling in the work of the community that was knit across that group of people that were sharing that stage and that were then sharing that with the audience that was present and those works are existing in the same festival and they're existing in the same conversation they're not different conversations because to the Ukrainian artists the work that they're making was having this resonance to the war that's happening there now even though they made the work before now it has a whole new resonance to the community that was being engaged with Heather that was speaking to their audience in the same way so I just think that there's a way that you can for me it's the passion and vision of an individual artist and if you can bring that to light in their intention that's where you're succeeding and that's following a little on what you were just saying that's what it is and that's why those things can fit in the same festival because the passion and vision of those artists was really coming through because they had the right support and context for the work to be seen and experienced. I also think that from that standpoint to the idea that for many times in terms of the opera form that's present has been in the past presented at the Met people always thought or tried to approach it which is why some people said this is not for me but from the standpoint of you're moving up some cultural ladder or some social ladder because you've gone to the opera like you had to aspire to that and if we really want to capture audiences and stories we inspire like our works need to say something and speak to people's hearts and that's why the idea in terms of news stories when you see I mean when I saw just the number of people I mean I you know physically remember going to operas and maybe they're six people of color to see the audience came in for fire shut my bones or for X I literally was standing at one point on the grant here and watching people come in and with getting a little late but I was like this is a sea of people of color this is not you know one or two and I want them to come back not just for X or fire but I want them to come back you know here Angel Blue in Carmen or here you know I gull or here are El Nino which is going to talk about stories yes by it is by a male composer by John Adams but Elaine Blaine Cruz is going to be the director and the Von Tynes and Julia Bullock and Jeanette Bridges are coming and it's also going to tell a story that of nativity but about immigration I mean these are the stories that we think will also excite and inspire people and not just that you come into the met and you'll suddenly get this you know and promoter of like oh you're now a cultured person that I think that also that particular story is gone by the wayside organizations like yours in terms of saying here's the way to experience these amazing creative people that's what we wanted them at they're amazing creative people that are working there and so to bring those stories out is really when you ask like my ambition that's my ambition to see that and people to see the range of even how some of these stories connect that you know the migration story crosses many many many cultures and many many different nationalities and people the struggle for empowerment in terms of women crosses many many different groups we can see the connections if we also don't get lost in like oh no that was composed by Puccini or you know so it doesn't really it can't really matter to me that that's once we make those connections I think our seats will be full should we go to audience question because that's a great audience here and and and to participate you know this is a dialogue as we see multi-log so I'll come down any comments or so one two three four okay I'll start with Jesse maybe shortly introduce yourself and you have to speak in the microphone because it's also streamed hi thank you for the conversation my name is Jess and I'm at the Graduate Center getting a PhD and I'm also a drama turd and one of the things that I'm thinking like seeing the landscape of what's on the stage we have an artist, a composer we have a producer of a new festival we have the institutions here and the one element that is kind of missing but also I think such a strong part are like the collectives like when I was first introduced with you it was International Contemporary Ensemble and so I'm wondering what and how the collective of composers the collective of composers and designers who are generating the work and who are supporting each other how they get enmeshed within the system of producing new work I mean we've collaborated with ICE with contemporaneous and with a number of the ensembles here we often sometimes co-commission like the festival will co-commission with an ensemble a composer that we're all excited about and then work together on it we've also at here we've worked with companies like Thing and Why which is a collective of composers and we've also worked with the individual composers outside of their collective so I think that there's a lot of different models of empowerment and collaboration and that it's exciting and fun and it's another way to think about your players and your players being your creative forces not just executing the inspirational music yeah a number of is made by these two composers but they only work with their actors so in a way it's a collective creating works and I myself also do not like opera that's okay but that's why I want to do opera right because you just you challenge yourself see that what you can do to shift that narrative and to what kind of story ooh can you tell but to go back to your question of collective I do think that as a curator and a performer we do need to be really mindful of looking out to these collective energies because that when I'm talking about because the one thing that I do not like about opera is that it's so hierarchical that composer is so high up and I don't agree with that and I think so many things that in a theater making is about ideas and it's also about and when we are also talking about engaging other music traditions you cannot just say oh featuring this I mean there's just so much part of that creation of the work so we also need to be very mindful of that as well this question was Hi I'm Olivia so I spent most of my professional career that is so pretty fresh so nonetheless in classical music programming also in Vienna and Berlin I'm also a musicologist and a researcher so like so many of these things resonated with me very much and I'm very excited about this so bear with me I think two very formative texts for me are formative moments these are both by men so I'm sorry about that but our music theory's white racial frame by Philip Ewell and then also hungry listening and indigenous theory for a resonant theory for indigenous sound studies which I'm sure you're familiar with and so these really got me thinking about the question of like how do we create validation or systems of validation and hierarchies and so my question to you would be kind of what your stance or approaches are to on the one hand implement that in programming and breaking up here we're talking about breaking up these content structures and like these levels of like how do we get people to feel comfortable entering the space but then also the questions of like listening how do we listen and what does it mean to listen and educated in certain ways of tonality and how does that shape our programming practice sorry that was maybe very long but I do think that that's some of the challenge too but that's also going to be continuing the conversation for the next generation as we think about who are the composers I mean if anyone had the chance to come to X the life and times of Malcolm X I mean you hear kind of tonality and yes still within the structure because that's how you know Anthony works but also adding the jazz on top of what we also talked about in terms of classical that's a very different and I could hear for some people who were in the audience that sometimes that was also a challenge both in terms of and people looking where's the melody you know but it didn't always have the sort of traditional aria moment and not but in Terence Blanchard does a little bit of the same I think that this is these are the things that are going to keep keep challenging and shaping because a lot of times it was also too about the story the power of the story but and I was I have to say for I was surprised to hear people's reaction and I don't think it was I mean they don't have to be polite or nice to me they can say whatever but it was they really were moved they really were the stories actually spoke to them as well as the music in different ways so I think that the more we push ourselves as organizations and institutions with these opportunities and have these conversations with different composers I mean the artistic department and our various arts are having and our dramaturgs are having conversations in a lot of different spaces and in order for these operas also to come you have to have collaborations but to come to the Met it's there was a time maybe you could come and stage it for the first time you know the finances of it require start with a place that can maybe shape it and then you we you think about how you move that or expand it and I think that that's to the point of terms of collectives that's going to be the way for most arts organizations and particularly large ones because you just can't start literally at the moment of experimentation just in terms of cost so the more we do those kinds of collaborations and outreach both the stronger our stories are going to be the more it will have outreach you've also then built an audience because you've got people who also know some of those works to begin with and that in terms of institution those are certain realities that you do have to acknowledge you know and the conversations that you have with your funders and things like that so I do think that thinking about how we push ourselves but how do we create those collaborations so we can bring those works I would just briefly add that I think that people are really hungry for fresh experiences and every year in the festival you know we'll bring something and people come up be like I've never heard anything like that before thank you so much for giving me that experience and I think there is a hunger and a curiosity that people have so yeah I think that people want that I don't think they want the same hello yep hi I'm Lily I have a Ph.D. in Milo Rao wow you are a son together and so I'm just going to ignore him for a moment because I feel extremely inspired listening to you three amazing women talk about this in the ways in which each of you have found a way to work within or without institutional dramaturgies in an extremely exciting way and I'm saying that as somebody who literally left North America because I didn't think the theatrical and performance institutions in North America had anything more to offer me or anything particularly interesting I'm saying that as someone coming from Edmonton not New York but I think the point remains valid I'm curious about a lot of things I could talk with each of you for hours I'm sure but I'm always with institutional dramaturgies which is a concept I'm looking more and more at within my work surrounding Milo and I think often particularly within the really stratified institutions that you see in Europe there's this sense that we can't break down the masters house using the masters tools and yet each of you have in your own way found a way to move into stratified institutions or create new institutions of your own that have a greater flexibility and I'm just interested in your insights in doing that and how this has changed and how it's developed and how things have gotten perhaps better perhaps worse perhaps different thank you she told him don't I mean one of the things I do think is important is some aspect of thinking about what are the things within the context of those institutions that you think you want to hold on to I do think the scale and size of what's possible on the stages at a metropolitan opera is really quite amazing and can be quite magical but how do you we constantly update how do you do that with new things and that's why I say you have to start in some way see how it works in smaller spaces and then sort of figure out what that is that translation that's why we have such amazing gifted people within our production group along with even in terms of the dramaturgy how do you make those kinds of translations or the size of the chorus the dancing what shifts in terms of the choreography also stage gets bigger how do you get across the stage and the costume how does it translate in a bigger space and the more we keep doing that work and figuring out how to do that translation that's the way when you say flexible that's what large opera companies have had to figure out how do you do that as opposed to you being the experimental place you might be the supportive in terms of some funding encouraging work with different as I said different opera companies and maybe one day we'll look at prototype Peter gov might come get me but you know you look at the kind of performance that is happening in that space what is it that might translate in terms of both scale spectacle in that way for a mat I mean I think that that's also what is exciting when you say oh you're getting these opportunities to sort of make the shifts it's like how far can we go but also most importantly is like how do we make sure it survives not just you know trickle survive maybe we get a thousand people a night because that won't be possible but really say there are people who want to come and see what the stories were doing they want to come and engage with the ideas that we are talking about that is absolutely motivates me every day because it really is as I said unless somebody out there has the secret and I'd love if you share it of the fountain of youth we just won't have that audience that always saw those same things before and to your point the whole new generation just because of social media and streaming services and everything else do look for what is the new I mean we are absolutely at a critical point we have to figure out what is the new not in a way that just people just sort of like oh it's new now it's all throw it out how do we look for the new that is going to be sustainable and relatable as well not just the new I actually think that the most fun I had with Dramaturk is actually the revival productions because for me premier production I'm always like no yes too many fights for you to really enjoy having the Dramaturk that's kind of a joke 50% and you know it's 50% absolutely true but the revival production is so fun because you are also as an artist you are also very loose of interested in knowing how that piece before you have died still take a different kind of shape and fluidity of that especially if that work has to do with social topic so that social topic and especially if you working with institution especially I mean even if it's small big major institutions because major institutions have such a power to collaborate with other major institutions or small institutions in the city whatever that city might be and in a case in point you were talking about Angel's bone when we're doing like different Angel's bones in different places what happens is that I always wanted to work and talk with Dramaturk about the human trafficking problems in that place because as we know that problem is not just a fixed problem and if we can use institutional support and to understand what is that social problem is in that locale and because of that dynamic of that that would happen would really translate to your audience and that power will get the audience into the conversation not just into the door and I think to me that's very important and that I think is the power of working as a journalist in the big institutions or however institutions that you might be end up doing just to add on yeah it's relevance and resonance to our times like that's what we're thinking about all the time is what's relevant and resonant and how can we amplify that at this moment and then the other thing is like follow the art like that's what it is it's like the artist is at the center of it and you're helping to craft the best work that can be made and it's not going to be the same the next time you're following the art because it's not the same anytime we're not making widgets we're making something different every time hi it's Yishun Urlu and I'm a performer and director actually I have a small comment about I just read this sentence it said that if the map does not agree with the ground the map is wrong so I'm just hearing a lot of if the map does not agree with the ground the map is wrong and I am hearing so many times here like when Peter Gelp I think it's a question of desire to communicate and I don't see that yet I don't see yet that two million dollars has been spent for only six shows something is wrong with the map and in the ground so I'm not going to ask question we have to think we have to change the narrative we really have to get to on the same table share a soup and do something and Milo you became my hero because I didn't know how to make theater the way you were doing and I was thinking but my imagination was not enough really not enough after seeing Moscow trial I was shocked literally I was like what so the way we are looking at the operas or music festivals that has to change somehow bring a completely new mindset into it that the process changes and as you said that I also senior operas and I love it is just kind of we can reach the others I mean we are still is a little bubble you know yeah we are talking about each other I'm like how many people are there where are they you know where where are the PhD other students high school students hello and then you know all these things somehow still I feel after this panel I am not satisfied I'm just kind of feeling the map does not agree with the ground and I am looking at really what is the ground actually know that I can we could respond necessarily too straight I mean I think part of it is to try to figure out how do you acknowledge the next then that's why I say you have to figure out how you would knowledge the next generation what they what do they want as well as you know when you you're talking about these ideas and you you know the ideas that connect to something that's happening in real time using art to actually engage people in ideas I think that's been a big part of what quote unquote traditional opera has learned that there is an opportunity to really reach people again as I said to inspire people but to reach people based on the ideas that are presented but we also have to have real conversations about what those works are and not kind of just in the fantasy we have to have those real conversations I mean as a director you enter opera now from that door how a new opera of course you go from when you come from theater from activism from community work and then you go into a highly professionalized machine super expensive every step and as you said super hierarchical you get the script the score and then you make your concept and then you give your concept two years before you would even stage it and the musicians learn it and when you arrive the thing is done and in the five weeks you can stage no but it's I mean we did what we could in Geneva that we overnight Hector was then changing the score and we were trying to put it in the heads of the of the hundred musicians very fast that we have other changes we invited guitar players from Congo they were on stage two and everything but I remember that after the January Hursley we had we had the impression that the ending was wrong so the Fistum Wanza Mujila a very known writer from Congo he was on stage two he was the writer of the script of the Libretto Mr. Wörth and he and the end was wrong and then he said okay we need another ending and this includes another way of the orchestra to play and then like and the choir and then 200 people are involved and I remember that they said how can we change it so and then I had before the premiere I had ten minutes with the orchestra to change it so it was really like from seven to seven ten we changed the ending and eight was the premiere because so many people are involved you know and this is the difficulty of collective work in the opera because bringing together this collective is so expensive and difficult that yeah you can't just hang around with the orchestra for five weeks and of course when we are talking now about this Academy Second Modernism of course we try to create I don't know how you do it but to have spaces to hang around and to share and to find out what you want to do and to yeah to find spaces of time and collective fantasy in this in this crazy machine before you then go inside the next process of producing like crazy and for me as a just to end it as a director when we did Mozart for example and even worse with Wagner I mean there are so many scenes you have to do in like some weeks that you know you see this scene once and you just say Tcha Tcha Tcha Tcha and then Tcha and you will not see it again until the premiere and this way of working of course is wrong but it's wrong for reasons that are objectively given by what is possible you know and voilà so it's perhaps we need other works perhaps we need to say okay for 50 years we don't do Wagner and we try to develop in another way and I mean it's very basic and structural decision that has been taken to change it because it's the opera and for me a machine that is so much more forest you know like an old factory and it's so much I mean in a very beautiful way not neoliberal you know you can't just flexibly change this and that and then you throw away this one because this experience you can't throw it away you can't throw away this musician because you don't like him because you need the musicians you know you can't exchange it by a manager because a manager can't play the violin so it's a very it's a super nice way of human practice and at the same time it's it's difficult I mean when you described I just would imagine coming in 10 minutes with along with our orchestra being part of its own union too I mean there are 15 different unions that we work with within the structure so that's a whole other kind of sad to sorry to add the lawyer part on this the collective bargaining agreement that would define win that rehearsal but we're also I mean for the met and for the size that we are 20 different offers within 33 weeks you you have to learn those operas and the people who are performing have a certain level of they want to perform the music well so not doing it 10 minutes before with new music that would be a whole and if you're a composer you want to hear it played well too I mean I mean they're all skilled artists yes they could read but even if you if you know if I were a dancer and I've been in that space where somebody changes the steps like just as the curtain's going up you're like oh blankety-blank I'm gonna now remember this new step to make sure that you do it well because you don't want to you know dishonor the things so I think there are certain aspects not just of large opera companies but of the construction of art unless you're saying ladies and gentlemen this is a completely improv moment you know I mean and that could be in its way when you say the ground that would be a very interesting thing hard and amazingly interesting to do with a chorus of 90 an orchestra of 90 dancers 40-50 of them and then the lead singers along with the people running the sets and the like if you did that all improv it it I don't know that it's going to be happening ever at the Met but I have to say I would probably buy a ticket to see that show cause it would be it would challenge a whole lot of ideas yeah we are out of time almost out of time already over time but before we come to the next section maybe everybody could say very surely what are you working on for your next project what's on your what's baking in the oven budget I know that we I think it's really important to talk about budget and numbers and I feel like we don't talk about numbers performing art is so expensive we are so this culture is so used to movies and because movies can just get screened and when we look at when you talk about like 6 million for it's when you think about it's not that much it's really expensive to live in New York City really really expensive so when we like travel to Europe for instance they would be like oh why people coming from US or whatever you know asks this much money you're like oh but people will lose money going to places right things like that so I think our machine of this performing arts or modern music or whatever the the field that we are in is expensive and to me I think it's worth doing it and I am going to go back to your question of what I'm working on now a lot of things but I am also looking at how the ambition works with like to put it on the ground different places and on different stages and that has so much to do with money and numbers and how many meetings that we talk about is not just about the artistic visions because we just get it right away we don't need to have a meeting about that right but it's the numbers moving numbers and maybe there is something really deeper here at play too that this private funding of the American culture which is very different than in Vienna and in Germany and all that and the world trying to have this kind of conversation but the money comes from different part of government and all that so when we are talking about global exchange we need to also talk about the exchange of the money power and all that so just open ended I mean Frank as you know it's written a manifesto and collecting ideas how to change the situation so of course I made some notes and I mean I'm a big fan of very simple technical rules no so for example you said how to go out I mean I completely agree after my experience of four shows what to do with the heritage I mean what to do with Schoenberg but for me the biggest question is I mean I noted one sentence what does new music mean I mean what is why most of the people is completely afraid of Schoenberg 100 years after he is dead as and why is all these people afraid of opera and new music like it would be a crazy elitist bondage experience you know and how can this be changed why modernism never landed in our culture I mean it landed in design it landed in the way how we conceive ourselves how we I mean in everything we see here modernism landed everywhere but not in music why not I don't know I was just like reflecting now and then I want to end with a sentence that I featured from you yeah so change is hard extinction is maybe harder and yes and I think that's it and because I mean then the question for me is even if modernism never landed why are we still giving two millions for four shows do we hold it like this what is the reason what do we expect from modernism you know and when will this closed flower for me still open and explain us why it exists so why it really exists you know and that's my last quote big ambition is for more people to see some of the really amazing work that we're here about to do best El Nino Fortza come back for those who didn't get to see the hours or fire shop my bones which I think stories that might not have been on the the met stages before or they were in other formats I was thinking about La Boheme and then the hours you know which is talking about illness and disease and you know no one really you know it's consumption or something in La Boheme but the realities of what was happening in the AIDS crisis and you know the 70s and 80s here in the U.S. it's those are important stories for us to be both talking about and sharing so I hope that you all will come I'm working on a new work with Kamala Shankaram who's a frequent collaborator of my wonderful composer it's called Joan of the City and it's dealing with homelessness and gentrification and we've collaborated with women in shelters to create the text and it'll be performed in the streets. Well thank you all for the panel as the last comment you know this afternoon we talked about your book and your ideas that we have to leave the spaces the safe spaces and when you took over again you said I have to be in Mosul I have to go to Africa or go back and you did work in Iraq you know how would it be with a metropolitan opera to develop something perform outside perhaps for the people it's paid a lot of it also by taxes by everybody so maybe you know the unthinkable the breaking down of what is what we used to think of you know is something we are starting considering now especially after this devastating time of Corona it happened now it didn't happen 10 years ago 25 so something is up. I would like to thank you maybe go right away Milo we don't even give you your coffee break so but thank you for coming it means a lot to us and it's a great it's of course a big white field and so really thank you