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TO OUR LARGEST CELEBRATION OF COMMUNITY AND IMAGINATION TO DATE, AND TO MANY MORE YEARS OF NEW MUSIC TO COME!
CONTEMPORANEOUS IN 2025
Contemporaneous is turning 15 this coming year, and as we mark this astounding milestone on our journey — from when a few kids decided to assume that no music was impossible, to giving larger-than-life performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall and Times Square and presenting the world premieres of nearly 300 new works — we're asking you to join us in creating an unbreakable space in 2025 for joy, imagination, and creative community.
Looking out from an uncertain time, it is crucial for those of us who care most about the things that we in this community treasure in our world — our capacity to dream, to love, to create, to share the strange idiosyncrasy of each of our time on this planet — are ensuring space for that life.
Contemporaneous is planning a 2025 that safeguards like never before those spaces in our world, creating places for community and imagination that are available to all who seek to share their voice, regardless of identity, education, age, or economic standing. We’re launching a revolutionary new initiative called “Contemporaneous: Open Mic” that will allow anybody who wants to hear and share their music to always have a space to do so — full stop. We’re amplifying our commitment to the unlimited dreams of artists, ensuring there’s always room for wild imagination in our world.
2025 will be our biggest year yet, with dozens of world premieres, community gatherings, and the most extraordinary music being imagined. We need your support to help make this possible — to help us make the vibrant world we hope to inhabit, and to advocate fiercely for a space for the budding of wonder.
“It is vital for us to fight for the things that matter in this world – if we want a world filled with the colors of artistic expression, we must make that world; and if we want a world which fosters the pursuit of beauty and joy and meaning, we must make that world.”
— Dylan Mattingly (Executive & Co-Artistic Director, Contemporaneous)
Everything Contemporaneous does is made possible by the support of this community. Every dollar we raise goes directly to artists, towards the viability of this artistic life for all through commissions for composers, fees for the unbelievable musicians of Contemporaneous who carry these dreams into the world, and the production of transforming the impossible into the necessary.
Will you join us as we head into 2025 by contributing towards our goal of raising $100,000 to make this world we hope to inhabit?
COMMUNITY…
We know from years of experience that there are countless people in every walk of life who have wanted to share a musical idea. Sometimes just a melody remembered since childhood, other times a symphony written in the quiet hours after work across a whole life, or even kernels of a new idea that will change the world forever. For those with dreams, there are few things harder than never having a chance to share them.
In March 2025, Contemporaneous will celebrate our 15th year by launching a transformative new "Open Mic" series. The goal of the Open Mic is to give anyone who needs it a space to share their music — with no barriers. For anyone who has dreamed of hearing their music, they can share it on the Open Mic with the backing of the extraordinary chamber-orchestral forces of Contemporaneous.
Without having to pay, without needing a resumé or having connections in the industry, anyone with an idea can be part of the Open Mic and find a free, generous space for their musical dreams and a community that's open to receiving them.
AND IMAGINATION…
It is — and forever will continue to be —Contemporaneous’ mission to offer artists the chance to follow their wildest imagination, wherever it may lead, and to support the revolutionary capacity to reimagine the world.
To this end, Contemporaneous will launch another round of Contemporaneous IMAGINATION, our initiative to commission and develop the dream projects of composers and musical creators — without regard for traditional constraints like scale or instrumentation — drawing future programming for years to come from these boundless dreams. In 2025, Contemporaneous will begin by bringing History of Life — a new ecstatic epic about our place within the world and its unimaginably vast history from our very own Dylan Mattingly and writer Thomas Bartscherer — to blazing life as the next massive presentation of this dedication to the wild reaches of the imagination.
DEDICATION SINCE 2010
Your commitment to the music of the future is a profound statement of trust — not just in our organization, but in the power of music itself. We are so inspired by and grateful for you. When you attend our shows, bring your friends, dream with us, you help us empower artists to make the most meaningful experiences they can imagine.
Please donate today!
Thank you for joining us as pioneers headed for a future of music, meaning, beauty, and community!
Contemporaneous is a 510(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. All donations are fully tax-deductible to the extent allowable by law.
Do It Online…
Or by check!
Checks may be made payable to Contemporaneous and mailed to:
Contemporaneous
P.O. Box 275
New York, NY 10023