WHAT'S OUR
MISSION?
Vibrant Matter Collective is dedicated to uplifting early-career musicians in the American Northeast, facilitating an equitable new music community that supports all facets of musicianship. Our core concert series is dedicated to uplifting fresh and diverse performers while promoting the performance of works by living composers.
While there are many opportunities in the Northeast for the practice of contemporary music, it can be difficult for up-and-coming musicians to find their place within the professional new music community. After college, having to balance a 9-5 job with expanding a professional network and searching for performance opportunities can be incredibly overwhelming. Following the completion of their master’s programs at the Boston Conservatory, it was this shared experience that drove Andrew Gretzinger (performance), Dylan Dukat (composition), and Sidney O’Gorman
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(composition) to form the Vibrant Matter Collective – supporting young performers and composers by facilitating opportunities for performances and creating an infrastructure that allows them to network with other artists, audiences, and venues/organizers.
​​In our work as a collective, we seek to cultivate what Jane Bennett, author of the homonymous book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, would call an assemblage–a network of forces that combine to create a dynamic, active, and interrelated whole. As such, we put great emphasis not just on our featured performers and composers, but also on forces like the audience, program, media, and venue and how these forces interact in a specific event.​