Contemporary Music for All (CoMA): The Open Fund for Organisations
For:
Contemporary Music for All Festival and Summer School
Contemporary Music for All (CoMA) has been an energizing force in contemporary music for more than 20 years, bringing together musicians of many types; young and old, amateur and professional, beginner and experienced, and uniting audiences, composers and performers in a participatory celebration of contemporary music.
Founded on the observation that, due to the high technical demands of much new music, many non-professional performers are excluded from enjoying the experience of actively taking part in the music being written by our most important composers, CoMA seeks to create both a repertoire and the contexts in which it can be played and heard.
An annual summer school brings together all-comers with leading professional composers and performers to share ideas and to make music together as creative equals, this year with Michael Finnissy, Judith Weir, James Weeks, the Fidelio Trio and a re-convened IXION ensemble directed by Andrew Toovey.
Throughout the rest of the year CoMA oversees and coordinates a network of performing groups throughout the UK and abroad (there are CoMA groups in Maastricht and Berlin for example, in addition to the UK-based ensembles) and, in addition to their many performances, there are regular special events, workshops and courses.
Increasingly CoMA plays a coordinating role for contemporary music enthusiasts and professionals of all kinds, as evidenced by the convening of the UK’s first national festival of contemporary music for all in March 2016 at venues in Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London and Manchester.