Relevant Tones Live: The Power of Babel

Published 50 years ago this year, Studs Terkel’s seminal book Working is a compelling look into the world of jobs and the people who do them. ACM celebrates this landmark with a unique evening of new music inspired by Studs alongside a fascinating conversation about how work has changed since his time and where it might be going next.

Our musical guests include the groundbreaking composer, conductor and saxophonist John Zorn and multiple Grammy-nominated Black Oak Ensemble premiering four new pieces written just for this evening.

Artists should be paid for their work but what does it mean to “sell out?” Why do we value visual art and music so differently? Can commercial art ever be good?
Join host Seth Boustead and special guests Douglas J. Cuomo, composer of the Sex and the City theme song, art curator Tod Lippy and filmmaker Juliet Lewis for for a lively discussion of this pertinent topic.

Italo Calvino’s seminal short story collection Cosmicomics tells the story of the dawn of the universe through the eyes of an immortal narrator known only as Qwfwq.

The stories are inspired by then-recent discoveries in quantum mechanics and physics and are told with a sly sense of humor that brings them down to the human scale.

ACM has released a new album of music by Seth Boustead inspired by Cosmicomics and this release party features Unheard-0f//Ensemble performing excerpts of the pieces alongside conversation with Yale University astronomer Chira Mingarelli and writer and comic artist John Dermot Woods.

The New York Times has begun a new program called Overlooked in which they belatedly write obituaries for extraordinary people, (many of them women and people of color), whose lives were not originally commemorated upon their passing.

Access Contemporary Music has commissioned five composers to write a short musical piece for string quartet inspired by a life featured in the series.

We’ll perform each piece, hear from the composer how they paid musical homage to the person who inspired them, and talk with special guests filmmaker Vanessa Gould (Obit, Between the Folds) and Baltimore Sun obituary writer Jacques Kelley.