Welcome to Access To Music

“If music can extend its energy into a broader role,
society at large will reap its vast, cathartic rewards.”

With this thought in mind, Elizabeth Wolff has launched Access To Music, a piano recital series held in homes in urban centers throughout the United States. Each concert includes a work by a local composer. This same work is performed in an additional city, thus creating a “round-robin” effect and giving the selected composers double exposure. As well, the programs are repeated in outreach settings—at local prisons, rehabilitation and psychiatric centers, women's shelters, and other institutions whose residents cannot travel to hear music's power.

ATM's recitals have taken place in St. Paul, Tucson, Los Angeles, Denver and Washington DC. Other cities will be strategically added on an annual basis, ensuring a strong ripple effect across the country.

The mission of Access To Music continues to be threefold:

• to challenge and expand social conscience
• to promulgate the names and works of today's emerging composers
• to give pianists greater opportunity to approach, undertake, understand, and perform new keyboard works

Access to Music was featured in an edition of the American Composers Forum newsletter, Sounding Board!
Click here to download a PDF file of the article >>>

It is a privilege to introduce you to Access To Music, a series of piano concerts held in homes throughout the United States. Its mission is to feature and further the careers of emerging local composers whose interest in the piano is strong and ongoing. A doctoral course on contemporary music at CUNY's The Graduate Center led me to ponder: why not create a concert series which would highlight 21st century piano works?

In my hometown of St. Paul, suggestions and support led to the birth of ATM. Since that Twin Cities debut concert, we have performed in Tucson, Los Angeles, Denver and Washington, DC. Because American Composers Forum agreed to serve as our Fiscal Agent, we became a 501(c) 3 non-profit.

The all-important format was carved in stone from the outset. Each concert includes a work by a local composer. At the following concert in another urban setting, this same work is included along with a selected work by that city's resident composer. The round-robin concept gives every chosen composer double exposure. It is a joy to unearth and learn the repertoire, play the new works in two settings, and of course, simply get to know who is "out there"---who is writing for piano, who needs an audience locally, and who wants to enlarge his career outside his environs. Most emerging composers, I have found, seek just that.

The mission of Access To Music does not end with the recital, however. Indeed, probably the heart of ATM is that the formal house concerts are repeated at a local rehabilitation center, senior center, prison, shelter, psychiatric facility, or nursing home. These 2nd presentations not only give the new works another local hearing, they introduce the very concept of productivity, purpose and creative thinking to those who have so little contact with its inspiration. Presenting both classical and contemporary music to young and elderly alike in an expanded repertoire of locations, simply gives music's enormous power even greater accessibility.

At this juncture and because of ATM's youth, I am the sole participating artist, but in time, and with exposure, my hope is that more pianists will jump on board and participate in the treasure hunt.

Thank you for your interest in ATM. We welcome both suggestions and support.

Elizabeth Wolff

Founder and Artistic Director