New Muses Project

Find your next
favorite
composer.

What would classical music look like if we were always searching for our next favorite composer?

What if learning about composers who we're less familiar with were more like an adventure, or a game? The canon will always be there, and there's so much more of the musical landscape we have yet to explore.

New Muses Project is a DEI-centered classical music organization, promoting justice and curiosity through performance, education, and scholarship. We are driven by a radical desire to always keep learning , as well as strong commitments to intersectionality and depth of understanding.

We are creating a vibrant future for classical music that truly celebrates all composers, and we invite you to join us in this adventure.

Core Values

Justice
We seek to redress the centuries-old bias against classical music composers of historically marginalized identities and to continually refine our role in the ever-changing landscape of work towards justice.

Curiosity
We believe in the power of curiosity to change classical music into an open-minded, adventurous field that assumes the relevance of composers a priori.

Partnerships
We nurture the interdisciplinary spirit of collaboration between all branches of classical music, including but not limited to scholarship, performance, and education.

Humanity
We are committed to presenting composers in a way which emphasizes their humanity and lived experiences, so that we consider them real, creative individuals rather than historic monuments.

Innovation
We seek to work on our mission through creative and original means to avoid replicating existing work in the field and to generate scalable engagement and excitement within the classical music community.

Accessibility
We believe that learning about classical music composers should be accessible to all, regardless of academic or performance experience.

Reputability
We are committed to maintaining a high level of quality of our resources in order to present composers in the best possible light.

Our Projects

Web resource
This is the flagship endeavor of New Muses Project, a central hub for exploring composers and their music. Our database is organized as an interconnected web of composers, creating links between them based on stylistic parameters. When you let us know a composer you like, we look in our database for a composer we think you’ll love.

Recordings
Access to excellent recordings is essential for enjoying and learning a composer’s music. It is an cycle of injustice that some composers receive hundreds of performances every year, while others do not. We will rectify this problem through an annual series of professional-level albums of rarely or never-recorded music which deserve more attention.

Transcriptions
For music to be widely performable, scores must be budget-friendly and engraved well. We understand the frustration of coming across a piece’s existence, only to find that no transcription exists or the work is no longer in print. Our transcription project will plug in these holes, removing this particular barrier to entry.

Board of Directors