WoCo Fest 2024 Evolve: Saturday at the Mansion

Explore exhibitor booths from Ebony Music, Women in Music DC, Washington Women in Jazz, Key of She Jazz, Sleepy Puppy Press, Aubrey Bergauer’s Run It Like a Business, and more, get free headshots with a professional photographer, and enjoy dining and shopping opportunities. Food trucks will be on site during the day and there will be a public food and wine reception after the final performance by Sarah Cahill.

Free headshots provided by M3 Mitchell Media & Marketing.

As a musician and sound-obsessed person, I am constantly thinking about the physical properties of sound and the infinite possible ways that vibrating bodies can be manipulated to create different pitches, timbres, and shapes. The sonic image I had in mind as I conceived my harmonica sculptures was this: what would it sound like to be surrounded by harmonica players who could each play ten pitches at once without ever needing to breathe?

My first germ of inspiration came from watching the flexible plastic wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-tube people sometimes seen along the highway advertising car dealerships. I wondered, what would it sound like if the air blowing through the wacky creature’s limbs was channeled through a harmonica? It could create an otherworldly harmonica sound that no human player could make. Many of them “playing” together could create rich and continuous walls of sound.

Harmonitrees uses vinyl, fans, and deconstructed harmonicas to create an interactive environment that is whimsical yet intense.

See the Harmonitrees in action here.

WoCo Fest 2024 features our inaugural Composer Workshops which are process-based, exploratory music workshops offering women and gender-marginalized composers the extraordinary opportunity to workshop their ideas in real time in front of a live audience and hear their works-in-progress performed by the incredible musicians of Thalea String Quartet. These workshops are a safe space for composers to try out ideas which may or may not work and to take artistic risks that could lead them in an exciting new direction. It's also a thrilling opportunity for the audience to watch the creative process, so often behind-the-scenes, at work in real time!

If you hate that phrase, you’re not alone. But the arts are a business, a sector worth billions whose institutions serve almost every region in the country. Today, arts organizations are trying to rebuild audiences, reclaim relevance, and confront centuries of systemic discrimination.

The solutions are right before our eyes though. Volumes of data, research, and case studies from the for-profit sector demonstrate how to achieve success across creating places of belonging for our customers, places of psychological safety for our artists and administrators, and places that live their values internally and externally.

Just because arts organizations are non-profits doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make money; it means the money we make goes back to fund the mission. And it means a sustainable model is still necessary. Running it like a business isn’t unwitting board speak; it’s essential to revitalize this critical, massive economic engine and ultimately better serve the art and its consumers in the new normal ahead.

Based on book of the same name published February 2024 by BenBella Books.

The prioritization of women’s literacy and the rich musical traditions of
cloistered life on the Italian peninsula contributed to a proliferation of women’s musical creation across the seventeenth century. This talk focuses on the variety of venues in which Italian women flourished as composers, including the court, convent, and academy.

Amanda Gookin, moderator

with
Jasmine Barnes
Andrea Casarrubios
inti figgis-vizueta

Honest Commissioning: Commissioning is about more than raising money to pay for a new work. At its core, commissioning is about honest and open communication from start to finish. Having commissioned 18 works by women and gender-marginalized composers through her Forward Music Project, cellist and entrepreneur Amanda Gookin will engage composers Jasmine Barnes, Andrea Casarrubios, and inti figgis-vizueta in a discussion about best practices to achieve an enjoyable and respectful commissioning process from the very beginning through the world premiere and beyond.

Parking for events in the Mansion at Strathmore is free in the Mansion lot on a space available basis. Learn more.

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