Event series
Symposium - Diversity and Inclusion in New Music

The Goethe-Institut Boston, in conjunction with Ensemble Recherche (Freiburg) and Castle of our Skins (Boston), presents a two-day symposium that brings together local and international creatives actively working to diversify new music repertoire in Boston, Germany, and beyond. Through a mix of virtual and in-person panels, brainstorming sessions and performances, the symposium aims to inspire cross-cultural action and coalition building around the topic of diversity in new classical music.

The Goethe-Institut has long promoted critical discourse on the effects of colonialism and ideas about what a postcolonial world might look like. When applied to the Arts and its institutions, important issues arise such as the need to determine the future of cultural objects from the global south in German museums, to reign in the power (and arrogance) of cultural institutions of European and North American, and to recognize the dominating tendencies of the western cultures when it comes to worldwide dissemination of cultural production.

In the field of music there are also many questions that arise. For example, how to decolonize music, in particular when considering historical and contemporary classical music traditions of Central Europe, where its dominance over other regions and genres has too often been mistaken for being aesthetically superior. What must change so that composers and performers from non-western backgrounds can be accepted by and contribute freely to the current international classical music scene on a greater scale? How can the challenges that artists with different aesthetic practices encounter be met more constructively?