Coming to America: Immigrant Sounds/Immigrant Voices was a project of the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), exploring civic dialogue within the field of classical orchestral music.  Spanning ACO’s 2000–2001 season, the project centered around chamber music concerts and informances at schools and cultural centers in New York City, bringing immigrant and refugee composers and their music into communities, and immigrant and refugee communities into concert settings.  Through dialogue, the project sought to link the music of four immigrant or refugee composers to questions central to immigration and cultural adaptation in American society.  The case study chronicles the many unforeseen difficulties that arose, and the programmatic and organizational conversations and reassessments that these difficulties sparked.  The project came to illuminate ACO’s mission and role within the civic sphere, as well as the challenges that are intrinsic not just to arts-based dialogue work but to processes of creating active, sustaining culture.  The case study includes a reflective essay by ACO Managing Director Michael Geller, Coming to America and Civic Dialogue: Implications for ACO and the Field.

Coming to America: Immigrant Sounds/Immigrant Voices was a project of the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), exploring civic dialogue within the field of classical orchestral music.  Spanning ACO’s 2000–2001 season, the project centered around chamber music concerts and informances at schools and cultural centers in New York City, bringing immigrant and refugee composers and their music into communities, and immigrant and refugee communities into concert settings.  Through dialogue, the project sought to link the music of four immigrant or refugee composers to questions central to immigration and cultural adaptation in American society.  The case study chronicles the many unforeseen difficulties that arose, and the programmatic and organizational conversations and reassessments that these difficulties sparked.  The project came to illuminate ACO’s mission and role within the civic sphere, as well as the challenges that are intrinsic not just to arts-based dialogue work but to processes of creating active, sustaining culture.  The case study includes a reflective essay by ACO Managing Director Michael Geller, Coming to America and Civic Dialogue: Implications for ACO and the Field.