Recent News
Spring, 2023
MMF’s Brand-New Modern Vocal Projects Program Celebrates Living Composers
We are thrilled to announce Modern Vocal Projects (MVP), a brand-new addition to Mostly Modern Festival that celebrates living composers, librettists, and singers and is creativity-driven and composer-forward. It is offered as one of the options for up to four composers to have a piece performed when they apply to attend the Mostly Modern Festival, and it provides an opportunity for singer participants to work with composers at the festival. Singers will work with our fantastic vocal faculty, and both the composers and singers will work with this season’s stage director, Stephanie Havey, our Vocal Program Coordinator, Cris Frisco, our Artistic Director, MMF’s Artistic Director Robert Paterson, Stephen Cabell, MMF’s Composition Program Coordinator, and our opera conductor, TBA. Composers can provide their own librettos or choose to work with John De Los Santos, a librettist and one of MMF’s faculty stage directors.
Fall, 2022
Mostly Modern Summer 2023 Institute Applications Are Open!
We are thrilled to announce the third season of Mostly Modern Festival (MMF) and the Mostly Modern Festival Institute, which will take place from June 4-24 in Saratoga Springs, NY, at Skidmore College. This season will feature our ensembles-in-residence, including the American Modern Ensemble, the Mostly Modern Orchestra, conducted by guest conductors David Amado, JoAnn Falletta, and Aram Demirjian, and two fantastic guest chamber ensembles. In addition, we will be presenting three fantastic vocal programs featuring our vocal participants and faculty singing vocal chamber works, songs, arias, mini-operas, and scenes composed by our composition participants.
Spring, 2022
Mostly Modern Festival | The Netherlands is a Huge Success!
After two wildly successful seasons of Mostly Modern Festival (MMF) in the USA, we launched a “test run” of Mostly Modern Festival | The Netherlands, a brand-new festival in Middelburg, The Netherlands, co-hosted by Muziekschool Zeeland. This version of Mostly Modern took place for one week in April 2022 and focused on composers from around the world, and our first season featured world premiered by six excellent composers from the USA and abroad. Check. back for an announcement about MMF | NL 2023, which will take place in April 2023.
Fall, 2021
Mostly Modern Summer 2022 Institute Applications Are Open!
We are thrilled to announce the third season of Mostly Modern Festival (MMF), which will take place from June 5-25 in Saratoga Springs, NY at Skidmore College. This season will feature our ensembles-in-residence, including American Modern Ensemble, the Mostly Modern Orchestra, conducted by guest conductors JoAnn Falletta, Peter Bay, and Scott Terrell, and three fantastic guest chamber ensembles. This season’s festival will feature twelve concerts, with over 150 musicians from around the world, and works by over 35 living composers.
The Mostly Modern Festival Institute will also take place during the same period. Any applicants who were originally accepted into our third season which was supposed to take place in 2020, will be accepted in 2022 with the application fee waived, if they haven’t previously requested an application refund. Interested applicants can find more information on the MMF site.
Spring, 2021
Summer 2021 Festival Postponed Until Summer 2022
Unfortunately, despite out best efforts, the third season of Mostly Modern Festival (MMF) has been postponed once again due to COVID-19 and will return June, 2022.
As we are all fully-aware, hosting events such as these while there is a delayed national vaccine rollout would be extremely difficult — if not near impossible — for organizations such as ours. Therefore, Skidmore College has decided to cancel hosting all outside groups for summer 2021.
Here is a quote from an email we received Friday from Wendy LeBlanc, Skidmore College's Director of Conferences and Events:
At this time, the college doesn’t feel it is plausible to host other groups on campus. The experience of the fall, and now spring, semesters makes it difficult to imagine hosting external guests on campus. Until a vaccine is widely available, we don't have the resources to manage the record keeping and logistics of testing, contact tracing, quarantining, etc. of non-students on campus.
We have considered other possibilities, such as moving the festival to a different location, hosting an online festival, and so on. We all agreed that these options are not feasible, especially with an orchestra and vocal program, or would be extremely difficult since we would run into many of these same issues if we tried relocating anywhere else.
As for an online version of our festival, we feel strongly that this goes against our mission of providing an exceptional live experience for everyone involved, and we wouldn't be able to provide the same level of interconnectedness, collegiality, and performance and recording quality that we provide via our live festival.
In light of these developments, all application fees paid by any current 2020-21 applicants will be refunded, and they are welcome to reapply next season. For any past applicants prior to this season who were accepted, but who were not able to attend, application fees will not be refunded, since we did adjudicate the applications, but we will offer to refund any tuition that has been paid thus far, unless they want to transfer tuition to 2022. We will hold any spots for anyone who wants to delay another year, whether they ask for any tuition deposits back or not.
Located in Saratoga Springs, New York and taking place at Skidmore College at the Arthur Zankel Music Center, MMF includes over 30 composers and 120 performers and conductors from around the world. It is Skidmore College’s largest summer program. MMF has the distinction of being the only festival in North America with an orchestra dedicated to performing mostly modern music, exclusively. Presenting 14 concerts each June, MMF’s season includes the American Modern Orchestra and American Modern Ensemble, as well as chamber ensembles and features three guest conductors from major symphony orchestras. MMF includes the Mostly Modern Festival Institute, MMF’s educational initiative that allows performers, conductors, and composers ages 18 and up to attend. Musicians work side-by-side with top professional musicians, for a three-week intensive, that is transformative to their careers.
MMF offers scholarships and fellowships for each discipline that covers partial to full tuition (Please give to our Scholarship and Fellowships Here). MMF hosts a concerto competition, as well as readings of brand-new orchestral works by composers. Two ‘winning’ orchestral works by the composer participants are performed on the orchestra programs each season.
Highlights for 2022 summer are JoAnn Falletta from the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Peter Bay from the Austin Symphony Orchestra. We will mount Robert Paterson’s The Companion, a futuristic story about a woman and her biomorphic android lover, which has its premiere with The Nashville Opera and Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2017.
For More information, visit the Mostly Modern Festival online. Application to the MMF Institute opens October 1st, 2021.
Winter, 2021
Plans for Summer 2021
We are very excited and looking forward to hosting Season Three, safely and beautifully, from June 6th-26th, 2021, at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.
We completely believe in real learning, live music-making and collaborations In Real Life. We are absolutely planning to be open and have our orchestral, composition, vocal, and chamber music program. There may be no audience, there may be outdoor classes and performances. Everyone will have single occupancy rooms (we never had roommates, actually, and we won't next summer). Dining may be outdoors and/or pickup. We will have top recordings and videos no matter what.
Mostly Modern Festival will follow all safety precautions as per New York State and Skidmore College rules and regulations. Those details will be available in more depth by April and May, 2021. We believe that a "wait and see" approach is best way to keep the door open for June, 2021.
A Few Key Points:
Applications open January 25, 2021
Tuition will be all-inclusive: tuition, lessons, performances, three meals a day, and single occupancy room at Skidmore College (travel to and from Saratoga Springs, New York is on your own).
Students and faculty will stay on campus in our Mostly Modern 'pod' (unless there are some very extenuating circumstances).
New Deadlines for 2021:
Composers
March 1: early deadline for composer applications
March 15: priority deadline for composer applications
April 1: regular deadline for composer applications
Instrumentalists, Singers, and Conductors
March 15: deadline for instrumentalist, singer, and conductor applications
April 1: deadline for instrumentalist, singer, and conductor applications
April 15: deadline for instrumentalist, singer, and conductor applications
Acceptances & Tuition
May 1: acceptances awarded
May 10: deadline to commit and pay deposit or partial balance
May 26: deadline for remaining balance
You will not be billed until May 2021, once everything is confirmed and more definitive information is available.
We will have more updates and details by April 15th, in case the festival is different in size and scope, or if it is not happening because of COVID-19.
Any questions, please reach out to Victoria Paterson, Executive Director via email by clicking this link.
Summer, 2020
Equity & Inclusion Statement
Mostly Modern Projects stands in solidarity against systemic racism as an organization, and supports reforms advocated by the Black Lives Matter movement. We are committed to the principles of equity and inclusion in the arts and beyond. The Mostly Modern Festival (MMF) provides an inclusive and welcoming environment every summer, and throughout the year.
– Robert Paterson, Artistic Director & Victoria Paterson, Executive Director, Mostly Modern Projects and Mostly Modern Festival
MMF is a nonprofit that admits attendees and hires faculty regardless of race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin. Our Special Needs/Non-Discrimination Policy may be found on our site.
COVID-19 Update
The third season of Mostly Modern Festival (MMF) has been postponed due to COVID-19 and will return June 6th-26th, 2021.
Located in Saratoga Springs, New York and taking place at Skidmore College at the Arthur Zankel Music Center, MMF includes over 30 composers and 120 performers and conductors from around the world. It is Skidmore College’s largest summer program. MMF has the distinction of being the only festival in North America with an orchestra dedicated to performing mostly modern music, exclusively. Presenting 14 concerts each June, MMF’s season includes the American Modern Orchestra and American Modern Ensemble, as well as chamber ensembles and features three guest conductors from major symphony orchestras. MMF includes the Mostly Modern Festival Institute, MMF’s educational initiative that allows performers, conductors, and composers ages 18 and up to attend. Musicians work side-by-side with top professional musicians, for a three-week intensive, that is transformative to their careers.
MMF offers scholarships and fellowships for each discipline that covers partial to full tuition (Please give to our Scholarship and Fellowships Here). MMF hosts a concerto competition, as well as readings of brand-new orchestral works by composers. Two ‘winning’ orchestral works by the composer participants are performed on the orchestra programs each season.
Highlights for 2021 summer are JoAnn Falletta from the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Peter Bay from the Austin Symphony Orchestra. We will mount Robert Paterson’s The Companion, ia futuristic story about a woman and her biomorphic android lover, which has its premiere with The Nashville Opera and Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2017.
For More information, visit the Mostly Modern Festival online. Application to the MMF Institute opens October 1st.