Pulled from reports written by Dr. Erin Busch, organized by Abby Rolland*
As part of The Presser Foundation’s drive to be more transparent and to amplify the work of its partners, it uses information from grant reports to highlight its grantees.
Each post will spotlight one partner, who has final say over the contents and structure of the post. In this way, the Foundation hopes to not only use information from grant reports (which often go unread and unused), but also to shine the light on many wonderful music organizations.
This post focuses on Wildflower Composers. Created in 2018 by Dr. Erin Busch (a Temple University graduate who received the Presser Graduate Music Award) as the Young Women Composers Camp, the organization amplifies and supports female, transgender, nonbinary, and genderqueer composers by providing accessible and high-quality programming, resources, and mentorship to a global community of early-career composers. It offers a suite of programs, including college-level composition courses, an annual summer festival at Temple University, and a growing support network of peers and mentors from all over the world.
The Foundation began providing general operating support to Wildflower Composers in 2021.
Background
As the only female composer in her community growing up and in her undergraduate studies at Temple University, Dr. Busch realized “that (the) homogeneity of the composition field was a widespread systemic problem.” Several years later when she began teaching at Temple, another female composition student echoed the same issue. Based on that conversation and her own experiences, Dr. Busch decided to create the “Young Women Composers Camp,” a weeklong summer festival where young, female-identifying, nonbinary, transgender, and genderqueer composers in middle school and high school could come together to compose, learn from core faculty and expert guests, and share their challenges and successes with one another.
The 2018 and 2019 Festivals brought the students together with professional composers Missy Mazzoli, Jennifer Higdon, and Andrea Clearfield. Students also had their own compositions performed at the end of each week.
During the Pandemic
While planning for its in-person Festival in 2020, Wildflower had to quickly pivot to offer a 100% fully virtual experience both that year and in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, the program expanded its eligibility to welcome undergraduate and international students and brought in additional faculty to accommodate the increased student body.
It was at this time that Dr. Busch began pulling together an executive board; not only to make the transition from being a fiscally sponsored project within Temple University to a 501(c)(3) public charity, but to also rethink the name of the program to be more open to all female and gender-expansive composers. After a year of internal discussions, the team alighted on the name “Wildflower Composers” to better describe its “diverse, vibrant community where underrepresented composers can learn, listen, and belong together.”
2022: A Return to the In-Person Festival
Composers Cecelia Olszewski, Hannah Sobel, Erin Busch, Emily Liushen, and Chloe Thomas. Photo Credit: Rec.Today.
The newly renamed and new public charity Wildflower Composers received its first grant from The Presser Foundation in Fall 2021. That same year, the Festival returned to in-person activities, and students participated in seminars on various subjects including film scoring and working with electronics. They drafted their own pieces and worked with external performers to workshop those drafts. After the students’ scores were edited and completed, the performers participated in a recording session and dress rehearsal prior to presenting the final pieces at the final concert.
Students also visited the So Percussion Summer Institute (SoSI) at Princeton University, where they played several pieces with SoSI participants and met their guest performers and guest composers. They then performed a piece with the So participants at the Princeton Public Library.
Expanded Programming
Over the past several years, Wildflower Composers has expanded programming beyond the Festival to include year-round opportunities, many of which are collaborations with other arts organizations.
In Fall 2022, the organization celebrated its 5th anniversary by commissioning four alums to compose new works for Quartet Iris (composed of AAPI members of The Philadelphia Orchestra) which were premiered at the Philadelphia Ethical Society alongside works by Wildflower faculty inti figgis-vizueta, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Erin Busch. These commissions will be professionally recorded into an album.
In Spring 2023, Wildflower also launched their Virtual Mini-Courses, a suite of online courses offered to an international audience of early-career composers. Their first course ran in April and May 2023 and was entitled “Beyond the Double Bar: Building a Composing Career,” taught by Dr. Melissa Dunphy. This fall, they will run two sections of “Introduction to Film Scoring” with Alison Plante (in collaboration with Berklee Online) and “Humans and Computers: Interactivity in Electronic Music” with Dr. Flannery Cunningham (in collaboration with SPLICE). All courses run for six weeks, and generous financial aid is made available to all applicants in need.
In addition, Wildflower is launching a new pilot program this fall called the Wildflower Composers Lab. This new in-person program focuses on local composers, and is a true workshopping space for works-in-progress, sketches, ideas, and/or completed drafts of compositions. The pilot phase includes two lab sessions in fall 2023 when four composers from the Philadelphia area will be invited to hear their music and receive feedback from musicians. Each composer will receive 45 minutes with musicians, and sessions will be professionally recorded for composers’ personal use. Composers will also have the opportunity to opt into an additional session with musicians later in the fall, which may be used as a recording session of their completed piece, a revised draft, or as an additional workshopping opportunity.
In partnership with the Asian Arts Initiative (AAI), Wildflower chose Tammy Huynh as a Resident Composer and Teaching Artist to lead workshops with AAI students on composition and to compose a new piece. Her piece be the cyborg reexamines how oppression has influenced how the human is viewed and treated, and premiered in June at AAI.
Wildflower has partnered with many other arts organizations and presenters to offer annual paid commissions and performance opportunities to alums, including Network for New Music, the Women’s Sacred Music Project, the UU Church at Washington Crossing, the EXTENSITY Concert Series, and the University Choir at Penn State University.
Through this expanded programming, Wildflower hopes to allow underrepresented composers from across the world to access their resources, mentorship, and supportive community without geographic or financial restriction.
Overall Impact
Wildflower’s impact is best explained by Dr. Busch in a recent application to The Presser Foundation:
“Through our programs, Wildflower Composers is focused on providing early career composers with the resources, knowledge, and mentorship to succeed as composers. We strive to create programs that are fully accessible to composers who write in a variety of styles and aesthetics, and who come from different musical and experiential backgrounds.
“The second part of our mission is focused on the greater impact of our programs. For the young composers whom we serve, we seek to provide them with community support, mentorship, and the knowledge and resources to take the next step in their composing career. We accomplish this not only through careful programming, but also by maintaining contact with our students through frequent emails to share opportunities as well as regular newsletters. Over the years, our faculty and staff have also been asked to write letters of recommendation for alums, some of whom have continued to take Zoom lessons with our faculty long after the festival has completed. Many alums have told us that they credit their experience with Wildflower as the reason they were accepted to prestigious undergraduate composition programs, including Oberlin, USC, Berklee College of Music, and Northwestern, among others.
“In order to adequately measure the success of our programs, we seek regular feedback from our participants. During our summer festival, students complete anonymous evaluations at the midpoint and end of the program. In one such anonymous evaluation, a 2021 student stated: ‘[Wildflower] has given me a clearer idea of how I could go about achieving [becoming a professional composer], as well as also introduced me to various artistic practices and music which I can learn from to find my own musical voice.’
“Another alum recently reached out to our Executive Director to say the following about Wildflower:
Composer Hannah Sobel announcing their piece. Photo Credit: Rec.Today.
“’Thank you so much for everything you’ve done and all the ways you’ve affected my life – getting to be a part of Wildflower, even though it was virtual in 2020, was incredibly inspiring and really set me on my path to becoming a composer – and then all of the wonderful opportunities you continue to share have helped me to learn and grow so much. […] I’m certain now that I want to major in music and make composing my career. You’ve seriously helped me in every way to find my passion and follow it, and I can’t thank you enough.’
“Regarding our impact in the wider music community, we seek to bring awareness to the gender gap in contemporary music and work alongside other arts organizations to highlight the work of more female, transgender, and nonbinary artists. We are able to accomplish this work in part through hiring early-career composers who represent a variety of different creative aesthetics and identities as faculty members. We are also able to further this impact by acting as an intermediary for arts organizations who wish to commission or program works by our young composers. We don’t simply connect our students to these organizations: instead, we act as de-facto managers, consultants, mentors, and advisors to our students, recognizing that young composers not only need great opportunities but also continuous advocacy and support while building new relationships.”
Funding for a Newer Organization
In the philanthropic space, many funders wait to provide grant funding to an organization until it has been in existence for at least several years in order to see the organization’s prior impact. However, The Presser Foundation believes that small, newer organizations can be nimble, experimental, deeply in touch with community, and meet a previously unmet need.
Wildflower Composers is a great example. Seeing a lack of opportunity for female, transgender, and nonbinary composers to connect and learn in a space of their own, Dr. Busch sought to address a prevailing need. Through experimental programming and feedback from participants, Wildflower has found new, creative ways to serve young composers. The Presser Foundation is proud to support music organizations such as Wildflower Composers that are newer but have an innovative, inclusive, and community-based mission.
*Special thanks to Dr. Erin Busch, Founder and Executive Director at Wildflower Composers, for contributing to this blog post through writing various applications and reports for The Presser Foundation.
