The ˛ĘĂń±¦µä Entrepreneurship Center for Music (ECM) has a straightforward mission: To equip today’s music students with the skills and tools they need to create sustainable careers in the arts. In fall 2022, the ECM awarded $10,486 in artist assistance grants which helped support 14 students with projects, research, career building and professional development. We sat down with three of these students to ask how the grants affected them and their emerging careers in the arts.
The classical guitar album 
As part of his degree, DMA student Andrew Wilder (classical guitar performance) is recording and editing an album of Mozart and Haydn transcriptions for the classical guitar. The ECM grant helped Wilder purchase a new laptop to run the editing software and streamline the tech needed to complete the album.
“It helped a ton because my computer was 10 years old and issues were accumulating so I had to stop recording pretty often,” Wilder explains. “In editing, it's like painting or sculpting, in a way, and if there’s something that’s constantly causing slow-downs, it really inhibits creative possibilities. Not having to worry about crashes during all of that was a huge help.”
This project has been a challenging, yet rewarding, experience, according to Wilder. “I think recording is one of the most educational things a musician can do,” he says. “Especially in my case, doing all of the editing myself really forces me to become even more familiar with what I’m creating and shape that, instead of it being just a performance, and then it being gone."
Wilder will also be working on finalizing the transcriptions he created, with the goal of publishing.
The immersive choral experience
Jessie Flasschoen, also a doctoral student, had been wondering how she could reimagine the choral performance experience. “I’d been really interested in taking choral music out of the stuffy concert hall experience, and wondering how to engage the community and the audience more deeply,” she says. “I wanted to create a choral experience that had active participation on the part of the audience.”
Flasschoen started a choir called Renova in January 2022, comprising up to 25 ˛ĘĂń±¦µä affiliates dedicated to performing student compositions. In November 2022, Renova presented an centered around the concept of alchemy.Â
“Depending on which version of alchemy you’re following, it has three processes. It’s a story of transformation,” explains Flasschoen. “What’s interesting about the ancient study of alchemy is that it wasn’t just about the metal turning into gold, but also about some sort of spiritual transformation of the alchemist personally. So alchemy in its origin has always been about human transformation in addition to making gold out of other metals.”
The audience was led through three rooms, each representing a different stage in the alchemical process. Room one covered blackening and death, room two featured opposites and purification and room three represented fire. The ECM grant helped to fund logistics such as the technical elements and decorations used in the rooms.
Flasschoen says the audience was enthusiastic and willing to participate, and that after the show was over, she received glowing feedback from community members, colleagues and choir members.Â
“The generosity of the grant made this crazy idea possible and it came together really really well in a way that people are talking about even months later,” she says. “And because of this generosity, I want to take this idea further, so this is a launching point for more research.”
The Wolf Opera
Artist Diploma student Chas Barnard and alumna Sabina Balsamo were artistically inspired by the proposition passed by the state legislature in 2020 to reintroduce gray wolves into Colorado.
“We just got to talking with our composer friend, Ben Morris about the proposition and then we thought, 'oh, this could be a great opera!'” Barnard says.
The project that emerged, named , is a family-friendly chamber opera that also features shadow puppetry. The opera is written for three voices and a string quartet. The ECM grant helped with the cost of hiring baritone Andrew Garland, who also happens to be an assistant professor of voice at our College of Music.
“There were two parts to this project. There was a workshop in January where we recorded the whole work with Andy and then we’ll also present live performances on June 3 and 4,” Barnard says.
The team has also collaborated with Art Song Colorado, Boulder Opera, and the Broomfield Council on the Arts and Humanities.
Barnard says, “It means a lot to have the support of the school. The grant gave our project momentum and the ability to hire someone like Andy who is an incredible artist, and who really gives our project a lot of credibility. I’m just grateful that we were able to move forward.”
Find out more about the live concerts of Colorado Sky in and .