About

Making contemporary music exciting and necessary

CoMA helps schools, festivals, amateur orchestras and choirs get started with contemporary music. CoMA is committed to quality participation led by inspiring professional musicians, using a flexibly scored repertoire which includes works employing graphic notation and aleatoric elements as well as standard notation. These works all share the characteristic of being suitable for use by ensembles of all types of instruments, size and ability. CoMA’s approach is to provide bespoke service based for

• Workshops for festivals, conferences, and school and amateur orchestras and choirs
• INSET for teachers, music teachers and directors
• Repertoire packs providing PDF’s of scores, parts in all transpositions and a CD.

Example workshop

The workshop aims to:

• provide a thoroughly enjoyable day of music-making with a rich variety of contemporary music that is fun to play, effective in performance and of interest to audiences
• inspire players to meet up again on regular basis to continue working with such music and in so doing to establish a locally-based contemporary music ensemble
• present the scores and sets of parts of the repertoire used and other works as a resource for the new ensemble

The workshop concludes with an informal play-through concert to an audience of friends, relatives and other interested people and also could include discussion on ways of taking the initiative forward as an ongoing, self-funded organisation led by the workshop leader, workshop coordinator and relevant members of the local organisers of the workshop.

CoMA input includes outlining how it could support such an initiative through its contacts with composers and performers and as part of CoMA’s network of contemporary music ensembles in the UK and in continental Europe.

Previous workshops

Some previous CoMA allcomers workshops.

Oct 2002	Liverpool Tate British Art Collection project
Jul 2008	SoundWaves Festival, Brighton
Sep 2008	Rotherham Festival (BMIC Curring Edge Tour)
May 2009	Limerick, Ireland
May 2009	Sounds New Contemporary Music Festival, Canterbury
May 2009	Corsham Festival, (BMIC Cutting Edge Tour)
Jul 2011	Late Starters Summer School, Doncaster
Nov 2011	Samensleelweekend, Mastricht, Netherlands
July 2012	Late Starters Summer School, Bangor, North Wales
Jan 2013,14,15	Allcomers Mid-winter Composer Masterclass, Oxford