After a successful inaugural run as the first-ever university EarShot Reading, it’s BACK!
The 2025 EarShot Readings will take place at Jacobs on March 26-28, with a public event on March 28 at 4:40 pm in MC066. The project is a thrilling initiative to assist composers in the process of hearing their work performed and develop relationships between composers, conductors, and orchestras.
Last year’s event was wonderful so we are sharing this story about it from Resonance to highlight what will be happening this year.
While attending a new music workshop in Tucson, Jacobs professor Jeffery Meyer (orchestral conducting) had an idea. The workshop, EarShot Readings, is one of the American Composers Orchestra’s (ACO) composer advancement initiatives. “It’s such a gargantuan task to write a work for an orchestra,” Meyer remarks. “It’s much different than writing a piano piece which you can sit down and kind of play yourself—it’s a hulking organism for 70-100 people! And the learning curve is very steep to be able to do this effectively and well. Therefore, the entrance to this practice is quite narrow. Earshot attempts to open that door a little wider.”
Meyer’s idea? “Let's bring EarShot into an academic setting.” He successfully pitched this to the ACO’s president, Melissa Ngan, and in March 2024, EarShot’s first Reading at the Jacobs School took place. EarShot featured the work of four composers (including one Jacobs student and one alum) with Meyer conducting the Jacobs Chamber Orchestra.
The program is the first of its kind and is dedicated to developing relationships between emerging composers and orchestras. The ACO partners with orchestras across the country to conduct new music workshops, giving early-career composers a chance to hear their music live. Participating composers also receive mentorship from established composers, professional experience working with an orchestra, and public exposure.
EarShot had a new feel in an academic environment. “There were a lot of places where the ACO’s expertise and our learning processes at Jacobs intersected,” Meyers says. “So even though EarShot’s overall structure was similar to the professional environment, being at Jacobs added a real different dimension.” As just one example of this partnership, an audio production class got involved by producing recordings of the EarShot performances as the students’ final projects.
The experience left Meyer with renewed appreciation for the collaborative nature of composition and performance. He believes that programs like EarShot shift the paradigm of composer-as-hero to collaboration-as-hero. “The more you can collaborate and bring a variety of voices into a creative process, the more impact and vibrance it will have.” Meyer and the EarShot team plan to expand the program’s opportunities next year for a second Reading at Jacobs. Meyer is confident this “ecosystem of creation” will have far-reaching effects about how we understand creative process.
Looks like bringing EarShot to Jacobs was a pretty good idea!
To find out more about last year, watch this video!
Find out more about EarShot.
