Audience Engagement

In addition to educational programming, From Scratch is deeply committed to rethinking traditional concert formats. At each live event, alongside student premieres, audience members participate in From Scratch’s signature experimental live-group workshops. Learning principles of music notation and engaging with new works interpreted on the spot, concertgoers leave with a uniquely personal and empowering connection to contemporary music.

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 Audience-Created Works

  • At the Fall 2024 event, From Scratch directors wrote their own work of minimalism, GRIDLOCK, which required audience members to fill out a large grid of creative instructions to help shape the minimal texture. This work is available for public performance and can be accessed here!

  • At the Spring 2024 event, audiences interpreted and performed a bespoke version of Liza Lim’s Love Letter on mini-harmonicas and egg shakers. Their text-based scores responded to prompts about the ways we listen to new music.

  • At the 2022 edition of Chicago, From Scratch, audiences were split into small groups to experience their own collaborative composition workshop, on the spot, and write their own multi-movement work. The performers and audience worked together to discuss the interpretation, then voted on the order of performance, and heard their own work performed right before their eyes. Click here to see what they wrote!