I'm asking for your help to raise $50,000 to record the first two editions of my new series, In Real Time, featuring my collaborations with composers Scott Ordway and Henrique Eisenmann!

In my world, we often do this funny thing where we put tons of time, energy, and money into commissioning new music, and then…we just wedge it onto any old program where—well, if you like contemporary music, great, it’s there, and if you don’t—and we assume you don’t—hopefully you won’t notice.

But we are living in an amazing time for new music. There has never been a broader diversity of voices, or modes to express ourselves, or ways to present our work, than now.

In Real Time is my new commissioning series in which I partner with a living composer whose music I love, who I think you’ll love too. Together, over many months, we open the proverbial hatch in the top of the composer’s head, let all their brilliance spill out, and together we create not only a new piece of music, but an entire musical journey around it—inviting you inside the inspirations and ideas, questions and obsessions, that make them who they are

Two of these new works are written—with their accompanying programs—and have premiered live. Now, they're ready to be transformed into full-fledged albums and shared with the world.

The first, Letters to My Daughters, features my friend, the Philadelphia-based composer Scott Ordway, in a program that asks: how do we talk to those we love, and what do we say, in dark times? Into this, we weave writings that speak to these questions—including Scott's own handwritten letters to his daughters; words by the late Margot Friedländer, who survived a Nazi concentration camp; and a short story by Booker Prize-winning author George Saunders. We're recording this project at Emil Berliner Studios in Berlin with UK-based producer Jonathan Allen.

The second project, Cio da Terra (or Heat of the Earth), features the brilliant pianist-composer Henrique Eisenmann, and is a celebration of nature, spiritualism, Brazilian culture, and musical scenes from Parisian parks to the jungles of the Congo. Zahra Marwan—celebrated watercolorist, children's author, and awardee of the UN Human Rights Commission—is creating paintings based on Henrique’s music. In August, Henrique and I recorded the music for album at the beautiful Abeshouse Studio in South Salem, NY, with six-time Grammy award-winning producer Silas Brown.

Every In Real Time production is designed to be an album. Well, not just an album—a whole world: interviews with the artists, music videos and film from behind the scenes, artwork, writing by me, and the composers, and even award-winning authors, and much more.

In our impatient, automated, digital world, In Real Time is quite the opposite: slow and handmade, asking questions instead of providing easy answers. And honestly, so fun and humbling to make alongside these artists I admire so much.

So please, sign up for updates and help us reach our fundraising goals so we can bring these multidimensional albums to life!

Thank you,
Josh

In Real Time is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of In Real Time must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

If you prefer to donate by check or ACH, please contact me at josh@halperns.org.