Opus Illuminate Presents "The Space We Hold" Documentary Series

This five-part documentary series features the music and life experiences of multiple living composers

Co-founded by VC Artists Nathan Meltzer and Devin Moore, Opus Illuminate is a performance organization dedicated to expanding the classical music industry by performing works by composers of historically underrepresented communities and heritages.

In addition to their community engagement efforts, Opus Illuminate creates various video content committed to the diversification of repertoire programming. After the success of their first Asynchronous Concert series, their newest project, The Space We Hold, is presented in partnership with the Alphadyn Foundation. 

The Space We Hold is a five-part documentary series featuring composers Saad Haddad, Jeffrey Mumford, inti-figgis vizueta, Pamela Z, Billy Childs, and others.

The series includes both recorded performances and interviews to provide insight into the personal lives and compositional styles of each composer. The aim of the series is to humanize the music and facilitate a personal relationship between the audience and the composer. Topics range from early education and musical upbringing to the unique experiences of being a composer that is part of a traditionally underrepresented or mistreated community.

The composers' works will also be performed by esteemed young artists such as Jordan Bak, Alexi Kenney, and Sterling Elliott.

“This project is necessary," Devin Moore said. "We find ourselves at a unique time in history. The intersection of two major society-altering events - the global Coronavirus pandemic and a nationwide confrontation with systemic and systematic racism - yields a seemingly inescapable prison saturated with political polarization, a dilapidated national economic state, and a societally detrimental absence of empathy. We as a people have diverged from a basis of compassion and have become resistant to change, despite how necessary.

"Music is the most humanistic vessel for change, and it is our responsibility as the world’s innovative trailblazers, individualistic entrepreneurs, and inspired performers to positively influence the society to which we belong, because, without music, the light of the world goes dark.”

Watch the trailer below:

“The arts have the potential for amazing and powerful influences on society; we as artists have the unique ability to reflect upon the society in which they were created," Nathan Meltzer said. "And when we reflect upon society, we are not only preserving the virtues of our era, but we are exposing the flaws. This is an aspect of the concert-going experience of classical music that gets mostly overlooked. The general Euro-masculine programming practice, and thus how classical music is mostly consumed, has been more or less identical for hundreds of years. And thus we, as performers, continuously choose to turn a blind eye to the societal prejudices and injustices that actively made it impossible for people of other demographics to be successful in the arts.

"We believe we must take a stand as a community and rise above the faults of our predecessors. If we continue to play music exclusively by white men of the past, we are still complicit in the system that allowed for only them to rise to prominence. We must, as artists, reflect upon our own current society, and not merely stay blind to the effects of its deeply flawed past. 

"By experiencing a whole new collection of works by composers of diverse demographics, we will be beautifying and enriching not only our culture as classical musicians, but our culture at large. We can change our society by choosing to allow the art form that we all love to finally represent all the people of a vast spectrum of cultures, heritages, and communities, who have dedicated their lives to the craft.”

Tune into The Violin Channel next Monday, October 24, for episode one of The Space We Hold.