Access Contemporary Music has the mission of providing equitable access to the transformative power of music-making through concerts, commissions, lessons, digital media projects and storefront locations serving hyper-local communities. Access Contemporary Music (ACM) is dedicated to integrating musical creativity into everyday life by presenting the music of living composers at the highest qualit
y, fostering musical creativity in our storefront music schools and through commissions, and partnering with composers, festivals, universities and ensembles in cities throughout the world to build a global contemporary music network. ACM began in 2004 when composer, radio host and new music advocate Seth Boustead had the idea to assemble a group of musicians every week to read through, record and post music by living composers. From the Weekly Readings project grew another signature ACM program, the Composer Alive commissioning project in which a composer is commissioned to write a piece and send it ACM in short installments as she writes them. Each installment is recorded in front of a live audience and posted for the composer giving her the chance to experiment and to really know the ensemble. Additional ACM programs include the Sound of Silent Film Festival featuring newly composed scores performed live to modern silent films, Open House collaborations in Barcelona, Chicago and Milwaukee featuring commissioned pieces performed live in the buildings that inspired them and Global Connections, a series of partnerships with festivals and composers around the world including Korea, Japan, China, Mexico, France, Ireland, Spain and Canada among others. Today ACM operates on an annual budget of over a half million dollars and employs twenty five teachers and staff plus countless freelance musicians in Chicago, Barcelona, Mexico City, New York and Milwaukee every year. ACM has produced two films that have been shown on PBS and has been featured on WNYC, WFMT, WBEZ, WGN, WTTW's Chicago Tonight and Austin Public Radio.
