V.com weekend vote: Are you 'open' to new music?

November 16, 2025, 7:05 PM · What is your feeling, when you see a piece of "new music" on a concert program? Excitement? Dread?

Are you open to it?

In our interview this week with violinist Leila Josefowicz, one of the world's foremost interpreters of contemporary music, she brought up this very topic.

"What I hope to do is to be so convincing that people are drawn in and fascinated," she said, of playing modern music. "I hope to preempt them, before they get to this stage of, 'Do I get it?' You don't need to 'get it.' There's nothing to get. You just have to experience it. Feel it and hear it, and be open."

Feel it, hear it, be open - these are good ideas for experiencing any kind of music! But truly having an open mind for completely new music - accepting the unexpected and resisting the urge to latch on and reduce it to the familiar - it's pretty hard to do.

For this vote, I am talking about "new music" in the concert hall, including the kind that is atonal, experimental, "sound-based," as well as new music that might be built on more traditional ideas.

Please participate in the vote, and let's use this as a chance to talk about "the way in," for new music. I've certainly had the experience of not exactly liking a piece the first time I hear it or play it, then after hearing it multiple times and living with it, the piece grows on me and I wind up liking it very much. I've also had he experience of a new piece really exciting my imagination, right from the start. Or, there are the cases of just never liking it. What is your way "in" with new music? Do you have particular pieces that have really grown on you, new composers that you enjoy?

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