Hello everyone,
The purpose of this blog is to give all of BNMI’s friends and members the latest news and updates for our upcoming Beer Festival Benefit. Since this is our first entry, please allow me to inform or remind all of you of the details. The event will take place on Saturday, October 8 from 6 to 10 pm at the Back Bay Events Center Grand Ballroom (180 Berkeley Street). Public transportation is easily accessible from the Green, Red, and Orange Lines, so you can come have a great time without having to worry about parking or the drive home. Tickets will NOT be sold at the door, and while we want to see all of you there, word about this event will hopefully get around and capacity is limited, so please do not wait to buy your tickets. They are $40 and available now on our website!
As many of you know, beer festivals are popular events throughout the region and breweries have pretty packed schedules, so we’re still waiting to hear who else might be available. At the same time, some breweries are still getting involved without their staff physically being able to be there, and we are thrilled to have commitments from Dogfish Head, Ipswich Ale, Sierra Nevada, and Narragansett to provide us with a generous and diverse supply of samples of their fine products. Blue Hills Brewery has committed to the event as well, and we’re just awaiting word to see if they can attend in person. I’ll keep everyone updated as soon as I know of the others who will hopefully be joining us as well.
We’re working on getting some live music entertainment (of course this event would have music!) to be a part of the show, and we’re happy to announce that the Redline Brass Quintet has agreed to perform for us! We’ve had the privilege of some of the Redline guys perform in our concert series in the past and we always look forward to their great performances. Again, as we line up more entertainment (as with the beers we’re featuring, we’re looking for a vast collection of different styles and influences in the music), I’ll be sure to let all of you know right away.
Lastly, it’s now been two years since I founded BNMI in the hopes of strengthening the international network of the people directly responsible for the continued creation and promotion of new classical art music. We’ve come a long way in that time – from our remarkable success of the concert series (through our first nine concerts, we have performed 66 works by living composers) to expanding to a staff that can help us attain our many ambitious current and future goals (we currently have over 20 volunteers on our staff, though each one of us would probably be lying if we said we weren’t busy enough!). In that time, we’ve been able to do some things surprisingly well, while other things have taken much longer to get up to speed. I remember many of you joining when our website was little more than a page on my personal website, and I’ve been encouraged by the fact that our list of interested members continues to grow by the day just as we continue to grow as an organization.
I know we have been promising some upcoming online and in-person networking opportunities that will allow all of our members to become more deeply involved in our operations, and to have a real voice in the direction of this organization in the future. I know the opportunities for feedback and involvement from you have been limited over the past year, but that is going to change, and soon. Please consider this fundraiser our first real “networking” opportunity for those of you in the region. (i.e. Bring your business cards!) I’ve expressed to some of you who have introduced yourself to me directly the idea of meeting up and grabbing a beer at some point to get to know each other, and here’s a great chance. I would love to see you on October 8 and I will be happy to get to know you all a little bit, to discuss your ideas and concerns regarding BNMI, and most importantly, what this organization can do for you moving forward. The success of this event is going to open up many doors for us to hold other networking and professional development events for all of you in the future, as well as give us more flexibility in creating a top-of-the-line online community that will enable our network to be one that is truly global, rather than strictly regional. And, of course, we look forward to continuing to bring all of you high-quality performances of new music as part of our ongoing concert season.
Please join me and the rest of our staff for this great opportunity on the 8th, the first of many opportunities in the coming years we hope to have a chance to connect and work on fulfilling our new music mission together.
All best,
Tim Davis
President and Founder, the Boston New Music Initiative, Inc.
Photo by Clinton Blackburn Photography
On Saturday, October 8, the Boston New Music Initiative will host a Beer Festival fundraiser at the 