Brandon Farnsworth

Lund University | LU

There is increasing evidence that a paradigm shift has occurred (or is in the process of occurring) in contemporary music. Among the twentieth-century avant-gardes, music was held in special regard for its seemingly inherent ability to function as an abstract organizing principle and for its ability to create rigorous internal logics for itself. Ar...

On September 17th, 2021, 25 musicians, activists, festival directors, ac- ademics, and institutional leaders from across Northern Europe gath- ered at the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival. The goal was to explore how contemporary music's topography has shifted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with all its ancillary effects on how we are...

Even before the current pandemic, contemporary music existed in a state of crisis. Its structures and institutions struggle to support any minority, let alone artistic practices outside of a narrow Western European style, meaning fundamental change is inexorable if this field is to remain societally relevant. With this issue of OnCurating Journal,...

Taking the Temperature Crisis, Curating, and Musical Diversity (Second Expanded Edition) The caesura in musical production caused by recent global lockdowns has made contemporary music’s crisis of societal relevancy more apparent than ever. Bringing together interviews with music curators, musicians, activist networks and institutional leaders, th...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in...

Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of “curators” laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists — but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, this book lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in contempo...

With the backlash to globalization in full force across the West, many biennales and perennial arts events are unsurprisingly attempting to justify their relevancy to local communities that are not the ‘jet-set global art world.’ This shift in biennale discourse is an occasion to re-examine these events alongside music and theatre festivals—sibling...

This paper examines and contrasts the curatorial approaches to recent editions of the Munich Biennale for New Music Theater and the Maerzmusik Festival at the Berliner Festspiele.

The project Revisiting Black Mountain at the Zurich University of the Arts brought together projects addressing the historic art college from all departments of the school. I conceived and curated the four projects from the music department that would be presented over the course of the school-wide initiative. The following text presents my curator...

Grounds for Possible Music, edited by Julia Eckhardt, is a compilation of essays by musicians, sound artists, and writers tracing the often-overlooked connections between music and sound art's relations to issues of gender, as well as voice, language, and identity. The book itself is just one of several outcomes of a larger multi-year project led b...

This article is a review of the 2019 Ultima Festival in Oslo, Norway. The article is in German.

The idea that New Music can be curated has become a popular idea among festival directors in recent years. Many artistic directors, programmers, etc., now self-identify as curators, or call their work curating. There is still however a significant lack of reflection about what this change of title implies. In three sections, this article will exami...

Rethinking Institutions: Curating (New) Music This paper will survey several important institutions for contemporary music in Germany, including the Berlin Festspiele’s Märzmusik Festival, the Donnaueschinger Musiktage, and the International Music Institute Darmstadt (IMD). Each of them have recently appointed new artistic directors that represent...