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Commission Music

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IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. THAT'S THE PHILOSOPHY OF VENTURE CAPITALIST KATHRYN GOULD, WHO TURNED TO MEET THE COMPOSER FOR HELP IN CREATING A GROUND-BREAKING NEW MUSIC PROJECT.

Based in San Francisco, Kathryn Gould is a founding partner of Foundation Capital and is regularly recognized as one of the country's most accomplished venture capitalists. She has been featured in Forbes magazine's "Midas List" of Tech's Best Venture Investors and has a primary focus on investing in the telecom, networking and enterprise software sectors.

Kathryn Gould

Outside of work, Kathryn describes herself as a "serious violinist, painter and pilot, and a frivolous boogie boarder." But as a devoted concert-goer and musician, Kathryn wanted to become more involved in encouraging composers to reach audiences. She embarked on a project called Magnum Opus.

To help her achieve her new music vision, Meet The Composer enlisted three orchestras in the San Francisco area (Marin Symphony, Oakland East Bay Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony) to form a consortium to commission a total of nine new works. Each orchestra will premiere three of the works, as well as give subsequent performances of the others.

Kathryn is putting her money and her energy where her mouth is and the project was launched in 2003.

I woke up to the idea of commissioning music when I turned 50, saying okay, I've been hugely successful in business, I've made all this money and now what can I do? One of my biggest disappointments in life has been new music. I do believe there are a lot of composers out there writing wonderful music but their music isn't being heard.

I love music. It's always in my head. I worry that the orchestras are suffering and the audience all has gray hair. Art music is going to die if it doesn't reconnect with the audience. So I started trying to discover why music was in this state. After having a bunch of conversations with other music lovers and realizing I wasn't alone in this, I decided I had to do something.

My violin teacher, Karen Dentley, pointed me to some professional music people. Through conversations and email exchanges, I came away thinking that with enough money, forcefulness and determination, we can reinvigorate art and orchestras.

It's a big goal but what the hell? I've done the impossible before. I'm one of the only women in venture capital, so challenges don't bother me.

To one composer I asked, what would inspire you to write your best work? He suggested the plan of writing a piece several orchestras would play. Apparently everyone wants to give money for a premiere, but it's hard for new music to find a second, third, and fourth performance. So that became the idea for Magnum Opus. It's designed from the composer's point of view to meet that need.

Ingram Marshall

So, I had the idea. But I didn't have the contacts. Then I found Meet The Composer, which provided the way in and helped me develop the project every step of the way. As a venture capitalist, I consider myself a pretty good picker of people-it's my skill and it's important to me to get the right people involved. The composers for the first round are Kenji Bunch, Ingram Marshall and Kevin Puts.

Kenji Bunch

I've got enough money for the pilot program to last two to five years. Then, if we get good results- and it may happen faster than that-I know a lot of people who have said they'd be interested in helping. But first we have to create a track record.

My hope is that people will take pride in creating a new sound that reflects the culture we have here in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. It's a unique and pretty interesting area. Maybe we'd end up creating a new school of new music here. That would be fabulous and I'd love to be part of it.



I play quartets with Walter Hewlett and Paul Brest, president of the Hewlett Foundation and every time we play together they ask how the project is going. There's obviously tremendous interest in this.

Kevin Puts

My second musical project is a collaboration with Villa Montalvo, which has a 300-seat auditorium where world-class performers-like Midori and Joshua Bell and the Eroica Trio- perform. There we are developing a commissioning project for performers.

What is amazing is that commissioning does not cost very much money. And you can really make something happen.

I'm not in this for fame. The Magnum Opus project doesn't even have my name on it. I just want to go to a concert of new music and go wow, that was incredible, I want to hear that again right now! That's why I'm doing this.