Remix the Symphony is a transmedia experience that encourages new audience members to engage with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s Lilly Classical Series through live events and digital content. It was developed as part of EMDD’s research and creative project labs. As producer, I led my team through a year of ethnographic research, academic research, and user testing to develop an experience that would engage a younger audience new to the ISO and classical music.

In January 2017, Remix the Symphony launched. This semester, we are concentrating on producing content that makes it easy for our audience to personally connect to classical music and to connect classical music to contemporary music they already love. The idea of remixing is threaded throughout everything we do. When we first started developing the project, we knew we wanted to do a Remix Contest, where we would invite musicians to remix music that the ISO is playing in their current season. However, as my team did more user testing, we discovered that everyone wanted a way to connect classical music to their personal style of art, not just musicians. This was the inspiration behind our Remix Nights.

For our Remix Nights, we partnered with two local arts organizations, The Geeky Press and Cat Head Press, to host events where artists of all disciplines could remix classical music in their own style. With the help of a live DJ who played music that will be featured at upcoming ISO concerts, we made a space that felt much closer to a party than anything else. At our first night with The Geeky Press, we invited writers to create flash fiction, poetry, or collages inspired by a playlist of classical music. At our night with Cat Head Press, we concentrated on visual art. The pieces that were created at each Remix Night will be featured in content that we’ll release throughout the month of March, which means that an even wider audience will be able to see how people from the Indy community interpreted classical music.

WFYI produced a piece about our first Remix Night with The Geeky Press. You can listen to it starting at 17:17.