peace

The Words & Music Project is a multi-year commissioning venture of the Oakland East Bay Symphony (OEBS) in partnership with The James Irvine Foundation. The Words & Music Project will result in several exciting new works for symphony orchestra that will be premiered in Oakland in the Symphony's upcoming seasons. In its first phase, OEBS brought selected writers and composers together for a public symposium and a subsequent private collaborations workshop designed to spark new partnerships. This resulted in a remarkable 18 team-proposals for new works, six of which were chosen to go forward to a final round: public readings of "works-in-progress" by the artist-teams. (Point Arena Poet Blake More and Berkeley Composer Ernie Mansfield were one of the six teams that advanced to the finals). Poet Laureate Devorah Major and SF Composer Guillermo Galindo were the team awarded a full commission from this process.