“During my dissertation research, I felt a certain mournful nostalgia for the world that I was investigating,” writes William Robin in “A Scene Without A Name: Indie Classical and American New Music in the 21st Century.” Reading it, I was surprised to find myself emotional at times too—a testament to Robin’s writing, which is precise and vivid. Also, I write about classical music; and in his conclusion, Robin presents a convincing case that the genre of indie classical resulted from a healthy, mutually supportive environment, including the press, that may already be a thing of the past. So what is indie classical, anyway? The exact answer depends on who you ask, but it broadly refers to a group of artists, like Nico Muhly, Judd Greenstein, Nadia Sirota, and Missy Mazzoli, and institutions, like New Amsterdam Records, (Le) Poisson Rouge, and yMusic. I reached Robin, who is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Maryland, one afternoon to talk about the origins of the genre and the future of the new music music ecosystem.
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