I just wanted to draw atten­tion to col­league and friend Lisa Bielawa’s new blog, which I think is a good exam­ple of the kinds of things com­posers should be doing more to stay in the pub­lic eye. Lisa won the Amer­i­can Academy’s Rome Prize this year and has taken the oppor­tu­nity to write about some of her expe­ri­ences in Italy and elsewhere.

The blog is hosted by clas­si­cal music sta­tion, WQXR, in New York, which puts it into the radar of peo­ple who would poten­tially be inter­ested in what com­posers do and how they think. It’s also an exam­ple of reci­procity in con­tent cre­ation. For artists like com­posers who tend to be rel­a­tively obscure, it helps make them more acces­si­ble to those who might be inter­ested. And for the read­ers, it’s a source of qual­ity, gen­uine con­tent. I’m cer­tainly not big on self-aggrandizement on the web, or ads dis­guised as sto­ries. But peo­ple cre­ate music because it is valu­able to other peo­ple, so if we can find ways to cre­ate sec­ondary materials—in this case a blog—that increase the value of our musi­cal work for lis­ten­ers (through greater under­stand­ing, pro­vid­ing of con­text, etc.), then that is a good thing and every­body wins. Com­posers increase their audi­ence base and audi­ences have more ful­fill­ing encoun­ters with new work.