In-person Seminar, Utrecht, Netherlands, 4th September 2025
As the Tune-In project concludes its journey, from online conversations to this in-person gathering in Utrecht, we, the participants, wish to reflect on what we’ve learned, how we’ve changed, and where we’re going. This statement is the outcome of our journey and collective thinking across our network of musicians, producers, curators, and educators. A first draft of this Statement has been put forward at the panel conversation on 4th September 2025 at the end of our in-person Tune-In seminar, moderated by Davide Grosso, and it has been amended with the results of the panel.
Our goal: to forge paths for early, classical and world music that are inclusive, sustainable, and true to the music’s essence, while remaining responsive to contemporary realities.
1. Preamble
We, the participants of the Tune‑In Seminar, held on 2–4 September 2025 at Instituto Cervantes in Utrecht, within the framework of the LIVEMX project, supported by Music Moves Europe of the European Union, and initiated and organised by Stichting Museum Geelvinck (Amsterdam – Heerde), in collaboration with the International Music Council, REMA–European Early Music Network, Utrecht Early Music Festival, and Centre Européen de Musique (ViaMusica), convened as cultural professionals in early, classical, and world music to envision and shape inclusive futures for our sector.
Building upon three prior online webinars accessible on the project website, the seminar furthered this discourse through keynote presentations, interactive workshops, and reflective dialogue. While attendance at the webinars was not mandatory, participants were encouraged to engage with them, as the project’s methodology is rooted in a think‑tank approach.
2. What we found
- Inclusion is structural. It involves shifting power, not just adding new “content.” Audiences engage when their histories are represented and their participation is real. Inclusion also involves gender equity, representation of people of color and traditional music from migrated communities, and broad engagement beyond traditional classical music audiences.
- Interpreting context matters, as storytelling can become political. The way histories are told, archived, or silenced shapes meaning. Responsible programming must consider whose voices are heard, questioned, or restored. Storytelling can be layered: for some audiences, depth and complexity are enriching; for others, approachable and engaging narratives spark curiosity without overwhelming. Interpretation of the historical context and its impact on today’s society has become an essential element.
- Music embodies listening as an ethical act, a pedagogy of attention and empathy. Listening to others and to oneself fosters dignity, democracy, and mutual understanding. Excellence and accessibility must reinforce, not exclude, one another.
- Concerts can transform. When formats are opened to other disciplines, locations, and rituals, they become spaces of encounter and dialogue; responsive to places, time, and communities. Music in itself can guide transformation and audience engagement. Local, organic community-building fosters sustainable followings while allowing experimentation and meaningful participation.
- Sustainability must be holistic. It demands new models for collaboration and engagement that include all stakeholders. Economic, societal, and environmental challenges are integral. Cooperation, rather than competition, maximizes impact and builds resilient networks.
- Education and knowledge-sharing are crucial. Musicians, audiences, and institutions benefit from expanded learning opportunities, including training on outreach, cultural literacy, and creative experimentation. The educational dimension supports inclusivity, equity, and engagement at all levels.
- Music brings joy. Beyond structural, political, and pedagogical concerns, the experience of music should remain a source of joy, contributing to the wellbeing of performers and audiences alike.
- Cultural ownership is shared. Music connects communities across time and geography, revealing intertwined histories, migrations, and networks. Archives, instruments, and repertoires are living tools that tell stories of exchange. Preserving and activating them ensures continuity and creativity.
3. Where we go from here
We propose a shift across the field based on five priorities:
1. Community-Rooted Creation
Artists, programmers, and educators should be encouraged to engage, at every stage, with communities, drawing on histories and formats of expression, both local and migrated.
2. Fair practices
We need touring and production models that are equitable, balancing the needs of all actors of the ecosystem, local infrastructures and economies.
3. Experimental formats
Programs, productions, policies and funding schemes, that are breaking barriers and bridging silos, should be supported. Risk taking is a value that should be cherished.
4. A critical engagement with history
We must treat archives, repertoires, and historic instruments not as relics, but as living tools for research, education and creativity. This allows also space for overlooked histories and hybrid practices to thrive. It is therefore crucial that archives, libraries, and historical instruments remain accessible. Proper maintenance of keyboard instruments with complex mechanisms is essential to keep them playable. The full range of historic instruments must be preserved, rather than reduced to a few typical period replicas. Therefore, it is vital to safeguard the living heritage of specialized craftsmanship for restoration and maintenance, and to pass it on to future generations.
5. Education and access
Musicians and institutions (such as ensembles, orchestras, production houses, festivals, stage venues, educational institutions, libraries, archives, museums, amateur and professional associations, and heritage communities), as well as audiences must be empowered through education, participatory formats, and outreach initiatives. This includes addressing gaps in knowledge, providing accessible entry points, and cultivating informed and engaged audiences.
4. A call to the sector
We call on actors in the sector – performers, ensembles, producers, festivals, venues, educational and research institutions, musicologists, institutional keepers of archives, libraries and collections of historic instruments, policy makers, and funders – to:
- Bridge the silos of early, classical and world music, and deconstruct colonial frameworks;
- Recognize listening as a civic and creative practice that sustains democracy and empathy;
- Foster sustainable relationships with local and migrated communities;
- Support cultural cross-over, interdisciplinary and experimental formats, and new research-based historical informed performances;
- Promote excellence and knowledge as engines of accessibility and inclusion;
- Provide for dedicated stages, proportionate in size to the repertoire presented, and equipped with the required facilities, including fixed and/or semi-immobile historic keyboard instruments;
- Prioritize financial sustainability for early music (including traditional folk and non-western music) and historically informed performers and creators, for music libraries and archives, and for specialized craftsmanship for restoration, replica-building and maintenance of historic instruments;
- Ensure for programming and education recognition, equity and inclusion across the gender and culturally diverse community spectrum;
- Never to forget, that to share music from the past, reinterpreted in the present, unites humankind, performers and audience alike, in joy
Together, the Tune-In community has shown that innovation, equity, and musical integrity are not in contradiction. They are co-dependent. This statement is not an end, but an invitation to stay connected, stay critical, and keep sharing. Nurturing a viable future for the next generations is our shared responsibility.
This is the first step, the Tune-in community counts on you to keep building that future.
Thank you to all contributors for your work, your vision, and your trust.
Annex. What we did
Webinar 1 – Audience Outreach: Where do we stand? (25 March 2025)
Moderated by Davide Grosso, with contributions from Jurn Buisman, Dunya Verwey, Jorge Losana, and Karin Cuéllar Rendón.
Jurn Buisman, representing Museum Geelvinck (the Tune-In project initiator), opened the session by framing the goals of the project: to rethink historical music practices through the lenses of inclusion and economic sustainability. He presented past initiatives from the museum that resonate with Tune-In’s mission, most notably Beethoven is Black, a concert-performance and research project that addressed the underrepresentation of musicians of color within the professional early and classical music sectors. In addition, the effort reexamined Beethoven’s legacy in historical context through the lenses of musicians of color. It fostered critical dialogue around Eurocentric classical canons and aims to broaden representation within the field.
Dunya Verwey, program curator of Museum Geelvinck, introduced Bigi Kaaiman – songs and tales from Slavery Times, a video documentary on Surinamese oral traditions in songs for children, which refer to slavery-era stories, emphasizing the role of music in cultural memory.
Karin Cuéllar Rendón (ClassiqueInclusif, Early Music America) spoke about using historical performance to foster belonging among bicultural audiences, advocating for narrative-rich and inclusive concert formats.
Jorge Losana presented the work of ECOS Festival in Spain, highlighting accessible and participatory programming, and how local heritage sites can be activated through early music.
Key takeaway: Outreach is most effective when rooted in cultural co-authorship, when artists and institutions share authority with the communities whose histories they engage.
Full webinar recording: https://tune-in.eu/recording-webinar-1/
Webinar 2 – Storytelling & Historical Perspectives (6 May 2025)
Moderated by Davide Grosso, with presentations by Mélanie Froehly, Georg Kroneis, and Jed Wentz.
Mélanie Froehly (Zamus) reflected on how symposiums and curatorial formats can address historically rooted inequalities in early music, urging institutions to embrace global perspectives and rethink power dynamics.
Georg Kroneis shared insights from queerPassion, a music theatre project reimagining Bach’s St. John Passion through queer identity and embodiment, challenging performance conventions while engaging new audiences.
Jed Wentz presented a creative revival of Byron’s Manfred, exploring 19th-century melodrama to connect with younger generations through theatricality, poetry, and historical imagination.
Key takeaway: Storytelling in early music isn’t only about the past—it is a powerful means to question hierarchies, explore identities, and imagine inclusive futures.
Full webinar recording: https://tune-in.eu/recording-webinar-2/
Webinar 3 – Interdisciplinary Approaches & Reimagining Concerts (1 July 2025)
Moderated by Davide Grosso, with presentations by Chi-chi Nwanoku CBE, Leonhard Bartussek, and Doug Balliett.
Chi-chi Nwanoku CBE opened the session by calling for a radical rethinking of the concert experience—one that acknowledges the richness of diverse musical lineages and prioritizes access, representation, and emotional connection. Drawing on her pioneering work with the Chineke! Orchestra, she championed performance as a space for belonging and societal change.
Leonhard Bartussek introduced his concept of Liquid Music, an immersive and interdisciplinary performance approach grounded in baroque aesthetics yet shaped by meta-modern sensibilities. His work challenges linear concert formats and invites audiences to experience sound through installation, architecture, and visual storytelling.
Doug Balliett explored the church as a “baroque laboratory”—a fertile environment where sacred music, drama, and poetry converged in the past, and still can today. Sharing insights from his work with Theotokos Ensemble and original compositions such as the St. Mark Passion, he advocated for reclaiming early music’s theatrical and poetic dimensions to engage contemporary audiences.
Key takeaway: Reimagining concerts through interdisciplinary and inclusive practices allows for deeper audience engagement, renewed relevance, and the transformation of musical traditions into vibrant, socially conscious experiences.
Full webinar recording: https://tune-in.eu/recording-webinar-3/
Tune-In seminar (Utrecht, 2 to 4 September 2025)
Moderated by Davide Grosso, with presentations by Leonhard Bartussek, Daria van den Bercken, Jurn Buisman, Koert Debeuf, Rembrandt Frerichs, Philippe Gimet, Artur Malke, Mimi Mitchell, Ronald Snijders, Liubov Titarenko, and Jed Wentz.
Leonhard Bartussek led the workshop Conscious Marketing as a Tool for Growth and Inclusion, inviting participants to reflect on structural barriers within the Early Music field.
Daria van den Bercken gave a keynote titled Music Performance, and the Depths of Sharing, reflecting on performance as an act of connection and reciprocity. Drawing on her experience as a pianist and cultural entrepreneur, she showed how musicians can reach audiences beyond conventional concert formats through creative, participatory, and site-responsive projects.
Jurn Buisman opened the seminar with a keynote situating Tune-In within Museum Geelvinck’s mission. He highlighted the importance of inclusive curatorial practices, collaboration, and the urgent need to preserve historic keyboard instruments and the living musical heritage connected to them.
Rembrandt Frerichs shared insights from his practice as a composer and jazz musician working across genres and traditions. He highlighted improvisation as a creative and social tool for inclusion, showing how musical dialogue between traditions can open new artistic and cultural spaces, by bringing forward examples from his experience with musical dialogue between Western classical and Jazz musical traditions in dialogue with Middle Eastern musical traditions (Iran).
Artur Malke, director of the All’Improvviso Festival in Gliwice (Poland), presented the festival’s approach to programming and its close collaboration with the city. He demonstrated how site-specific projects, partnerships with local institutions, and participatory formats can encourage inclusive audiences and community involvement.
Mimi Mitchell led a workshop based on her recently published book Early Music in the 21st Century. Through five thematic lenses—methodology, pedagogy, technology, instruments, and history—she invited participants to reflect on the evolution of early music and its capacity to respond to contemporary cultural realities.
Ronald Snijders gave a talk titled Music Has No Colour, connecting his experience as flutist, composer, and ethnomusicologist. He reflected on identity, hybridity, and the Surinamese–Dutch musical dialogue, showing how music can act as both a bridge and a mirror in the conversation about diversity and belonging.
Liubov Titarenko offered a musical interlude on a historical square piano (Buntebart & Sievers, 1787, Sweelinck Collection, Museum Geelvinck; tuning by Hans Kramer), illustrating how historically informed performance on a historic period instrument can reveal new perspectives on repertoire and enhance the audience experience by what could be called ‘the spirit of the instrument’ (comparable to ‘the spirit of place’).
Jed Wentz presented several projects from the programming and outreach strategies from the Utrecht Early Music Festival. He discussed how historically informed performance can engage broader publics when paired with imaginative curatorial framing and inclusive communication.
The seminar concluded with the Panel Discussion: “Engage & Inspire – Rethinking Outreach Strategies”, moderated by Davide Grosso and featuring Leonhard Bartussek, Daria van den Bercken, Jurn Buisman, Philippe Gimet (keynote online representing Centre Européen de Musique), Koert Debeuf (keynote), Rembrandt Frerichs, Noa Kleisen, Mimi Mitchell, Artur Malke, James Oesi, Lucie de Saint Vincent, Ronald Snijders, and Dunya Verwey. The discussion brought together diverse perspectives on audience engagement, collaboration, and the future of inclusion in music. The participants of the symposium joined in the panel conversation and made important contributions. During the conversation, the Tune-In Statement was reviewed and subsequently updated to reflect the participants’ remarks.