About Music in the Barns

Founded by Carol Gimbel at the Artscape Wychwood Barns in 2008, Music in the Barns has always been focused on the future of live music events, while taking our inspiration from freewheeling 1960s artists’ collectives like Fluxus—which transformed New York’s gallery scene by staging participatory events very much at odds with the prevailing ideas about what art should be, where it should be shown, and who should see it. 

Our aim is to be a new kind of arts organization: at once nimble, adventurous and protean. 

By challenging the traditional, innately conservative conventional wisdom about classical music, we have sought bold new ways to renew, share and celebrate all we love from the past and also to be a part of the contemporary debate about social and political questions of the present day, and the policies that will affect the world’s future. 

Specifically, Music in the Barns has focused on how music is learned and taught, how it is performed and by whom, where it is heard, and how live performance events are produced, funded, publicized, and recorded.  

Our current initiatives include imagining concert halls of the future, leading the design of new digital musical instruments to make learning about music more engaging, and— in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts— exploring new outreach strategies to the country’s most remote indigenous communities.