Playing music exclusively from the past can be harmful because it puts blinders on to other opportunities in the modern world. For example, we often focus on classical music written in the appropriate time period, but there are composers alive today creating similar music and other genres as well that acknowledging can help to expand our musical knowledge and make sure that we aren’t excluding music because of who wrote it, when it was composed and, to an extent, what genre it is.

If all music written by composers that are no longer alive was wiped out I would probably start with bringing forward more Eric Whitaker, he is the first example of a composer alive today that comes to my mind, and he has pieces that work for band or choir and his music is challenging and uses classical components as well as having a lot of variety in his repertoire (Sleep –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLSRVE3t17E, Godzilla Eats Las Vegas – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgQCq4yrSDg). I would also likely turn to Philip Glass and pieces such as the Hours (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkof3nPK–Y) because he has a more traditional classical sound than some other modern composers. I would also probably bring in some John Williams because everyone loves to play the occasional film score in band.

This assignment has made me realize how few modern composers I had been exposed to. In how we are taught music today we spend an awful lot of time on past composers and their works and we tend to neglect most new age music even within the classical genre.