Found Sound Nation

Found Sound Nation is a mobile production crew that designs and implements collaborative audio-music projects. Comprised of professional composers, producers, and performers the Found Sound Nation crew uses the microphone as a central tool in creating unique projects that bridge geographical, genre, and generation gaps. Working with people from the U.S to Africa, from schools to prisons, from young to old, and partnering with local youth, social organizations, music festivals, and artists across disciplines, Found Sound Nation shapes musical projects that foster healthy, creatively intelligent social and environmental relationships.

Young Producers Project

Found Sound Nation’s Young Producers Project teaches young people computer based music production and composition using a hands-on experiential model that places students in the roles of producers, performers, composers, and audio engineers. Combining the innovative art music traditions of our sponsor organization Bang On A Can with the music traditions of our young producers’ communities, we provide the framework through which each student’s individual voice is channeled into powerful group compositions. Through collaborations between students and professional musicians, Young Producers Project connects teens to their environment and community, while developing leadership skills, building esteem, and training the next generation of music producers.

Ears to the Ground

We believe that the art of listening extends far beyond the practice of making music — it is one of the major ways we can become aware of what is happening in our communities, the mood of a place, what has been there before and what will come after. Youth are often most viscerally aware of the issues facing our communities, ranging from violence to air pollution to social injustice. They are also tapped in to the good stuff happening on the ground: the newest developments in music, dance and technology. We equip our students with skills to more deeply listen to the sounds of their communities and provide them with the means of turning those sounds into an expression of their experience, emotion, and vision.

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“Una Vaina Bien” produced by Found Sound Nation with students from ISLA High School in Bronx, NY

Staff

Christopher Marianetti
Co-Founder & Artistic Director

Christopher Marianetti is a composer, producer, and educator from Albuquerque, New Mexico. His works have premiered at Merkin Concert Hall, Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art (Mass MoCA), The Stone, and Tenri Cultural Institute. His recent collaboration, “A Novel In The Form Of A Car Bomb” an experimental radio play with a vehicular orchestra (8 cars) and a live chorus, premiered in May 2009 at Industry City, Brooklyn. Chris has been a composer-in-residence with Bang On A Can Summer Institute of Music, NYU/ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop, and in 2009 traveled to northern India to develop a project utilizing ambient Himalayan sounds, music and meditation with the Ashram Paryavarn Vidhyalaya. Chris trained in composition at the Accademia Internazionale della Musica in Milan, Italy and received his Master’s in music composition from Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music. Chris is an active teaching artist with the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, and has led workshops through Carnegie Hall’s Musical Connections Program and Cultural Exchange Program. Together with Jeremy Thal, Chris leads the Young Producers Project workshops as a lead teaching artist.

Jeremy Thal
Co-Founder & Artistic Director

Jeremy Thal is a horn player, composer, and educator. He studied horn, ethnomusicology, and Chinese at Northwestern University, and has since played in orchestras, chamber ensembles, and jazz groups in China, Mexico, and the US. As an educator, Jeremy is an active teaching artist through the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, and has led workshops in Mexico and New York through Carnegie Hall’s Cultural Exchange Program. He has also taught music in China (in Chinese) and community garden-building workshops in Chicago for high school students. He has composed music for film and theater, and will soon perform an original live score to Buster Keaton’s “The General.” He recently recorded and toured with indie-rock band The National, and leads his own band, The Briars of North America. Jeremy is Production Manager of the Bang on a Can Summer Institute, and the lead teaching artist for Young Producers Project with Christopher Marianetti.

Jennifer Kessler
Program Manager

A French Horn player by training, Jennifer Kessler is an educator, and arts education program manager and advocate. As Program Director of Found Sound Nation, Jennifer trains artists and collaborates with arts organizations in New York and abroad to design unique multi-media music composition workshops for young people. Her passion for connecting extraordinary leaders is fed in her work project-managing TEDxEast and the International El Sistema Symposium. In her former position as Manager of Professional Programs at the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, Jennifer implemented professional development opportunities for educators, young professional musicians, and NY-based Teaching Artists; produced over 25 concerts at Carnegie Hall; and collaborated closely with many of the world’s leading musicians. Formerly, Jennifer lived in Berlin, Germany, and in Tel Aviv, Israel, where she played French Horn professionally with leading ensembles and taught music. She has earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Northwestern University and a graduate Diplom in Music Performance from the Hochschule fuer Musik Hanns Eisler, Berlin.

Elena Moon Park
Projects Manager

Elena Moon Park is a musician and educator living in Brooklyn. Originally from Oak Ridge, TN, she studied anthropology and ethnomusicology at Northwestern University and completed a Masters Degree in Urban Policy from The New School in New York City. Elena currently divides her time between playing music, most often with the family music folk rock band Dan Zanes and Friends, and contemplating issues of community development, the arts, social justice and policy. She is also interested in the preservation of diverse music and culture in the United States, and is currently working on a family music album of folk tunes from East and Southeast Asia.

Ezra Tenenbaum
Audio Engineer & Teaching Artist

Ezra Tenenbaum is a producer and performer who received his B.F.A. from NYU Tisch’s Clive Davis School of Recorded Music. He has produced numerous bands, scores for film and sound for multi-media artists Karen Finley and Tatyana Tenenbaum. His band Strange Shapes has performed at venues such as Glasslands, Death by Audio, and The Tank. Joining Found Sound Nation in 2009, Ezra has worked on projects at Blair Grocery in New Orleans, Bronx’s Horizon Juvenile Center and Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School.

Teaching Artists

Advisory Committee

Found Sound Nation

and the Young Producers Project