We recently connected with Allen Schulz and have shared our conversation below.

Allen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

The mission of Random Access Music is to support, develop, and encorage composers of “serious (non-“popular”) music to create new works for performance in New York City, but particularly in the borough of Queens. We encourage our members to perform and\or play the created works more than once at concerts open to (a paying) public at least twice per program. Preferably, one of those concerts should take place in Queens, NY. However, we encourage our members to perform the works outside of NYC, too. In the past, we have had our pembers share their works in NJ, PA, and even in Japan.
To further this mision Random Access Music (RAM) created the Queens New Music Festival, a 3 0r 4 day event with 1-3 concerts of music written in the last 50 years performed by groups or individull performers around the world. We send out a call for proposals of a 1 hour concert of new works. Our typical applicant comes from NYC, but we have hosted ensebles and soloists from all over, includinf California or the Czhek Republic, and Pennsylvania.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

RAM provides opportunities for performers and composers of new music, giving them opportunities to share their work in an environment that is typically unaware of this kind of music–except for the “connesuer” of serios, new music.
I created RAM, partially to give myself opportunities to work with performers and other composers, but I have found that watching other composers recive premieres of their works and watching the players and composer members interact with one another and with other performers outside our core group to be one of the most rewarding parts of creating an arts organization focussed on new music.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I am the founder of both RAM and the Queens New Music Festival (QNMF), but I have relied on many others to make RAM successful for almost 2 decades and QNMF successful for over a decade, I

I met one of my primary partners almost at the beggining of founding RAM when he performed one of my new compositions. He not only played my works, but he performed other composers works as well.
In 2014, I suffered a cardiac arrest and was in a coma for 29 days. When I emerged from the coma, I was blind, had trouble moving or standing and gave up composing for almost 6 years. The partner I am writing about here, as well as many others sheparded the the organization through those dark days by keeping my vision of both RAM and QNMF alive, active, and moving forward with concerts, grant proposals, and member development

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

After emerging from that 29 day coma, blind and unable to stand or walk, I spent 5+ months in the hospita, with daily therapy of physical, occupational, cognative, speech. After being released from the hospital I got to reduce those daily sessions to a twice a week session, but added lots of other therapies, from vision, to cardiac, to vestibulr, to music.
My vision improved enough for me to read words and music, My damaged heart became strong enogh for me to walk 10,00 steps every day. And all of this flowed into me being able to compose again. During the pandemic in 2020, I decided to try to compose again. I started with a simple piece for voice and piano as a way to relearn the software I had used to compose before my injury. I was successful enough to assure myself that I could return to the work I had been composing when the cardiac arrest occured, which I had recieved a grant to write in 2013. They kindly told me not to worry about it–just get better. Boy, were they surprised when I turned in the work to complete the grant. 6 years late, but complete! And the piece was premierd just a few monts later.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://allenschulz.net
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/b-allen-schulz-842616246/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@allenschulz11106