My good friends over at Saratoga Arts were kind enough to provide tickets to the Sunday (06.15) performance of the Mostly Modern Festival at the Arthur Zankel Music Center on the Skidmore Campus, so I decided to drop by and check it out. In the past I have worked on projects with the Albany Symphony, Musicians of Malwyck and the Friends of Chamber Music to name a few so I have had a reasonable exposure to quality classical performance work. That said, I was not prepared for the resplendent beauty that I was privy to that day! The highlight being the world premier of Journey of a Dragonfly by Composer and MMF Co-Director Robert Paterson. It was a tour de force that felt like I had witnessed a new and unfamiliar format that left me hungry for more. (That and a great after party at the Surrey Williamson Inn!) I caught up with Victoria and Robert to better understand their organization and to ask how they are able to make this ambitious level of annual programming possible, with its attendant challenges, not only in Saratoga but with a sister festival in the Netherlands as well.
Image: Lisa Marie Mazzucco
Please state your individual name(s), titles and give me a little bit about your background.
Victoria Paterson, General Director, Violinist and Co-Founder of Mostly Modern Projects. I am a violinist who is equally comfortable with classical, pop, and the healing arts. I have performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall, Birdland, and Madison Square Garden to Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Today Show. I am the General Director of Mostly Modern Projects where I hire musicians year-round, delivering vital programs to the community via senior centers, hospitals, and Alzheimer’s patients, as well as ‘rush hour’ & ‘lunchtime’ programs in public spaces and parks all over New York State. I lead the ever-popular FAB5 with a great line-up of live shows. My career spans a 20-years on Broadway, including full-time 1st violin positions for Lincoln Center’s My Fair Lady, The Palace Theater’s Sunset Boulevard and West Side Story, Lunt-Fontanne’s The Addams Family, and Off-Broadway : Heathers and The Thing about Men. I love collaborating with my husband and award-winning American composer, Robert Paterson. We celebrate his music with life-long projects, including the Mostly Modern Festival in Saratoga Springs, New York as well as the European edition, Mostly Modern The Netherlands.
Robert Paterson, Artistic Director, Composer and Co-Founder of Mostly Modern Projects. As an American composer, I strive to embody the diversity and breadth of New York State. Born in Buffalo, NY, I spent over a decade in Rochester and Ithaca, more than twenty years in New York City, and now live in Saratoga Springs, near the Adirondacks. My goal is to create colorful music that embraces everything from the environment to goddesses, online dating to mathematics. I had the privilege of being named Composer of The Year by the Classical Recording Foundation at Carnegie Hall. I was the winner of the Alfred I. DuPont Award, and my opera Three Way won the Grammy® under Best Classical Producer of the Year. I am honored to often get recognized as Best of the Year pick on National Public Radio where my orchestral tone poems, Dark Mountains and Triple Concerto, regularly air on NPR’s Performance Today. Three Way premiered with the Nashville Opera, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and across the United States. The Oratorio Society of New York, Minnesota Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, Albany Pro Musica, Albany Symphony Dogs of Desire, Musica Sacra, Austin Symphony, Vermont Symphony, and ensembles worldwide also perform my music. I am a lifelong vegan and an advocate for animals and the environment, celebrating the natural world with seminal works such as Triple Concerto, A New Eaarth, Listen, and I Go Among Trees.
Can you share the history of the project? What was the genesis of the Mostly Modern Music Festival? How about the mission? Is this an annual event based at the Zankel only?
ROBERT: From the outset, our goal has been to continually reassess the world of classical music, to reinvent it as a vibrant art form for the 21st century and beyond. Mostly Modern Projects (MMP) is dedicated to shining a spotlight on music by (mostly) living composers. We founded MMP in 2005, initially as a new music ensemble in New York City, with the critically acclaimed American Modern Ensemble (AME). AME’s mission is to “turn classical music programming on its head,” programming mostly and usually entirely by living composers. To this day, AME showcases and celebrates living composers, featuring world premieres in engaging and fun-filled concerts. Around the same time, we launched Lumiere Records, a classical label featuring string quartet music with broad market appeal, and then American Modern Recordings, a house boutique label focusing on music by living composers.
In 2018, Mostly Modern Festival (MMF) was founded in Saratoga Springs, New York. Each June, it takes place on the campus of Skidmore College at the Arthur Zankel Music Center. Quickly becoming the “Aspen of the East“, MMF hosts the MMF Institute, an educational experience for 200 instrumentalists, singers, composers, and conductors. Each year, people from all over the world descend on Saratoga Springs for the unique MMF experience. MMF’s international reputation began in 2021 when MMF The Netherlands was launched. MMF NL is held every April in historic Holland in Middelburg, Zeeland.
Putting on a multiday, symphonic classical festival is a challenging endeavor on many fronts. How are you paying the bills? Is this mostly grant funded?
VICTORIA: The Mostly Modern Festival was founded in 2018 in Saratoga Springs, NY and takes place at the Arthur Zankel Music Center. It is an expensive endeavor indeed- I had an audience member say at the last MM Orchestra concert that she saw about $1,000,000 on that stage: 80 world class musicians, their instruments, especially the Steinways, the harp, all those precious violins and stringed instruments which can run about $10,000- $100,000 +, all the winds and the brass, all the percussion instruments. We pay top conductor fees and principal fees in our field to lead the orchestra with side-by-side learning with students who are all in their 20’s on average. It is a magnificent site and sound to behold, and yes, it is expensive. The hall and facilities at Skidmore College are world-class and top-of-the line in acoustics, sound and overall aesthetics and beauty. The price tag to rent the Arthur Zankel Music Center for 3 weeks is expensive. As of 2025, Mostly Modern is not affiliated with Skidmore. Mostly Modern is not presented by Skidmore College: it is a straight rental agreement, just as the New York City Ballet and Philadelphia Orchestra rent their facilities for the summer for housing, meals etc.
We pay the bills with tuition income, generous patrons, our board, local and national partners, as well as private foundations and public grants. Historically we receive funding from the NEA and NYSCA. Mostly Modern did not get those two grants in the 2025 current cycle. This was a loss of about $75,000. 2025 also brought on students who had far less money to cover tuition, so Mostly Modern awarded more tuition-free scholarships than ever before. Our goal is to have an endowed student education fund to ensure tuition-free scholarships for our 110 students (based on need, as well as merit) which will also help ensure 40 faculty salaries every summer. Student education fund goal: $2,000,000 by 2027.
Good news in 2025: local support really stepped in and shout out to local partners: Adirondack Trust Company, Stewart’s-Dake Foundation and Phinney Design Group.
Good news in 2025: We have a new collaboration with Yaddo. Mostly Modern performs and celebrates one Yaddo composer every summer, culminating with a performance at the Arthur Zankel Music Center. Big thanks to President of Yaddo, Elaina Richardson!
I was excited to be there for the debut of your piece JOURNEY OF A DRAGONFLY and was really excited about the format and the story-based narrative style. Can you tell us more about this piece…the process, how long where you working on this one? What was your motivation? What was it like to hear that performed in front of an audience for the first time?
ROBERT: I first started conceiving, outlining, and composing Journey of a Dragonfly twenty years ago, while I was in-residence at Aaron Copland‘s house. (Each season, the Copland House offers residencies at his house for a few select composers from around the world.) Knowing that I didn’t have a premiere lined up, or even the right orchestra conductor, I put that piece aside, and worked on a handful of commissions I had at the time. The conductor I wanted for the premiere of this piece was JoAnn Falletta. Since I love her conducting, and aspects of the piece are inspired by an area near Niagara Falls near Buffalo, I felt like I really needed to wait until I had a chance to work with her in order to finish the piece. Fast-forward twenty years later, we now have JoAnn as a guest conductor at Mostly Modern Festival, and I felt the time was right to complete this work. This piece is dedicated to JoAnn and MMF’s fifth season, and to the Mostly Modern Orchestra in-residence at MMF.
The format of the work is highly-programmatic, meaning, it has a story and a narrative ‘program‘ woven throughout the work, about a dragonfly that explores the world above, finds a portal to hell, sneaks into the Devil family’s house, is captured by the Devil child, and finally escapes back to the world above. The story is so descriptive that we decided to show each scene as super-titles above the stage so the audience could follow along. Although the piece is meant as a concert piece, it is also designed to be animated, so kind of the reverse process to how it’s usually done in the world of film. Usually, a film comes first, and the music is added at the end. With this piece, the music already exists, so the animation can be designed around the music. It took me one month to complete the first ten minutes at the Copland House, and another two to three months to complete the remaining twenty-five minutes.
Hearing this work for the first time was certainly cathartic! I feel like I’ve literally waited twenty years to hear it realized for the first time. It was definitely a little scary: with a piece that large, you want to make sure the audience is captivated the entire time, and fortunately, I received a lot of wonderful comments after the premiere, so I think I succeeded!
I noticed that your web address is MOSTLYMODERNPROJECTS…what else do you have going on we should know about?
VICTORIA: Mostly Modern Projects is a 501c3 non-profit music organization that runs and brings music to everyone year round. This summer brings more community and parks concerts than ever: here is our lineup
Special shout out…3 Yaddo events entitled Wine & Roses featuring Mostly Modern’s FAB5, July 17, July 31 and August 14.
after party at the Surrey Williamson Inn in Saratoga Springs. | Image: Provided
Extra Credit: Anything else you would like to share or plug while you have the talking stick?
VICTORIA: Seeking new board members for Mostly Modern Projects who live in Saratoga Springs and/or the upstate New York region – the lift is light and the benefits are robust!
Mostly Modern delivers vital and incredible music through concerts, festivals, outreach and community engagement all year round. Help us continue to provide this valuable platform for an ecosystem of classical performance artists, students and those who love the craft!
WEB: mostlymodernfestival.org | IG: @mostlymodernfestival | FB: @facebook