Founder Robert Voisey

"My belief is that there is a hungry audience out there
waiting to be inspired and touched by the music
that today's composer has to offer;
all we need to do is reach them."
- Robert Voisey -

As a producer, Robert Voisey is regarded as having ambitious ideas for the dissemination of contemporary music.

He founded Vox Novus in 2000 to promote the music of contemporary composers. Through Vox Novus, Voisey has been a significant force in providing composers with opportunities to present themselves and their music throughout the world. 60x60 is one of the most successful projects that Rob Voisey has created to promote contemporary music and its creators.

"The idea of commissioning sixty pieces each a minute long has elements of both ingenuity combined with madness: can a creative artist have anything serious to say in just one minute? Can a listener gain anything in such a short time span? The answer is yes if one may go by the individual contributions to 60x60"
- Malcolm Miller, Music and Vision Daily

60x60 - a circle of sound - a slice of the scene
In 2003, Voisey called for 60 recorded works 60 seconds (or less) in length to be presented together in a continuous electronic playback performance that would be synchronized to an analog clock. The idea was to present to audiences the vast wealth of new music being created by composers in a concise and accessible format. 60x60 has received more than 3500 one minute submissions ranging from almost every type of musical style and genre. The submissions have come from more than 2500 composers, sound artists, bands, and musicians from more than 40 countries throughout the world.

"composers are invited to submit minute long pieces in digital format with the prospect of being included in the hour long presentation -- concert -- CD. A minute can be ample time to express a whole gamut of imaginative sounds, or it can be a constraint which forces an artist to isolate what is the most important element of a work. The point of the project is that it enables an audience to take in and enjoy a cross section of different approaches to new music within a reasonable duration. And the purpose of Robert Voisey is to promote new music ..." - Malcolm Miller, Music and Vision

"With few opportunities and much competition,
young composers show creativity in just getting heard."
in Chris Pasles's article in the Los Angeles Times,
Robert Voisey is highlighted as one of those composers.

In David Cutler's The Savvy Musician, Robert Voisey is described as "an artist who knows how to create opportunities where they don't exist"

60x60 was specifically designed to be a fast paced, maximum impact, economical promotional project giving artists the opportunity to reach audiences worldwide. There have been over 200 performances of the 60x60 project in its various multi-media incarnations presented in a plethora of venues. Performance of various incarnations of 60x60 have been presented in concert halls, theater stages, museums, art galleries, public atriums, bars, nightclubs, building facades, and street windows in New York City; not to mention radio airplay, television and Internet broadcast around the world.

60x60 travels to the far reaches of the globe. The project has been to populous cities such as Tokyo, New York City, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, London, Rio de Janeiro, Taipei, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco, Miami, Boston, Essen, Berlin, St Louis, Munich, to less populous areas such as Presque Isle, Maine, Alberta, and New Zealand. Performance of various incarnations of 60x60 have been presented in concert halls, theater stages, museums, art galleries, public atriums, bars, nightclubs, building facades, and street windows in New York City; not to mention radio airplay, television and Internet broadcast around the world. 60x60 has been enjoyed by tens of thousands of people in venues across the globe.

"Composer and electronic music impresario Robert Voisey devised the 60x60 concept so large numbers of composers could bring their work to audiences in a portable, palatable, and decidedly unconventional format. Since the series' inception in 2003, Vox Novus - Voisey's organization dedicated to the promotion of contemporary composers and their work - has solicited 60x60 submissions by composers at all professional levels worldwide and presented its hour-long recordings at concerts in cities from Brooklyn to Bucharest. ...This digitized, compartmentalized, sound-bite format is a tantalizing new way to experience widely varied and eclectic electronic music. And 60x60's longevity and international acclaim show that Vox Novus' innovative strategy to attract audiences and encourage composers has actually worked" - Alexandra Jones, Classical Voice of North Carolina

- 60 new dance pieces...
performed to 60 new pieces of music,
each lasting no more than 60 seconds -

is quite mad.

But it's this kind of madness
that makes the cultural world go round

- NEW YORK TIMES -

60x60 collaborations - expanding artistic horizons - fostering greater artisitc community The forces that 60x60 utilizes, its unwavering integrity, the diversity of style and aesthetic 60x60 recruits, and the mass audience it reaches all accomplished with limited resources borders on the insane. Robert Voisey's vision for 60x60 was not only to reveal an audience of new music enthusiasts discovering the contemporary works of living artists; but also to create an artistic community that creates with each other across many art disciplines. 60x60 is designed speciffically to foster working relationships between composers, choreographers, videographers, photographers, artists, dancers, musicians, and many others.

The project has accomplished this goal with its collaborations 60x60 Dance, 60x60 Video, and 60x60 Images.

Embracing a grass-roots ideology, 60x60 Dance takes 60 one-minute audio works culled from an international pool of emerging and established composers and assigns them to an equal mix of 60 local choreographers assembled by dance coordinator or "macro-choreographer." The resulting collaborations are presented, without interruption, as a continuous one-hour performance synchronized to an on-stage analog clock.

60x60 Dance gives an energetic twist to 60x60 offering fast past dances of varying styles and aesthetics. The synergy that is created between modern dance and contemporary music is unparalled to any other performance. Both choreographer and composer have never been previously paired together creating a magic combination which audiences thoroughly enjoy.

The word 'viral,' comes to mind as a trendy
but disquietingly accurate image for Robert Voisey's infectious enthusiasm.
He is always ready to mutate and reinfect the process as indicated
to maintain the highest degree of project fever
- and yes, it is spreading.

-60x60: netsuke for the musical mind
Richard Arnest, Sounding Board

60x60 is a project of Vox Novus
60x60 was created and founded by Robert Voisey to inspire, produce, promote, and disseminate the vast aesthetics and styles of contemporary composers being written by today's living composers.
More about Vox Novus and Robert voisey can be found on their perspective websites:
www.VoxNovus.com
www.RobVoisey.com