New Music Paths

The composer Denis Nassar and the filmmaker Marcelo Vilhena just launched an exciting Web Series called New Music Paths. The channel will broadcast interviews with contemporary composers, musicians, bands, and chamber ensembles. Our episodes will show collaborative music projects, panels with musicians discussing cultural topics such as “What is Canadian music?”, and videos didactically introducing compositional techniques and concepts. This channel is not committed to one genre, it is focused on sharing any interesting approaches to music being done today.

Denis Nassar is a professional musician and composer with a MMus in composition through the University of Calgary. He is currently the director of the songwriting program at Prairie College where he teaches theory and composition. Marcelo Vilhena has an Applied Bachelor Degree in Motion Picture Arts and as a filmmaker with +20 years of experience he has produced more than 200 projects for communication and educational purposes. Together with the designer Claudia Antunes, Denis Nassar and Marcelo Vilhena lead the multimedia company My Land Productions.

Each episode in this channel has enough technical and content quality to be used for educational purposes. Music teachers could use our content to introduce interesting subjects and new composers to their students, and New music Paths is open to partner up with educational institutions to put more focus on didactic content.

How did all of this started?

In April 2017 the University of Calgary Orchestra premiered a piece by Denis Nassar called Minha Terra. This piece was based on the pitch, rhythm and melodic contours of the spoken voice and it musically compared three different dialects from Brazil. When Marcelo Vilhena heard about the composition he found the idea fascinating and proposed to film a documentary about the piece and the compositional approach. Denis Nassar gladly accepted to partner up and they both started working on that project together with the designer Claudia Antunes.

In 2018 the project was put on hold due to financial circumstances and in 2019 they both had a new idea: “What if we create a Web series instead of a documentary? and what if the Minha Terra documentary become three episodes of this series and we actually present many other composers and musical projects?”. Denis and Marcelo realized that lots of people are unaware of many talented musicians and composers that are doing amazing projects today, and those musicians deserve to have their music and story heard without necessarily only depending on grants or crowdfunding.

Producing professional video content is expensive and most musicians can’t afford that, but My Land Productions had the initiative of starting this channel and producing professional videos to promote these musicians and their work free of charge. Now the Minha Terra documentary compose a group of three episodes among many others in the New Music Paths Web series.

So far everyone including the multimedia company My Land Productions and all the interviewed guests have volunteered to produce all the content in the channel. They all put a lot of time and effort on producing professional videos and showing the wonderful composers and musicians are doing today. They plan to apply for grants and hope in future to get some financial support to cover basic costs and keep the project alive.

Visit the channel today and subscribe to discover new exciting music and musicians! Also, if you activate the notification bell YouTube can let you know everytime new videos are posted. Come on this journey with Denis Nassar and Marcelo Vilhena!