Sound Systems: The Future of the Orchestra

Edited by Alex Laing, Joey Eschrich, and Ed Finn

SOUND SYSTEMS: THE FUTURE OF THE ORCHESTRA
Copyright © 2025 Arizona State University.

ISBN 978-1-7367758-8-2

Fiction

The copyrights for individual short stories are owned by their respective authors, as follows:

“Symphony for the Boo Hag” © 2025 Deji Bryce Olukotun
“Heart of the City” © 2025 Amy K. Nichols
“Doula” © 2025 Ernest Hogan
“Take Three” © 2025 Karen Lord

Art

The copyrights for all visual art pieces are owned by
Shachi Kale © 2025.

Nonfiction

“Introduction: New Stories, New Games” © 2025 Alex Laing
“The Orchestra as Anchor Institution” © 2025 Robert H. Simonds
“Executive Order for a Public Orchestra: A Public Health Thought Experiment” © 2025 Lisa Villarroel
Towards Participatory and Collaborative Orchestras” © 2025 Evan S. Tobias
“The Improvised Concerto” © 2025 William Cheng
“Why Gödel and Escher but not Bach” © 2025 Punya Mishra
“Within the Edges” © 2025 Ashley Lauren Frith
“The Space Between Orchestras” © 2025 Loki Karuna
“Enter the Void: The Paradox of Tolerance in an Intolerant World” © 2025 Paul D. Miller
“Harmonic Convergence: A Symphony for San Antonio” © 2025 Christopher Jenkins
“The Orchestra: An Infrastructure Error of Tightness?” © 2025 Mikhail V. Chester
“‘Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone” © 2025 Jesse Rosen

Center for Science and the Imagination

Arizona State University
PO Box 876511
Tempe, AZ 85287-6511

csi.asu.edu
imagination@asu.edu 

Credits

Editors

Alex Laing
Joey Eschrich
Ed Finn

Artist

Shachi Kale

Cover Design

Nina Miller

EPUB Design

Emily Buckell
Tobias S. Buckell

PDF Design

Nina Miller

Special Thanks

This project is possible because of generous support from the Sphinx Organization (sphinxmusic.org) and the Flinn Foundation (flinn.org). We would like to extend our thanks to the staff at both organizations for their enthusiasm for the project and their dedication to supporting access, representation, and diversity in the futures we are building together. Thanks also to the staff of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University for their skilled management of the financial and logistical aspects of the project, and for providing an intellectual community that inspires and values imaginative exploration.

About the Contributors

William Cheng is a writer, pianist, and gamer. He is a professor of music at Dartmouth College and a founding coeditor of the Music & Social Justice Series with the University of Michigan Press. During 2022-23, he was the Rita E. Hauser Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Mikhail V. Chesteris a professor in civil, environmental, and sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University, where he runs a research program focused on preparing infrastructure and institutions for the challenges of the coming century. He is interested in how we need to change infrastructure, governance, design, and education for the Anthropocene, an era marked by acceleration and uncertainty. 

Ashley Lauren Frith is a violist, composer, facilitator, and educator. She is currently the director of racial equity and belonging at Community MusicWorks in Providence, Rhode Island, and faculty of the LA Philharmonic’s YOLA National Institute. Ashley’s work is held and supported by a contemplative end of life practice and yogic training, driven by deep healing and total liberation for all beings.

Ernest Hogan is considered the Father of Chicano Science Fiction because of his novels High Aztech, Smoking Mirror Blues, and Cortez on Jupiter. He was born in East L.A. and is based in Phoenix, Arizona; his mother’s maiden name is Garcia. He is trying to sell his latest novel, Zyx: Or, Bring Me the Brain of Victor Theremin. He blogs at mondoernesto.com and at labloga.blogspot.com, the world’s longest-running Chicano Chicana, Latina Latino literary blog.

Christopher Jenkins is the dean of Lawrence University’s Conservatory of Music. He holds a DMA in viola performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a Ph.D. in musicology from Case Western Reserve University. His first book, about support for students of color in conservatories, was published by Routledge and the College Music Society in 2023.

Shachi Kale is a visual storyteller, graphic designer, and children’s book illustrator. She was born and brought up in Mumbai, India, and now lives and works in Arizona. She has worked in advertising, run a design studio, illustrated more than 20 children’s books, and worked with watercolors, fibers, print-making, and digital art techniques. She was an artist in residence at the Tempe Center for the Arts in 2022 and serves on the Arts Commission for the city of Chandler, Arizona.

Loki Karuna is an interdisciplinary arts activist whose work aims to decolonize “classical” music; he was described by the Star Tribune as a “classical agitator.” His nationally syndicated radio programs include The Sound of 13 and Gateways Radio, and his weekly podcast TRILLOQUY was described as “required listening” by the New York Times.

Karen Lord, a writer from Barbados, is the award-winning author of Redemption in Indigo, The Best of All Possible Worlds, and The Galaxy Game, and the editor of the anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean. Her latest novel, The Blue, Beautiful World, was longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is a composer, artist, and writer. His multimedia pieces have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Internet Archive, and his artwork has appeared at the Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennial for Architecture. His books include Sound Unbound, on digital music and media, and The Book of Ice, a visual and acoustic portrait of the Antarctic. He produced Pioneers of African American Cinema, a collection of the earliest films by African American directors. 

Punya Mishra juggles being professor, researcher, author, and designer at the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Arizona State University, where he is director of Innovative Learning Futures at the Learning Engineering Institute. He claims to be interested in life, the universe, and everything, and loves shoehorning Douglas Adams’ book titles into his bio statement.

Amy K. Nichols is the author of the science fiction duology Now That You’re Here and While You Were Gone. Her shorter works have appeared in Plain Spoke and the Say Goodnight to Illiteracy Bedtime Storybook series. She has taught with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and the Copper Hills Center for the Arts, and has served as writer in residence with the Glendale Public Library. Driven by fascination for both art and science, she is navigating the world one story at a time.

Deji Bryce Olukotun is the author of two novels, and his fiction has appeared in various book collections. His novel After the Flare won the 2018 Philip K. Dick special citation, and was chosen as a best book of 2017 by The Washington Post. His short story “Between the Dark and the Dark” was selected for Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020. He works for the audio technology company Sonos, where he launched the Sonos Foundation, which focuses on ecoacoustics, music education, and bringing underrepresented voices into the sound industry. He is a Future Tense Fellow at New America.

Jesse Rosen recently retired as the CEO of the League of American Orchestras; he previously held executive positions with the New York Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, and Seattle Symphony. He is a member of the board of the Gateways Music Festival, a credentialed leadership coach, and taught the course “Critical Issues in Classical Music” at the University of Michigan in 2023. 

Robert H. Simonds has had a multifaceted career as a violinist, consultant, and nonprofit advisor and board member. He was the principal second violinist of the Rochester Philharmonic and has performed with major orchestras across America. He is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and Harvard University.

Evan S. Tobias is associate professor of music learning and teaching at Arizona State University and leads the Consortium for Innovation and Transformation in Music Education (citme.asu.edu). He focuses on imagining possibilities and futures for music learning and teaching, its impact on people’s lives and society, and helping people develop related curriculum and pedagogy. Learn more about his work at evantobias.net. 

Lisa Villarroel is the chief medical officer for public health at the Arizona Department of Health Services, where she has served as medical director for the emergency response to Ebola, Zika, opioid, vaping, and COVID-19 crises. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University, her doctor of medicine (MD) from Northwestern University, her master’s degree in public health, and a certificate in Media and Medicine from Harvard Medical School.

Editors

Joey Eschrich is the managing editor for the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, and assistant director of Future Tense, a partnership of ASU and New America. He has coedited a number of collections of fiction and nonfiction, including Cities of Light, created in collaboration with the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities, supported by a grant from NASA.

Ed Finn is the founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, where he is an associate professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Arts, Media and Engineering. He serves as the academic director of Future Tense, a partnership of ASU and New America, and a co-director of Emerge, an annual festival of art, ideas, and the future. He is the author of What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing.

Alex Laing is the president and artistic director of Gateways Music Festival, where he leads the organization’s mission to connect and support professional classical musicians of African descent and inspire communities through the power of performance. Before assuming his current role, he served as principal clarinetist of The Phoenix Symphony for more than 20 years. His work is about orchestras as ensembles and organizations in society and the contributions of Black people, culture, and artistry to classical music.

Artist’s Statements

By Shachi Kale

All of the visual art featured in Sound Systems was created by Shachi Kale. In these brief statements, Shachi describes the inspirations and thought process behind each of the artworks.

Orchestra as Public Good

In response to “Symphony for the Boo Hag,” by Deji Bryce Olukotun

In the first image, which appears before the story, the land and waters, and the creatures that live on and within them, are densely interconnected, forming a tapestry. Like the bars in musical notation, the sky, forest, earth, swamplands, and deeper waters are inescapably interrelated. The Earth creates its own symphony, and each element plays a critical part; there can be harmony if all of the parts are allowed to flourish in proper relation to one another.

In the second image, which appears after the story, the established rhythm of nature has been torn to pieces by human indifference. But it can be brought back together and create a new symphony, if everyone comes together and brings a piece of it with them.

Orchestra as Game

In response to “Heart of the City,” by Amy K. Nichols 

The violin here stands in, as a synecdoche, for the music of the orchestra, and for the orchestra as a performing body, with all of its rituals and traditions and biases and cultural baggage. This image riffs on the story’s climax, in which Ari’s solo creates a new kind of communal relationship with the audience, setting off a radiant, colorful augmented-reality visualization. Sprouting from the edge of the violin is the silhouette of a city skyline, underlining the embeddedness of the orchestra in the urban fabric and its communities.

Orchestra as Network

In response to“Doula,” by Ernest Hogan 

Inspired by the story’s imagination of a mycelial network, this piece visualizes the hidden interconnectedness of all things. The trunk of each tree is a musical instrument from a different culture—in the story, the wood out of which instruments are crafted, and the mycelial networks among the roots of trees, create global connections and ultimately a new form of world intelligence. Since Doula exists not only as a fungal network, but also as a digital and technological entity, I draw a parallel between subterranean mycelial networks and the unseen electrical impulses and circuitry that power our globe-spanning digital networks.

Orchestra as Infrastructure

In response to “Take Three,” by Karen Lord

In this image, I tried to capture the three possible paths that Pierre could take in each performance in one composite, layered composition. Imagine Pierre as the dark central dot, like the pupil of an eye. In one choice, he skirts the outside of the circle, making forays into new possibilities but ultimately staying tightly constrained in his comfort zone. In another choice, he strays out to the edges of possibility—the glowing circle—but his discomfort with change sends him back to the center each time. In the third choice, Pierre frees himself from constraints and paints beautiful musical strokes, wild and free and intuitive.