Wild Up presents the world premiere of a newly commissioned work by Shelley Washington for Wild Up musicians and The Collective Orchestra, an open-invitation community ensemble, in The Room Begins to Rise. Inspired by Émile Durkheim’s concept of “collective effervescence”—the energy that arises when people gather in shared emotion, attention, and action—the piece asks how music can become a practice of collective life.
Through a flexible score that combines notation, images, text, and prompts, the piece invites musicians of all backgrounds to a collaborative performance shaped by listening, responsiveness, and shared decision-making. Wild Up musicians serve as both performers and facilitators, teaching and learning the work alongside community participants. REDCAT will be reconfigured into a communal space, allowing performers and audience to occupy a shared field of resonance, proximity, and exchange—a space where music becomes a way to rehearse collective creativity, cooperation, and democratic action in real time.
Democracy Sessions returns in October 2026 for an expanded festival of music and performance taking place across Los Angeles. Building on the inaugural festival, organized by Wild Up and MOCA, presented in the days immediately following the 2024 US Presidential Election, this new iteration takes place in a moment shaped by censorship, polarization, and shifting public trust, and asks how art can function as a democratic practice—a means of gathering, listening, speaking, and acting together. Developed by Wild Up in partnership with MOCA, REDCAT, and CalArts, with related programming presented in collaboration with more organizations to be announced. Democracy Sessions 2026 is timed to align with the weeks leading up to the US midterm elections, and seeks to position music as a living civic practice and a space where free expression, cooperation, and collective action can be rehearsed in real time.