Music Manifesto Music is for the people, for all of us. The land of music is everyone's nation - his tune - her beat - your drum - one song, one vote. Composers are called to serve the people. Performers are called to serve also by presenting the music in distinctive ways. The People are invoked to witness this service which is celebration of our time - spun being - the ineluctable dance of sound-spelled Life. - Eric Stokes | Composer Eric Stokes was on the University of Minnesota School of Music faculty; his sounds came from the sonic worlds of Henry Brant, John Cage, Charles Ives and Harry Partch. His music manifesto best articulates his iconoclastic and very personal approach. While at the U of MN, he founded the 1st Minnesota Moving & Storage Warehouse Band and its electronic studio. |

His own compositions are widely performed and recorded. His long collaboration with Dennis Russell Davies and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra resulted in some of his most-recognized work.
Now, Composers Institute has been gifted the Stokes' Music Box by his wife Cynthia Stokes, a collection of musical instruments that he used in many of his compositions including his Book of Phonic Paradigms: toys, unique invented constructions, animal calls, found sound, washboards, indigenous instruments from around the world, idiophone, membranophones, and aerophones. The instruments will be available for composers' new compositions