Photography by Megan Mumford

This story is part of our annual Capital Region Gives Back initiative that honors 10 locals who are making our community a better place. Read up on all of the 2026 honorees and join us on December 9 for the 8th annual Capital Region Gives Back event at Putnam Place.

If you think classical music is stuffy, boring, or elitist, you probably haven’t been to a show put on by Mostly Modern Projects (MMP). 

“My mission is to change that perception,” says Victoria Paterson, who founded the nonprofit with her husband, composer Richard Paterson, in 2005. “We play Taylor Swift. If you hear Mozart, you may not understand it because you didn’t live in the 1700s. But if you hear Taylor Swift on a string quartet, you’re like, ‘Oh, wait, that’s “Wildest Dreams.” OK, cool.’”

Celebrating living composers and new music (beyond Taylor Swift) was and is the mission of MMP. But these days, the organization looks a whole lot different than it did 21 years ago. Back then, the Patersons were living in New York City, putting on several classical shows per year.

When their record producer told them about Skidmore College’s Arthur Zankel Music Center though, everything changed.

A year later, in June 2018, MMP rented out the state-of-the-art theater for the inaugural Mostly Modern Festival, a two-week series of performances dedicated to contemporary classical works. The festival returned in 2019, but was put on pause, like everything else, in 2020 and 2021. Or, rather, like almost everything else.

“I worked for the Jacob Javits Center when it was the nation’s largest vaccination center,” Paterson says of the pandemic. “During a six-month period, I ran a lunchtime concert series seven days a week. There was no Broadway, there was no Met Opera, there was no New York Philharmonic. I got to hire the best musicians in NYC to come perform.”

That experience got Paterson hooked on outreach—which has become central to MMP’s work. In addition to its annual festival, the organization now performs shows at senior living communities, in parks, at fundraisers for other nonprofits, and, recently, at Pitney Meadows Community Farm.

“I went to the Albany Symphony two weeks ago, and two children came up to me,” Paterson says. “They saw me play at Pitney Meadows, and wanted to hear what a symphony sounds like. That is what outreach is.”