It’s a peculiar phenomenon that people become individuals. There’s a complex, intangible arithmetic that begins the moment a baby is born, an ever-morphing aggregation of identity, experience, and interest that slowly imbues every human with personal singularity. Ultimately, this process is isolating: each one of us—and all of what we know—is wholly irreplicable. Yet at once, this fact is something we all truly, universally share. While we may construct ourselves in different ways, we all participate in the act of doing so. This fact, this capacity for empathic understanding, finds a home in the arts: an artist is always present in their work, sometimes overtly, sometimes quietly. No matter how abstract, through brushstrokes we can see the painter’s mind, in words we see the poet’s psyche, and we’re moved when we can also find parts of ourselves: by seeing the uniqueness of others, we somehow come to better understand our own. Predictably, some mediums pose challenges to this self-recognition. In many forms of contemporary art—and particularly in contemporary classical music—subversion of familiar aesthetics hinder our ability to locate the artist or identify ourselves with them. Often, the more unfamiliar we are with the techniques of a work, the more shocked we may feel, and the more we may resist connecting with it or seeing meaning within it. We need time and long-term experience with a work to begin understanding its complexities, its resonance in ourselves. Ultimately, these works, genres, and mediums may feel (understandably) inaccessible to audiences who are unfamiliar with their practices. inter-acts seeks to overcome this. By directly asking composers to write with personal experience and self-formulation in mind, we hope to underline the capacity for contemporary classical music to tell stories and hold relatable identities.