Residencies for people who make sound are thinner on the ground than residencies for people who make objects, and the ones that exist tend to be either conservatory-adjacent or aimed at a specific genre. Art Omi: Music is neither. It takes musicians, composers and sound-makers working in all genres, from anywhere in the world, and the open call for summer 2027 closes Thursday, October 1, 2026.
The specifics
- Deadline: October 1, 2026
- Application fee: $15
- Cohort: 10–12 musicians and composers
- Length: two and a half weeks
- Location: Art Omi’s 200-acre campus in Ghent, New York — Hudson Valley, roughly two and a half hours north of New York City
- Cost to residents: nothing except travel. Lodging, meals and dedicated working space are provided.
- Eligibility: individual applicants only — collaborative groups cannot apply together
- Remote: no; this is an in-person residency
Application materials are modest by residency standards: a bio of 100 words or fewer, a brief narrative on why you’re applying, and a single audio or video work sample no longer than four minutes total, which may contain up to three excerpts. For each excerpt you note the year, your role, the instruments and performers involved, and whether the work is improvised, composed, a combination, or digitally produced.
That last field is worth noticing. A residency that asks you to declare “digitally produced” as a peer category alongside “composed” is signalling something about who it expects to apply.
What the residency actually is
The structure is the unusual part. Art Omi: Music is not a retreat where you go to be alone with your work. Residents are expected to share ideas, perform each other’s compositions, and write new music specifically for the other people in the cohort while pursuing their own direction.
You arrive with your practice and leave having written for ten or eleven people you had not met, using whatever they happen to play. For anyone whose work has been solitary — laptop composers, sound artists, people who have been producing in a room for years — that is a fairly radical reframing, and it is the reason to apply rather than the fee-free accommodation.
The campus facilities reflect it: rehearsal spaces in a converted barn, contemporary residence buildings, a Federal Period farmhouse with a kitchen and library, plus a pool, bicycles, WiFi and computers.
On the application fee
Fifteen dollars is at the low end for a residency of this scale, and Art Omi runs the same open call structure across its Artists, Architecture, Dance and Music programs — all four are currently open for 2027, with the Dance and Architecture residencies sharing the October 1 date.
Check the exact 2027 residency dates on Art Omi’s own listing before you apply; the published session dates have been stated differently in different announcements, and the organization’s page is authoritative.