Enter: Versipel New Music

At the same time that nienteForte was growing and evolving, composers Kari Besharse and Philip Schuessler were seeking their own new music outlet, leading to their founding of Versipel New Music in 2014. From the very start, Versipel New Music flooded the New Orleans scene with their debut season presenting five concerts: three concerts in their “Visiting Artist Series” featuring prominent new music performers from New York and Chicago, and two concerts featuring the Versipel Collective, a recruitment of local new music performers including Mendel Lee.

Versipel New Music continued to establish a strong presence in the New Orleans new music scene, eventually becoming a 501(c)3 nonprofit in 2017 and earning a nomination for the New Orleans Gambit Tribute to the Classical Arts Award in the category of “Best New Classical Music Performance” in 2019. Versipel New Music events used the Versipel Collective as its flagship ensemble while continuing its Visiting Artist Series, crossing over with nienteForte’s own presenting model.

As each organization continued to rise in prominence and the New Orleans new music community grew, nienteForte and Versipel New Music started accidentally competing with each other. In a culture and event rich city like New Orleans, the window of ideal event dates that could best serve the dedicated new music community were limited, leading to both organizations presenting concerts on the same dates or dates that were very close to each other. With the understanding that collaboration would help focus and strengthen their aligned mission, nienteForte and Versipel New Music started working together to coordinate their schedules, boost each others’ events, and provide some measure of operational support to each other.

This led to a meeting in 2023 where Mendel, prompted by a passing comment made by Stephen Montalvo, proposed to Kari and Phil that nienteForte and Versipel New Music merge to create a larger and more unified single organization. After months of meetings and deliberations, Kari and Phil agreed, and the merger was approved by Versipel New Music’s Board of Directors.

Versipel New Music 2.0

While nienteForte and Versipel New Music started working more directly together informally once the agreement had been reached during the 2024-25 season, the merger was made official in the summer of 2025, along with the appointment of Mendel Lee as the new Executive Director, who left his full-time job at Tulane Bands in 2022 to shift his focus towards composition and new music advocacy full time. Under his leadership, Versipel New Music reorganized and established three distinct programs under its organizational umbrella:

• The Versipel Collective – Versipel New Music’s flagship ensemble, a dedicated group of New Orleans-based new music performers dedicated to celebrating and performing music from both established and emerging composers of our time.
• The nienteForte Residency Series – a program that combines Versipel New Music’s Visiting Artist Series with nienteForte’s established history and resources to present masterclasses, workshops, and concerts from world-renowned new music performers and ensembles from across the globe.
• Batture Contemporary – an annual Louisiana-focused new music festival that provides Louisiana-based composers, performers, and venues a platform to amplify and represent the Louisiana and Gulf South new music community.

As we enter into this new chapter in our history, Versipel New Music is grateful for all of the support and contributions that we have received from our staff, performers, and community. Together, we continue to strengthen and amplify the voices of new music in Louisiana, and we can’t wait to see what happens next.