Jason Freeman, who loves creating music, once wrote, “I believe that all of us are musically creative and have something interesting to say. I also wish that everyone could share in this experience that I find so fulfilling.” He’s spent his career spreading that message through his work as a composer and music professor at a research university. 

As an artist, he has blurred the traditional divisions between composer, performer, and listener, inviting the audience in on the act. For instance, his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, a composition called Glimmer, used a chamber orchestra, novelty light sticks, video cameras, computer software, and more as the audience basically conducted the performance, creating signals that were transmitted to the musicians on stage.

“I’m still doing creative work involving interactive technologies, but now I’m using it more to connect people in creative collaborations in an educational setting, trying to develop curricula and tools to engage students mostly at the K-12 level,” said Freeman, co-founder (with fellow musician and Georgia Tech Professor Brian Magerko) of EarSketch, a free, web-based program that teaches coding (Python and JavaScript) through music composition and remixing. 

EarSketch has been used by more than a million students around the world and translated into half a dozen languages. Through a collaboration with Amazon and music superstar Pharrell Williams, EarSketch is also being used in a national competition, Your Voice Is Power, designed to expand computer science education to young people from population groups currently underrepresented in the technology sector.

“Georgia Tech is very focused on serving our communities, on helping to improve the human condition,” Freeman said. “When we create art — when we create music — we are working to improve the human condition.”