I arrived at The Space last weekend to find Nicholas Serrambana, long hair tied up with a purple bandana and a fanny pack stuck to his waist, fussing with tickets outside the venue. The Space belongs to a cluster of concert venues tucked away in a strip mall at the bottom of a hill in Hamden, CT. To get there from Yale’s campus, all it takes is a quick bike ride up the scenic Farmington Canal Heritage Trail.

“Music as Will: Artistic Utilitarianism Conference” held its inaugural 11-hour session on Sat., Apr. 9, at The Space. Serrambana, a 17-year-old high school student at Classical Magnet School in New Haven, felt inspired by Arthur Schopenhauer’s claim that “other arts speak only of shadows, of the products of the will, but music speaks of the will itself.” So he put together a conference aimed at exploring the implications of this conception of music. It means that music is a powerful force central to the human experience, certainly, but then what? Serrambana coined the term “artistic utilitarianism” to refer to the idea of harnessing music towards altruistic and ethical ends.

Serrambana sold me a wristband for the afternoon session (admission for Yale students was half off), and then ran me through the workshops I could attend. For no particular reason, I settled on one titled “The Rock and Roll Life: Just Do It,” led by Miami punk-rock veteran Malcolm Tent. Tent also played bass for the New Paltz and NY black metal act Profanatica, and he runs the record label TPOS, which puts out records by such artists as Charles Manson and GG Allin. The workshop was held in a small green room above a guitar repair shop. Tent told us about his first concerts in South Florida, the worst vinyl pressing plant in the world, coldcalling artists for permission to release their music, and why it was punk to move to Danbury, CT. He has been self-employed since 1987 and is living proof, he says, that “the rock and roll lifestyle is still possible.”

The second workshop I attended, co-hosted by local experimental artist Id M Theft Able and Serrambana, was called “/ do / does / doing /” and focused on music as self-indulgence. Its point of departure was the observation that people are more willing to engage with experimental music as participants than as listeners. Id M Theft Able, a man with long orange hair and a giant beard, played music he made from strangers’ answering machine tapes purchased at Goodwill and talked about his childhood obsession with shortwave radio. He wore shoes scavenged from a dumpster and spoke eloquently about jazz. Other workshops included guided meditations, discussions of Schopenhauer’s thought, and improvised music sessions. Serrambana led a workshop titled “Artistic Utilitarianism: An Attitude Adjustment.” The inspiration for his event, Serrambana says, came jointly from various theater festivals that he attended and from X-Fest, an experimental music festival in Holyoke, MA. The format of the workshops derives from his high school’s seminar model.

At 5:20 p.m., Music as Will proceeded into its second stage: live performance. There were seventeen acts in total. Malcolm Tent played an acoustic hardcore punk set. Id M Theft Able played experimental music on instruments he assembled from parts he found while dumpster diving. Serrambana played as Big Nurse, his experimental music/performance art moniker, in a duo with The Carapace, an electronic artist. Each set lasted twenty minutes.

The event closed with the release of a music cassette and two magazines. The cassette, released through Montreal punk/experimental label Misery Loves Co., featured music from artists involved with, but unable to perform at, Music as Will. It included a pamphlet glossing the concepts of “music as will” and “artistic utilitarianism.” The first magazine was a literary compilation addressing the relationship between free markets and musical expression. The second was an art sampler with an open submission policy aimed at showcasing local talents. All proceeds from the event benefitted the Ana Grace Project, a charity “promoting love, community, and connection for every child and family.”

Serrambana told me that he worked on organizing Music as Will “about an hour every day for four months,” reaching out to various local artists via Facebook, rehearsing his own contributions, and coordinating logistics with The Space in Hamden. He raised approximately $2,500 on GoFundMe to cover expense. Going forward, he would like to make the event an annual conference, although, he tells me, “that depends on college plans.” In the future, Serrambana hopes to secure 501(c)(3) taxexempt status for “Music as Will” and secure grants to provide it with a more stable financial grounding.

I left Music as Will ruminating on the workshops and feeling impressed with The Space and Serrambana’s resourcefulness. The turnout at the event included Serrambana’s family and friends, figures in the local music scene, college students, and others. The only other Yale students I saw were the ones I came with. Serrambana was pleased with the “egalitarian assortment” the event drew, but will continue to work to make the event more inclusive and universally appealing. In addition to bringing together as many creative, thoughtful, and conscientious people as he can, he is trying to increase diversity among the acts and attendees. “It was great,” he says, “but I want to reach out to a wider group of people. I would love it if not everyone was wearing flannels from Goodwill.”