Damien is a singer, instrumentalist, and founder of music projects that sit squarely where his other lives meet — creativity, code, and copyright.
All the Music
Damien founded the All the Music project, which copyrighted — and then gave away — over 471 billion melodies. After computationally composing every melody that has ever existed, and can ever exist, Damien put everything into the public domain (CC0), helping protect “you stole my melody” lawsuit defendants.
Read the full All the Music story → — including the TED Talk and how it reshaped melody-copyright lawsuits. Project site: allthemusic.info.
Brute force, used not to break a password but to break music — so that no one can monopolize a tune that was always inevitable.
The project reframes a deep legal question: as machines generate hundreds of thousands of melodies per second, what does “originality” even mean? (Damien explores exactly that on the Speaking stage.)
Schola Diffusa
He also founded Schola Diffusa, a virtual choir with COVID-era origins, which now has singers on six continents — a community that turns distance into harmony. Damien composes arrangements, singing and recording soprano, alto, tenor, and bass parts — singers worldwide sing along asynchronously — and Damien assembles everything into a dispersed whole. Singers performing separately — together.
Spiritu
Damien performs with Spiritu, an ensemble pairing traditional hymns with a warm, contemporary acoustic sound.
SAP Porchfest
Closer to home, he helps bring neighbors together through SAP Porchfest, a grassroots community music festival in the Saint Anthony Park neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota.
