The submissions were based on the idea of love & compassion to symbolize "an axe for the frozen sea inside of us" (Franz Kafka). 110 collaborations were submitted and 10 songs were chosen. 27 artists from 21 countries were invited to meet for 12 days at one of the world's leading studios, “La Fabrique” in the South of France. The recordings took place under the direction of multiple Grammy winning producer Larry Klein. Klein assembled a studio band of A-list musicians including Dean Parks (Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder), Ed Harcourt (Patti Smith, Marianne Faithfull), Adrian Utley (Portishead), Manu Katché (Sting, Peter Gabriel), Clive Deamer (Radiohead) and Dan Lutz (Melody Gardot).
When in 2020 the virus pandemic hit and artists around the world were isolated and deprived of performance opportunities, we continued to enable our community to create new music together. For our album Vol.2, we called for the most unusual collaborations across all borders and musical styles, with "Songs for the Planet" as the leitmotif. The Beyond Music artists were supported by three outstanding Mentors: Elina Duni, Manu Katché and Yaron Herman. 600 artists from all over the world submitted 193 pieces of music. The 16 songs selected for the album were produced by legendary drummer and composer Manu Katché. The tracks are about climate change, protecting our children and women, and a new awareness of interacting across borders.
The ongoing virus pandemic continued to restrict the lives of artists. Thanks to our online platform, the Beyond Music Project was able to proceed unimpeded. Given today's diverse challenges, the five-time Grammy Award-winning producers of our Vol.3 album, Michael League & Bill Laurance, chose "conflict" as the guiding musical theme. Artists were asked to apply this concept to every element of the musical creation process. "Conflict" was to be used as a creative and inspirational tool to think about all kinds of struggles and reflect those experiences in their music. We received 140 pieces of music from 850 artists of 54 countries. 16 of these songs were selected and newly produced.