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Situated within the installation it’s after the end, my site-specific multimedia piece Attention to Detail had its premiere in London yesterday. The broader show features a collection also including works by Fabricio Mattos, Elias Brown and Janell Yeo that reflects on themes “of perspective, obsession, the passage of time, and the nature of practise itself.” Attention focuses on the role of metronome as taskmaster, demanding exacting precision from its laborers, while its larger-than-life reflection in a pair of mirrors, along with the viewer’s own reflection, creates a space like an uncanny practice room and questions the interplay of perfectionism and narcissism. It seems to ask: who really calls the shots here, man or machine? 

After first hearing about the project nearly two years ago, on Thursday I finally made it out to my first Multi-Story Orchestra concert. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the group, they are best known for performing symphonic repertoire in car parks (ie: parking garages), most regularly in a space in Peckham, London run by the art organization Bold Tendencies. There, in the dark of the garage, surrounded by site-specific sculptures by professionals and school kids alike, accompanied by the screeches and growls of passing trains, the orchestra plays.

This is the third post in the Play Out series, a collection of profiles on performers, ensembles, and organizations who have chosen non-traditional approaches to classical music performance.

“I just really love classical music!” exclaimed Shasta Ellenbogen, violist and founder of the Classical Music Sunday series at Die Wiesenburg in Berlin. The chamber music series, which takes place every other week in a Wedding-district art space that seems straight out of the ‘90s Berlin squat scene, is her venture to make live classical music a fun and relaxed experience – a nice social evening out – rather than a stressful and judgmental formal occasion.

This is the second post in the Play Out series, a collection of profiles on performers, ensembles, and organizations who have chosen non-traditional approaches to classical music performance.

“The basic motivation in this kind of making theatre is to discover,” David Marton explained to me above the background music and clanging dishes in a Berlin café. David, a Hungarian-born theatre and opera director who trained as a pianist at the UdK and a conductor at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Germany, guides the creation of pieces in which musicians take the stage alongside actors in an attempt to break the actor-musician hierarchy of traditional theatrical genres. He aims to create works of theatre in which music and musicians are central, where “actors also make music and the musicians also play, or they are just characters on the stage like actors.” His pieces have covered a broad range, from reinterpretations of classic operas to a staging of Kerouac’s novel On the Road.

This is the first post in the Play Out series, a collection of profiles on performers, ensembles, and organizations who have chosen non-traditional approaches to classical music performance.

In 2010, Fabricio Mattos cut off his nails – which to a guitarist means ending one’s career. He was living in Italy at the time and had just left a competition where “they did something really bad to me.” (I did not ask him to elaborate.) He was upset, destroyed. Upon returning home, he opened a drawer and found two pieces that had been written for him. Deciding that he could not let the composers down – he couldn’t quit just yet – he instead got to work.

My heart sank as I watched the children seated around the Kammermusiksaal covering and uncovering their mouths with a palm while making a sound. It was the first children’s concert of 2018 at the Philharmonie in Berlin. Kids often imitate what they see, whether it’s a conductor’s arm movements or, in this case, the woodwind section of our orchestra making the so-called “Indian whoop” that the composer had stuck into the Finale of his newly commissioned Alphorn Concerto. I imagined the children returning to their playgrounds, unaware of the racism embedded in their play, now legitimized by a performance in a cultural space sanctioned by adults.

Classical music is often described as “pure, abstract, and apolitical.” We are taught that any “distractions” should be eliminated because they detract from the absolute, abstract beauty of the form. These distractions can be anything from unscripted noises like coughs or whispers, to movements deemed excessive on the part of performers or audience members, to multimedia or theatrical effects, to the clothing we all wear. The following are a few examples from history that demonstrate how what is considered to be a distraction in one era is normalized in another. This directly contradicts any claims that classical music can be separated from its social context. Not only this, but any claims that it can be only serve to stifle self-reflection and perpetuate inequality both on and off the stage.

The morning’s half-foot of snow had just barely turned to slush, but somehow more than 50 people made it to the Friends Meeting House in Poughkeepsie, NY last week in a display of care, generosity, and solidarity with the refugee families who will be moving into our community. I came up with the idea of doing a fundraising recital several months ago, but it would not have been possible without the many people who jumped in to enthusiastically show their support. It really does take a village…

“Arschloch!” Not exactly a word you would expect to hear shouted out at an event dedicated to classical music, but MC Mozart’s Classical Smackdown was no normal recital. The event, which took place on October 5 at a bar in Shoreditch (the Williamsburg of London, in terms of hipsterness), featured two violinists from the Royal Academy of Music battling it out for audience affection and eternal glory, or at least a bottle of champagne. The playing was at a high level and the audience was an engaged group of 20- to 40-somethings. But the highlight of the evening’s event was by far MC Mozart herself – with a wig and a precariously handled glass of wine, her witty one-liners ran the gamut from raunchy to political, and were often both at once. To break the ice, she invited the audience to shout out a favorite curse word. Hers? I’ll let you guess.