Check this out and tell me what you think.
I notice that the performers were “young professionals” and I wonder if us oldsters would put off any of the younger crowd. In order to draw in young listeners, does one have to be a young performer?
I would love to try new and different ways of performing. To be honest, the way we do concerts—the formality, the quite hush and the entrance of the concertmaster—all add to my nervousness. So I wonder if doing something in a more casual place would mean I wouldn’t get nervous. I also wonder, though, if I would play as well. Do I need to have a bit of that anxious feeling? I really hope that’s not the case, but part of me thinks that there has to be some sort of “on edge” feeling. Hmmm. Guess I won’t know unless I get to do something like a nightclub concert.
Addendum: Here’s the actual website.
I think it’s really intriguing, and so appealing to think that classical music might be the cool new thing! It’s funny how the program seems to skip right from Thomas Tallis to Benjamin Britten, two good alliterative Englishmen, avoiding that whole common practice period entirely – not hip enough, I guess?
I got to hear the cellist Matt Haimovitz talk about his doing shows in clubs and coffee houses, and he really seems to have broken the ice between performer and audience. I was surprised, though, to hear him describe those audiences as even more intensely engaged than a normal concert hall audience – even with the extraneous noises at a club, they tend to be focused, attentive, and he definitely doesn’t dumb down his playing for them. If anything, the whole thing seems to be more edgy, because it is a new experience for everyone.
So don’t despair Patty, this may be for you after all! They just have to call it ‘this isn’t for you’ to be all cool and exclusive.
Oh I think it could so much be for me … but I fear that living across the ocean AND being old (49) might make it near impossible. Sigh.
Always the optimist, eh?
I do find that playing chamber concerts is so much fun, and the audience is so much more into what they are hearing. Is it the venue (we perform in a smaller hall)? Is it the music? Is it that folks who attend a chamber concert are different than those who go to the huge symphony concerts? I dunno. I just know I love it!