The past few years of my research have all been dedicated to the purpose of realizing a self-sufficient concert series. It began with my work at Fontainebleau: I took several chamber music groups and had them rehearse in unconventional places (parking garages, outdoor markets, carousels, etc) around the village to raise awareness about our upcoming concerts. People initially thought we were peddling, but when it was explained to them that our only purpose was to offer them music in a new environment, crowds began to form. Between runs of pieces we would inform them about upcoming concerts. Yet while the attendance at the Festival’s concerts went up significantly, the audience was significantly less at ease. It was same music, with the same performers, yet the stifling effect of the concert hall changed the reception dramatically. This led me to begin a series of forums for composers, instrumentalists and visual artists to discuss their thoughts on the problems in the presentation of music.
When I returned to the United States I continued this work by attempting to create a musical program that responded to the article in the Washington Post about Joshua Bell playing in the DC Metro and being virtually unnoticed (see Pearls Before Breakfast by Gene Weingarten). Peabody’s unwillingness to take such a risk was very informative, and it offered me my first glimpse of an emblematic trend in classical institutions; specifically a general desire towards stasis, regardless of the changing environment.
My most recent work involved accompanying an orchestra to perform in the Eastern Correctional Facility, a maximum security penitentiary in New York. Prisons are some of the only places in this country where people are removed from the hyper-saturation of our culture (i.e. recordings, television, Muzak, etc.). Their overwhelmingly positive response was very exciting, as much of the music that had previously been unknown to them had probably been misconstrued as dull and irrelevant. Their reaction gave hope to the idea that the circumstances to its performance effect its reception, as opposed to the outdated nature of the music itself.
