Translator: Paola Benedetti Reviewer: Nada Qanbar
Ten years ago, I was a sophomore at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
And one morning, I walked into my music theory class,
no doubt very excited to learn all about proper voice leading and harmony,
but our teacher started class by standing next to the piano,
and I could see she had tears in her eyes, she said:
"I know that sometimes we, as classical musicians,
have a tendency to get wrapped up in our own world,
but if any of you aren't aware
of the tragedy that's happening right now in New Orleans,
you need to turn on your television."
I tried to act cool, but I was one of the ones she was talking about.
I had no idea how bad Hurricane Katrina had gotten
because I lived in a bubble.
Now, the bubble is one of the first things they teach you.
I started taking violin lessons when I was five years old,
and my teacher was like,
"OK, here's your violin, here's your bow, and here's your bubble."
And you learn that outside the bubble
is where your friends get to play after school,
and inside the bubble is where you practice instead.
Later in life, outside the bubble is where your boyfriend dumps you;
and inside the bubble is where you practice anyway.
You can see why the bubble is important.
In fact, it's absolutely necessary.
No one has ever gotten really good at anything without the bubble.
But as my music teacher pointed out, it's not always a good thing.
For me, the bubble paid off when I won a job in the Richmond Symphony,
six years ago.
But shortly after I moved here, I developed the desire
to share classical music with a broader, younger audience.
So I founded Classical Revolution RVA, an organization that gets away
from the formality that cloaks so much of the classical music experience today.
So we perform in bars, restaurants, cafés, galleries,
basically places that young people are already going to hear live music.
There's no dress code, you can come and go as you please,
you don't have to subscribe to an entire season.
And we rely, almost entirely, on social media to get the word out.
These are all, in my opinion, steps in the right direction
because this approach seems to fit
these generations knack for not planning ahead at all.
But perhaps the greatest innovation of Classical Revolution
has been one that was a complete accident and totally low-tech.
Balliceaux,
the venue where we've performed almost every month for the last 3 years,
doesn't have a backstage area.
You walk in, there's a stage, some seating and a bar.
What that does is that it makes the musician sit in the audience
until it's their turn to perform.
And when they're done, they have to go back into the audience.
So when the lights come up and the concert is over,
the audience and the performers are in the same space,
physically and otherwise,
because they've all just experienced the same thing.
And that creates this really natural, low-key environment
that's just ripe for connections between audience and musicians.
And those connections have made our community stronger.
So I got to thinking: what if we,
as classical musicians, cared about our audience
as much as we want them to care about classical music?
What if we cared about them as individuals,
each with their own interesting stories and backgrounds, likes and dislikes?
What kind of culture would that foster?
Because, after all,
the reason art is so important in our lives and in our society
is that it expands our consciousness beyond language,
beyond our own particular worldview, beyond our time and place.
So if you want to talk about progress, it's not just playing Mozart in a bar.
The biggest step forward we can take
is going to be to take that experience of expanded consciousness,
past the stage, outside the concert hall,
beyond the art museum, outside of our bubble,
and to care, genuinely,
maybe not about every last person on earth,
but at least, about every person who comes across our path.
Thank you
(Applause)