Setting for the New Lights children's concert.
Moravec ensemble.
John Cage string quartet (above).
Photo credits to NOI participants.
One of the things that makes the National Orchestral Institute truly unique is the New Lights program, which involved two concerts that were almost completely designed by the students. Led by James Undercofler, we had several brainstorming sessions to create two concert-going experiences that were different from the norm.
The first was a children's concert. Our "anchor" piece was Prokofiev's classic Peter and the Wolf, for which I played in the orchestra. As for the rest, small groups selected well-known children's books: Harold and the Purple Crayon, Ferdinand, and Where the Wild Things Are. Small chamber groups used existing music and also improvised musical pieces around these books. Narrators (in costume!) read the stories out loud to the music. This concert took place in the atrium of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, so we also had to decide how to best use our performance space. In the top picture above, you can see that we set up the orchestra at the bottom of the stairs. The audience sat on the stairs. The purple streamers you see were meant to represent the purple crayon drawings of Harold. For Peter and the Wolf, our wind players also wore costumes representing the animals. The kids in the audience had a really great time, and it was a very rewarding experience to engage with young audience members!
Our second New Lights concert featured the piece Brandenburg Gate by living composer Paul Moravec as its anchor. Our mission as performers was to design not only a concert program but a concert experience around this piece. Some background on the piece: Brandenburg Gate was commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (our coaches from the first week!) as part of their New Brandenburg project. The orchestra took each of the six Brandenburg concertos by J.S. Bach and asked six contemporary composers to write a piece for chamber orchestra inspired in some way by the original. Keeping this in mind, we decided to select the original Bach concerto for a program opener. Our theme for the concert became "new music inspired by/based on old music." Other pieces we eventually selected were the second movement of the John Cage String Quartet in Four Parts and Arvo Part's Spiegel im Spiegel.
As far as changing the concert-going experience, it was really important to us to change up the spacial orientation of the audience and also to include them in the performance. I played in both the Cage and the Part. Our quartet for the Cage was placed in a box, so after the Bach finished, with the performers onstage, all the lights in the concert hall were shut off and we started playing. The lights stayed down for the Part. The piece is written for solo instrument and piano, but our group leader arranged it so that the line was spread out among many instruments. Different players on the stage, in the balcony, and around the hall played so the audience was never quite sure where the music was coming from. In terms of audience participation, we started the concert with a clapping "flash mob" to the rhythmic motive of the Bach. After the Part, we included a singing improvisation which transformed into an instrumental improvisation which led directly into the Moravec to end the concert.
If I had to pick a favorite part of the National Orchestral Institute, it would be New Lights. It was refreshing and inspiring to break away from the traditional concert model. I absolutely love tradition, but I think that classical music can afford to be fresh and more approachable from time to time.
Check out reviews of the New Lights concert here:
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