Let's play!

Next May 28^th will see the launch of the first ever NY Phil Biennial, to take place. From that Wednesday until Saturday, June 7^th, music will take on New York City with 22 concerts taking place in many different scenarios in the city, with a roster of many well-known musicians, including Alan Gilbert and Alisa Weilerstein amongst others.

The truly amazing feature of this Biennial is that all the music that will be played is new. This spectacle will include contemporary composers from all around the world, bringing new sounds to a bunch of different corners of the city. Going against the common belief that the audience “isn’t ready” to listen to contemporary music because of its complicated musical language and sounds, the New York Philharmonic has opted to create a whole festival around new music, with a fresh take on the classical world.

This initiative coming from musicians means a lot when it comes to appreciating and not underestimating audiences. People are ready to listen to the music that is being produced nowadays and this festival reinforces that idea by only presenting fresh music. It also shows the beauty of arts working together to create amazing pieces that will float around and envelop New York City’s venues. From The Raven, an opera based on Poe’s brilliant poem, to CONTACT! At the Biennial, the US premiere of a musical piece inspired by outdoors sculptures in Salzburg, this event will be filled with references of our current environment and world, and that is precisely why people are ready to listen to it.

But as if it wasn’t enough, the NY Phil Biennial will also include events featuring young students from the city, creating another element of inclusion in their concerts. With the participation of the Julliard’s AXIOM Ensemble in the opera Gloria – a pig’s tale; the concert performed by the Kaufman Music Center's Special Music School High School, the only ensemble 18 and under dedicated only to the performance of music by living composers; to the Very Young Composers of the Philharmonic, a concert performed by Philharmonic musicians and teaching artists with music composed by students of the Very Young Composers program, and Jovenes Compositores de Venezuela program.

This event will truly be a musical revolution. It will have the great task of showing people how much they are ready for new music, and show those musicians clinging to the past how ready audiences are for new music. As Benjamin Zander says, “everybody loves classical music, they just don’t know it yet”. And what better way to find out that you love this music than to hear the interpretation of your current world through sounds, the sounds of today.  So I invite you to join the NY Philharmonic in their “musical playground of the here and now. Let’s go beyond. Let’s explore, let’s revel. Let’s play!”

The transformative power of classical music

Benjamin Zander is an English orchestral conductor and cellist. He was born in 1939, of German descent, started composing music at the age of nine and became the youngest member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain at the age of twelve. He even caught the attention of composer Benjamin Britten who invited him and his family to spend three summers with him at his summerhouse.

He is now a living legend. Zander’s life has been so deeply moved and driven by his love of classical music that he devotes his time to teaching, conducting and speaking around the world. And in listening to his TED talk he did move me. He speaks with wisdom and passion about something that he is passionate about and that comes across: he is genuine and transmits his truth to the audience.

There were particularly two quotes from his talk that I find very interesting. One is musical. He says about conducting: "The conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound. My picture appears on the front of the CD, but the conductor doesn't make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful. And that changed everything for me. I realized my job was to awaken possibility in other people. And of course, I wanted to know whether I was doing that. And you know how you find out? You look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining, you know you're doing it. So if the eyes are shining, you know you're doing it. If the eyes are not shining, you get to ask a question. And this is the question: who am I being, that my players' eyes are not shining? We can do that with our children, too. Who am I being, that my children's eyes are not shining? That's a totally different world."

The other quote goes like this: "It's one of the characteristics of a leader that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he's leading to realize whatever he's dreaming. Imagine if Martin Luther King had said 'I have a dream. Of course, I'm not sure they'll be up to it'." 

Although one is embedded in a musical example and the other one is not, his words are about leadership. Having played in orchestras and sang in choirs for most of my life I understand entirely the meaning behind those words; and is that kind of leader, the one that empowers others, the one I aspire to be. I want to see the eyes of the people around me shine. A lot of times, being in a position of certain power blinds us to the things that are going around us and that are truly important. We get lost in the less important work and forget the passion and the motivation that drove us down the path we chose. We forget there is a bigger picture. It happens a lot in classical music with conductors who get stuck in their jobs and forget that it was the love for music what put them there; they just move their hands and expect the gesture to be enough to make good music. Or at least music. It also happens in many other aspects of life and career choices and it is something to fight against. Being apathetic is never a good thing.

I also loved about his talk the fact that he got an audience of 1.600 people to listen to Chopin. It seems like no big deal, right? Every day many more people go to concerts all around the world. But do they really listen? It is the true listening of the music, and the understanding, from our personal conditions and experiences what makes it such an amazing experience. As Zander himself says, everyone loves classical music, they just don’t know it yet.