Alt ist neu (and vice versa)

Alt-classical is a new-ish label for the new-ish breed of classical musicians who make music in unconventional places – nightclubs, galleries, ex-industrial structures and spaces – and those who draw instruments, repertory and performing vibes from pop, jazz and world music.

In The Washington Post and online, Anne Midgette surveys the alt-classical scene around D.C. and profiles several of its venturesome musicians:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/13/AR2009101303565.html

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-classical-beat/

These sorts of performances and instrumental and stylistic interactions have been on the radar, if low on the horizon, for a decade or more. Pianist Christopher O’Riley did his first arrangements of tunes by the band Radiohead, in 2003. Cellist Matt Haimovitz began supplementing his conventional concert engagements with nightclub recitals in 2000; by now, his schedule revolves around the latter. Many chamber groups, especially those specializing in contemporary music, are as likely to be heard in an art gallery as in a concert hall.

Orchestras have been in the vanguard of the movement of classical music out of the concert hall, or at least out of the traditional concert-hall environment. In the early 1970s, Pierre Boulez launched his “rug concerts” with the New York Philharmonic; in subsequent decades, the notion of informal or casual concerticizing was adapted in all kinds of ways by orchestras all over the country. Over the past 30 years, the Richmond Symphony has played in three or four bars, several ballrooms, an old foundry, a former railroad shed and other nontraditional spaces, and has given some of its best performances to its most enthusiastic audiences in those places. (The orchestral shut down its old casual-concert series, Kicked Back Classics, last season; one hopes it’s contemplating a successor.)

The University of Richmond is this area’s alt-classical epicenter, thanks to eighth blackbird, now in its sixth season of residency. The sextet regularly plays with musicians outside the classical orbit (such as percussionist Glenn Kotche and puppeteer Blair Thomas), programs electroacoustic works and compositions using non-Western structures and instrumental timbres, sometimes performs in nontraditional settings, and makes audience feedback part of its presentation.

For about 20 years, encounters among classical, jazz, pop and folk/ethnic/world musicians have been fueled by recording companies craving “crossover” best-sellers. Some of the participants, such as double-bassist Edgar Meyer, fiddler/violinist Mark O’Connor, banjoist Béla Fleck and sitar player Anoushka Shankar, have played crossover music not for novelty value but as a way to craft genuinely multicultural genres. They have been enthuasiastically abetted by classical stars such as cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

Generations of capital-C classical composers beat them to it. Western composers have been influenced by non-Western musics since the Middle Ages – i.e., for all the time that a “West” has existed as a distinct cultural entity. Since Debussy was smitten by Indonesian gamelan at the 1889 Paris Exposition, European and North American composers have drawn inspiration (and instruments, and performing techniques) from Asia, and from indigenous and popular musics of Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and from African-American culture.

Today, most of the leading “establishment” composers in the U.S. – the ones scoring prestigious prizes, big grants and commissions, high-profile residencies – produce multicultural or cross-cultural music: John Adams, Osvaldo Golijov, Tan Dun, Steve Reich, Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng, Terry Riley, David Lang, Michael Torke, Mason Bates, Wynton Marsalis . . . the list goes on.

Early music is very much part of this new scene. (Very old music, unperformed for centuries, is effectively new music.) Sample the offerings of in the Early Music America tour directory – http://earlymusic.org/rostersearch – and you’ll find a stylistically diverse, multicultural, sometimes multimedia brew that looks remarkably similar to – and in performance, often feels like – an eighth blackbird or Bang on a Can program.

Alt-classical’s ideal performance is one that engages an audience of traditional highbrows and followers of the new-art and alternative-pop cultures, in a space that all find comfortable and conducive to interaction between performers and listeners, preferably with something to drink and munch, not too long in duration (say, an hour of music and 20 minutes of talk about it) and not too expensive (say, $25 or less).

Getting that right is tricky. The New York Times has provided a running chronicle of recent dates by classical artists at Le Poisson Rouge and other nightspots, and its reviewers often comment as much about the settings and their environmental challenges (clinking glasses and other background noises, misadventures in amplified sound) as they do about the performances.

The “hook” that snares both over-40 highbrows and younger listeners from the new-art and pop cultures is elusive. The whole notion of alt-classical is rooted in wider accessibility and greater interactivity; so, naturally, it’s as much about personality as it is about programming. (Playing Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites well, and playing them convincingly in a bar, are two different skills, as Haimovitz can attest.)

They’re going to get it right. The best performers and composers, the most alert and savvy presenters, are committed to musical genres and modes of presentation that fall under the general heading of alt-classical. It is fast evolving from a subculture to an integral part of the classical mainstream.

As for drawing a crowd, it’s out there. A proliferation of media, such as YouTube, providing free and easy access to all kinds of music, have enabled more people to explore music, to listen for something new and different, and more listeners are exploring than at any time since the 1960s. For most of them, classical music, from Reich back to Bach, qualifies as new and different.