If one were to look at the “Dinner Time,” “Rush Hour” and “Audience Choice” concert schemes offered at various times by orchestral companies throughout the UK, one would probably find in common a desire to attract the increasingly coveted younger audience. Promoters and marketers look also to ticketing systems, subscription choices and booking technologies in their efforts to save orchestral audiences from a descent into pure 40-somethingness. Surely a simpler solution, says musician David Lasserson, would be to adapt the standard orchestral performance into something that young people actually wish to see and hear.
As a classically trained violin and viola player, and a core member of theatrical music group ‘The Gogmagogs’, Lasserson believes that classical music would forge a powerful response in younger people were it performed in a manner befitting the needs of both audience and music. Part of the problem with modern orchestral performance, he asserts, is that much of it is neither modern nor particularly performative. The essence of the musical expression is often lost as a result of orchestras’ strict performance protocols.
‘When you get to a classical concert, who’s there?’ he asks, pointing to the proliferation of older people who pack the concert houses. ‘Much older people. And, as a classical player, I was used to that. But as soon as I joined the Gogmagogs, I found we were playing to 20- to 30-year-olds, who were packing it out and screaming their heads off at the end. It was a very, very different audience and, while the Gogmagogs only play contemporary music, I knew in my heart that classical music had the same energies, and that it could attract my age group in droves if it were presented in a way which made people recognise the things they are constantly seeking to find.’
The way in which the Gogmagogs present music, says Lasserson, is certainly a factor that is central to the popularity with which their performances are received.
‘They are a group of moving string players,’ comments Lasserson. ‘And [when I joined] I found that all of a sudden I was put on stage, having to move while I played and make storytelling happen at the same time as playing. It kind of kicked classical concert-giving to the side.’
The need to explore the different ways in which music can be presented is an issue raised at a coming workshop to be given by Lasserson, entitled ‘Making Interdisciplinary Music – An Introduction.’
Aimed at exploring the physicality of music making, the Lasserson-led workshop will look at the ways in which breath, posture, motion and rhythm infuse a musical performance. In addition, the workshop will explore the spatial vocabulary that music shares with other disciplines, and the ways in which a musician can benefit from those disciplines – in the same way that dancers, or theatrical performers, can benefit from an understanding of music.
‘The ultimate question,’ says Lasserson, ‘is, “How is the music asking to be presented?” My point would be that performance protocol actually works against a lot of the things that you’re trying to express [as a classical musician]. Say you’re playing Shostakovich, you’ll be expressing quite violent aggression, deep ambiguity and a great human strain. But what the audience sees is 80 people in evening dresses playing in the same direction.’
In contrast to this more traditional approach to musical performance, Lasserson believes that musical texts should be explored from a multitude of angles and artistic disciplines.
‘If you analyse a piece of music, you’re ostensibly looking at it in one form and turning it into another,’ he comments. ‘You’ll see it as a set or relationships that are in certain proportions. Once you’ve made this analysis, you can offer those proportions to anyone – to a lighting designer or a set designer, for example – and they can build a set that is, in its own form, tied to that same piece of music.’
Part of the problem, argues Lasserson, lies in convincing artists from various disciplines that they have the ability to take an interdisciplinary approach to their art.
‘The musicians I meet who say “I could never learn to dance” haven’t considered that playing is a sort of micro-dance,’ he comments. ‘It’s a much more refined and complex dance, because it is so miniature – a music-making dance of the fingers. Dancers say that they are not musical, and yet they’ll be experts at making phrase shapes that have momentum.’
‘My feeling is that we should all be learning from each other, but that at some point we have become separated,’ he says, referring to his own experience at the Royal Academy of Music, in which ‘there was absolutely no outlet for me to indulge my theatrical side.’
‘It’s about finding the shared poetry and the different poetry, and seeing how they can enlighten each other. I get the feeling that this [interdisciplinary] work is enabling. Non-musicians often regard music as fundamentally mysterious. What is interesting about this project for them, then, is that they can learn how the music touched them, but also that they have the skills – in whatever discipline – to touch people in the same way.’
And for orchestral companies, too, the approach favoured by Lasserson may have positive ramifications. ‘It’s like Shakespeare,’ he says, to illustrate his point. ‘Shakespeare’s plays have always stayed relevant because committed artists have found ways to engage with them and to bring out their contemporaneity. It seems to me that the classical music canon is ripe for similar interdisciplinary interpretation.’
‘Making Interdisciplinary Music – An Introduction’ will run at the Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, London, on April 12. Tickets are £20. Companies or orchestras interested in arranging a similar workshop, should contact David Lasserson at workshopmusic@yahoo.co.uk
For more information on the Gogmagogs, CLICK HERE.
