Chorus puts tweets to music
In an effort to promote the city of Calgary, Tourism Calgary asked people on Twitter to suggest ways of staying warm this winter, then Calgary Philharmonic Chorus’s master set 20 of the tweeted replies to music.
The result? Tweets (including “gravy action on my cheese,” a.k.a. poutine) sung to the tune of Carl Orff’s dramatic “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana.
(If you aren’t able to play the “Singing Tweets” embedded video, click here to view it.)
“In a world of instant musical gratification, where tunes from any genre or artist are available at the click of a mouse, can classical music remain relevant to the digital generation?”
BBC News – Is classical music doomed?
A video of the debate (between participants Stephen Fry, BBC Radio 1 DJ Kissy Sell Out, Greg Sandow, et al.) will be available on the Cambridge Union Society’s Web site.
Arts matters:
From Toronto’s Creative Trust:
The results of Creative Trust’s Audience Engagement Survey – a first-time, collaborative initiative by Toronto’s [small to mid-size] creative performing arts companies – were released today and are available on our website [PDF here]. The survey made it possible for 20 participating companies to hear directly from their audiences on what motivates them to attend and what helps them connect more deeply with the work they see on stage. The initiative brought music, theatre, opera and dance companies together to learn how to design and plan programs and activities – both individually and collectively – which intensify the impact of their audiences’ experience and stimulate attendance
(via Survey of 3,662 Toronto audience members released today)
Via nprfreshair:
Make it Work! A musician-led initiative in New York merges classical music with fashion. For each concert, designers and stylists create performance attire that matches the music.
“Over the past year, an increasing number of classical musicians have been launching into unannounced performances in marketplaces and transit hubs — and videos of these impromptu concerts have reached a wide audience on the internet.”
“So what drives musicians to do this? At the heart of it is the pure satisfaction of making mischief and surprising people. But for most artists, the goal is to bring classical music to people who wouldn’t otherwise hear it. Sometimes, as in the case of the video above, it’s to promote an "official” performance. Other times, there’s no profit involved, and musicians just want to reignite the spirit of fun and improvisation that was behind the music in the first place.“
(via Out Of The Concert Hall, Into The Street: Random Acts Of Classical Music : Deceptive Cadence : NPR)
[from Los Angeles Times (Culture Monster blog)]
The Pacific Symphony’s “Tweetcert” event is modeled, in part, on Houston Symphony’s June Tweetcert and National Symphony Orchestra performances held last summer at Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA.
[N.B. - The venues for all three organizations’ performances are amphitheatres, not enclosed, indoor (dark) concert halls, so concert-goers looking at their phone (or iPad) screens aren’t likely to be too distracting to the folks sitting near them.]
Performing arts trend likelihood: high.