BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
There’s a lot to weigh up when deciding which live events you’d like to see. Are you interested in the music on the program? Do you want to know what it’s like to hear this particular artist perform those works? Are you in the mood to enjoy familiar pieces, or are you hungry for the challenge of something new?
With the program in front of you, the decision you’ll usually make is either “attend” or “pass”. But in pianist Andrea Lam’s upcoming event, you’ll have the rare chance to decide what music is featured on this program, tailoring the experience according to your interests, mood, and what you will find most fulfilling in a live performance.
Andrea Lam: Choose Your Own (Piano) Adventure will equip you with a QR code that unlocks access to a list of pieces ranging from Gershwin to Glass, Hindson to Bach. From that list, you’ll decide what Andrea performs. The New York-based Australian pianist is putting her program in your hands. After all, you’re the one who has to listen to it.
We ask Andrea to tell us how she came up with this interactive concert format — and the one piece she’ll play no matter what — ahead of her event at Penrith’s Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre.
Andrea, you’re putting such a creative spin on classical music concerts — tell us how you came up with the concept of Choose Your Own Adventure!
Thank you! The idea for Choose Your Own Adventure came through extended lockdowns, when I missed making music with and for people, so much. I was giddy at the thought of live performances starting up again — like all of us! — and really wanted to figure out a way to have a dialogue with the audience that felt more interactive. Music is so personal and I was curious to see what audiences would want to listen to when they came back to live concerts.
I’m really interested in the idea that this is tied into technology, and how you’ve designed a kind of ‘playlist’ from which concertgoers can select their favourites via QR code. What do you find fun about playing with that crossover between digital listening behaviours and live music?
Great question. Technology has changed how we listen to music so much. Playlists are categorised by ‘mood’, and there’s an infinite library of music available at the touch of a button. I enjoyed finding new connections in listening to playlists — it’s a very different experience to listening to an artist’s album and being immersed in that world.
It took a while to figure out logistics with audiences choosing their selections. But, one of the consequences of COVID is that we all became very familiar with QR codes! And it’s fun to interact with the audience before I meet them. The QR code is linked to a Google document, so I see in real time what pieces people are voting for, and any comments they have added.
How did you come up with the song selection?
The music we play and listen to always starts with what moves us. All of the selections are beautiful and evocative in very different ways, and are all pieces that have resonated deeply with me.
It was also important to have as big a range as possible to leave room for audience’s reactions — so the music spans from Bach to now, and has some jazz, baroque, classical, romantic, minimalist, impressionist, and contemporary music.
You have quite a range of works in there, but they’ll be interwoven with Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A major. How will this work on a practical level, and why did you want to play that one no matter what else happens with the concert program?
The late Schubert sonatas are such humane, beautiful, and poignant works of storytelling, and I listened to them every day during isolation. Something about the close connection between pain and love, sadness and joy, beauty and strangeness brought a lot of comfort. I needed to play one of Schubert’s late sonatas after that.
The pieces I chose in the playlist all echo elements of this Schubert sonata in some way. What I love about this program is that you might hear a piece written last year directly next to something written almost 200 years ago, and somehow see new connections and open up possibilities in listening that one might not have noticed before.
Your event is putting a lot of power in the hands of audiences. What do you feel might be the benefit of allowing audiences to design the program of music they want to listen to?
I think of recitals as storytelling in some way. I’m curious about what audiences want to listen to, and completely aware at the same time that choices can vary drastically depending on the kind of day someone’s had. They might want something classic and comforting that they already know and love, or feel like choosing something new to them, putting their faith back in me to go on a musical ‘adventure’ together that they might not otherwise have embarked on, on their own.
Music is for sharing, and this is just a small way for me to give something more to my audiences.
Do you think this could be a good idea for the classical music industry more broadly? What’s your ideal level of audience/artist interaction when it comes to curating a program?
Music is all about connection. I tend to like a lot of interaction in programming, not just thinking about what to offer but also discussing what certain audiences might enjoy most.
Levels of audience/artist interaction will vary depending on the program and the context. It’s not always possible; I can offer this as it’s just me, not a whole orchestra! But I feel like you always want to be on a journey together, which sometimes happens through talking it out, and sometimes by just creating a space where reality is suspended.
Technology helps us keep connected — mostly! — so now there can be this balance between what I’m able to offer as a pianist, and what audiences tell me they’d like to hear at that particular moment in time.
Ultimately, what do you hope to challenge or change through such an innovative idea?
I hope people will come along to try a different way of listening to or experiencing music, with some power to make it personal too. Anything from sitting an hour in traffic or wanting to ignore the ‘to do’ list, or personal loss or happiness, might shape their choices on the night.
Whatever they are, the layering of those pieces will hopefully also highlight the originality, strangeness, and power of late Schubert. The sonata is one of the great masterworks of the piano repertoire, so this might be a gentle way ‘in’ for anyone who isn’t familiar with it — or, for those who already know it, perhaps a way to hear new things in it, alongside people’s choices from the list.
Each audience member, the audience as a whole, and me at the piano — we’re all playing a part in the concert, we’re all in this together.
Andrea Lam: Choose Your Own (Piano) Adventure is on at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, 7pm August 5.
Images supplied, credit Lisa Marie Mazzucco.
