Empire Brass on Japanese Television
Todays post will be about this video I found on YouTube a few weeks ago
https://youtu.be/Hv-5Rh4L_IA?si=nh52FA9-vSqk5pgH
This video is striking to me because seeing a group of brass chamber musicians playing on live TV is really on something that I think of when it comes to seeing a Salvation Army group play some holiday tunes on the morning news. I’m no stranger to the fact that there used to be a number of variety shows that would feature all kinds of musical acts, but for a program to feature a brass quintet, even the empire brass, is pretty wild to me.
This leads me to my first main point, which is wondering how something like this happened. Some of the answers are fairly obvious, like the fact that Empire Brass was already a popular recording ensemble. But I think there are other aspects that we can hone in on that make this seem particularly interesting. For one, when watching the program, the musicians aren’t just sitting. They’re playing like a live act, the move around, they emote, and they look like they’re having fun. From the perspective of someone who really only has gotten to experience chamber music from a chamber music perspective it’s honestly refreshing, and I think that it serves as a a thing that we could look at.
My other point that I want to make is that we need to think about how we can get back to this level of public performance. While there are many social issues that are outside the scope of this blog, I think something we can think about is how we can get back this level of public engagement is finding ways to make concerts fun. While intense recitals are important and will always have their place, if we want the general public to watch us, we need to give them a reason to watch us. That could be playing recognizable music, talking to the audience at concerts, or just making them public and actually trying to advertise them.
Those are just some of my thoughts and reactions to this pretty cool video. I’d like to hear other peoples opinions on this.
Really great point about the need for innovation when it comes to public appeal. Things have changed in the 21st century, and it seems that the groups who do add theatrics and other non-musical elements are the ones that can attract a crowd. I think about the Blue Man Group and Mnozil Brass as examples. I also appreciate Empire Brass's performance because of the various American styles they played for the Japanese audience.
ReplyDeleteI have always thought the difficulty with classical music reaching a wider audience fell within two major categories: engagement and interaction. And while I agree that this recording certainly is entertaining, the hard part about any classical piece of music is that there usually is not something as catchy as a pop hook for the audience to latch on to and leave humming. Oftentimes, it takes a little more brain power to process and thus be able to interact with the music post concert, because that is what keeps audiences coming back.
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