Transcripts

KARL GEHRKE: Wordless Music Series founder, Ronen Givony had little background in classical music when he started working for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. One day, he asked a colleague in the office what was meant by the term "chamber music." He was told that it was music made by small groups of performers for a small, attentive audience.

RONEN GIVONY: This got me to wondering why chamber music was the name for the sort of music that was being played in Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and it was being known by different names for the music that's being played in downtown clubs such as Mercury Lounge and the Bowery Ballroom.

KARL GEHRKE: Givony also wondered why people at the downtown clubs knew all about adventurous rock bands and performers such as Radiohead and Bjork, but nothing about Bach and Stravinsky. It seemed to him that these musicians and composers had much in common. And so he started the Wordless Music Series to bring them together. Saturday's Southern Theater concert is the first time the series has done a show outside of New York City. It will feature Icelandic electronic composer, record producer, Valgeir Sigurdsson, and young American composer, Nico Muhly, whose music is rooted in the classical tradition, and especially inspired by the minimalist movement of the 1960s and '70s.

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One of the philosophies behind the Wordless Music Series is that the various boundaries segregating music are artificial constructs. As a composer who's worked with both Philip Glass and Bjork and is inspired by early English choral music, Nico Muhly exemplifies that idea. But he also says that some of those distinctions are real, and it's not helpful to pretend they don't exist.

NICO MUHLY: I think about this issue a lot because a lot of people are like, oh my god, you have electronic music. In your classical music, it's crossover music. And I always, always, always have to resist that because crossover, I think, is like one of the dirtiest words. It's like fusion food, or your skin crawls when someone says it. So in a sense, the condition of being 26 and living in New York is one in which all these musics coexist. And I think to deny that is incorrect.

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KARL GEHRKE: Because of the way so many different musical worlds come together in this age of the internet and iPod, Muhly says it's a great time to be making music. New Yorker Magazine classical music critic, Alex Ross, says the Wordless Music Series is taking advantage of this musical fluidity.

ALEX ROSS: So many people have a mixed menu of different types of music that they listen to. So, why not put it on the same program and see what happens? And can you make it work? And sometimes the programs may go on a little long, or the juxtapositions seem a little forced. But more often for me, going to these concerts than I've been to five or six of them now, it just all intuitively makes sense.

KARL GEHRKE: Alex Ross says everyone has something to gain from the Wordless Music Series. The rock crowd can enjoy music free of chatter and the sound of clinking beer bottles, and classical musicians can expose their music to a new audience. Series founder, Ronen Givony, says it's a simple answer to the old question of how to get younger audiences interested in classical music.

RONEN GIVONY: You have 50 and 60-year-olds sitting around obsessing over how to get 20-somethings in the seats, and they don't happen to know any 20 somethings. And all you have to do is ask one of them, hey, the music that you're listening to, it's not classical music, obviously, but my guess is that a fan of Bjork, a fan of Radiohead, is a lot more likely to be turned on to John Adams or Steve Reich or Kronos Quartet than they are, say, the next single on MTV.

KARL GEHRKE: Givony says the success of the Wordless Music Series after just one season demonstrates that there is an appetite among both younger and older listeners for new ways of hearing music. The Southern Theater is already making plans for two or three more Wordless Music Series programs in Minneapolis for 2008. Karl Gehrke, Minnesota Public Radio News, Minneapolis.

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