Friday 22 November 2013

Exploring the rapport bewteen musicians and the audience


Sinfonia Cymru manager, Sophie Lewis, looks forward to the unique opportunity An Anatomie in Four Quarters affords to find new ways of building a rapport between the audience and orchestral musicians.
 
How important is the rapport between the audience and orchestral musicians during concert performances?  How do you recognise it and  how do orchestral musicians respond? These are all questions that really  interest our performers and the team at Sinfonia Cymru and this is one of the reasons why Anatomie in Four Quarters is such an interesting project for us right now.

 

When I experience live performances of drama or dance, I feel very involved in it all.  I might laugh out loud if it is funny or weep if it moves me, sit on the edge of my seat if I am totally engrossed and of course show my appreciation for it at the end with my applause.  Either way, I consider this a two way thing between me and the performers, as if the way I and my fellow audience members react has the power to create a rapport between both parties which can influence the success of that individual live performance and how the performers felt about it. In many ways, I guess it can do just that. Imagine a stand-up comic getting no laughs or a stunning pas de deux igniting no physical response from an audience whatsoever.

 

How does this work in classical music, other than the applause at the end of a piece and does it matter?  That is what we are trying to find out at Sinfonia Cymru and through our collaboration with Clod Ensemble next week we might get a little closer to finding out some answers.  Breaking down the physical barrier between stage and audience, getting up close to audiences, moving around, and exploring something new like this will give us the opportunity to understand ourselves and our audience more.  So let’s see what happens.

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