My new mission
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My NEW Mission: To bring musicians TOGETHER and CELEBRATE musical creativity across genres
(This is part 2 of a five-part series on my journey that led me to create a new music festival in Besançon, France.)
POTE: How do you relate to others?
Having been an immigrant and loner for most of my life, I had always struggled with how to overcome the language barrier, my timidity and confusion in each foreign culture.
POTE: Tell me about the most important experience you’ve had in ensemble playing?
The first time I went to a summer camp and played chamber music all day long with both young and experienced musicians, I was overwhelmed with joy by the collaborative spirit, the collegiality, the dedication to a common goal, and the resulting music-making that seemed like a utopia.
POTE: What were your first experiences like with musical creativity?
As a student at Juilliard, I signed up for composition lessons where I aspired to fully give voice to my teenage creativity and compose heartbreaking, sublime music like my favorite composer, Brahms. Little did I know at that time, I was about to embark on a totally different journey taking me from Brahms to Boulez - more on this later - becoming actively involved in different new music ensembles in New York, Zurich, then in France.
POTE : What is your musical life like today?
Today, as a classical music omnivore, I navigate constantly between my home orchestra, chamber music ensembles, new music and early music groups. With the musicians and audience of each group, I love geeking out about repertoire, technique, instruments, gears, the latest technological development in live interactive performance or early music treatises. I love digging deeply into each era, each composer’s world, and making fresh connections to our living, breathing emotions and experience.
POTE: Do these experiences complement each other?
However, with each specialized ensemble and social group, I also feel “incomplete,” unable to fully share my love and curiosity of the other genres and practices. When performing with contemporary ensembles, I miss the emotional openness, the vulnerability of listening to and being guided by historical forms of the instrument, and the subsequent finesse in the interpretation. With early music groups, I crave the penetrating relevance, radically novel sounds and forms, and urgent contemporaneity in new compositions.
POTE: Why contemporary music in Besançon?
Living and working in a city and Conservatory where there’s virtually no presence for contemporary music, two of my colleagues and I started a new music workshop with a structured, yet experimental curriculum five years ago. There was palpable excitement throughout the school year as we embarked on the journey with our 15 students. We had shared our personal stories of how we got hooked by new music and ensured that all our students (novice or experienced musicians) felt exhilarated in the discovery and collaborative space. In each of the classes, there was a symbiotic sense that the team of teachers and students were pioneers working and creating a whole-new course as a unit.
POTE: Why a festival?
After four very rich seasons of the Workshop with numerous new music projects, I wanted to expand upon this experience and launch a festival that brings together musicians together and celebrate musical creativity across genres.
A festival, a forum, an attitude - called Playing On The Edge (POTE) with the purpose of presenting curious musicians, artists, thinkers and an audience engaged in deep listening and ingenious collaborations. Through curated concerts, chamber music parties and participative jam sessions, POTE seeks to bring together friends and communities at the heart of new music and fascinating ideas.
The inaugural festival will take place October 23-25, 2020 in a series of four concerts at the FRAC, Maison Victor Hugo, Kursaal (Salle Proudhon), and the Auditorium of the Cité des arts.
We are launching an open call for participants to propose their creative projects!
More information can be found at festivalpote.com
I hope you’ll join me as I launch this new endeavor to bring joy and community to my home through music.
(The website is currently in French only. However, if you want to participate and need help, please write to us at festivalpote@gmail.com)
Learn more about the festival here
Play at the festival here
