I’ve mentioned the ConcertLab online video series, in which much care is given to the filming of short individual performances by a wide array of musicians, leaning heavily classical, in a wide array of arrangements, focused largely on chamber ensembles, small groups, and solo players. The consistently modest scale of these videos provides the ConcertLab directors and producers with the opportunity to situate the video viewer near and even within the performance.
Cultural phenomena and trends online and off often intersect, and so the Cercle Odyssey traveling series of “360-degree immersive nomad concert installation” settings (also mentioned here recently) suggests, to me, not just a portable experience vaguely akin to the Sphere in Las Vegas, but also an in-person rendition of the kind of experience that crafted performance videos provide on platforms like YouTube. A question for live event producers is how the intimacy of home viewing — perhaps best exemplified by NPR’s Tiny Desk series — can manifest itself in-person.
There’s an interesting intersection of unintended consequences at work in the importance of live music to the livelihood of working musicians. Much of this economic shift has to do with streaming having cut revenue significantly, and that change dovetails with the desire for in-person experiences by people whose life and work increasingly involve staring at two-dimensional screens for much of the day. These twin scenarios — the need to put on a show that encourages word of mouth, and the desire to see things that don’t lose the intimacy of home viewing — find their fruition in events like Cercle Odyssey.
The video that stoked these thoughts is a new upload from Cercle, of an extended performance by Max Richter and a small chamber string group (consisting of Eloisa Fleur, Max Baillie, Zara Hudson, Max Ruisi, and Abby Baillie). They perform post-classical, even neo-romantic, music surrounded by their audience who are, themselves, surrounded by massive screens projecting images throughout the set. It’s a new type of performance set-up, and judging by the length of the videos’ credits, not a small undertaking — all the more understandably when part of the plan is to, later, share the live show online.
