Musique a la Mode Chamber Ensemble

About

Musique à la Mode, french for "music in style" was formed by Hannah Shields, Jeffrey Worthey, Jennifer Taira, Ed Klorman, and Laurie Rubin in August 2007. The group shares the desire to bring music to a diverse audience, to keep classical music relevant to our current time, and to give the composers of our day a venue and musical palette for their new works. In experimenting with different formats by integrating elements of theater, visual art, and multimedia in our concerts, we hope to keep classical music interesting, meaningful, and relevant to the current time. In a world that is constantly changing, we understand that the audience for classical music isn't as it once was, and that in order for classical music to still have meaning, we must keep up with societal and technological change. Our series, "Musique at the Bowery" had it's first concert on November 11th, 2007 where a large and enthusiastic audience enjoyed a "Schubertiad", topped off with wine, and good food.

We've chosen St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, located in the East Village, as our venue. The East Village's eclectic array of restaurants, coffee houses, unusually themed eateries and shops lends itself to a young, hip, and artistic crowd. Many theater companies have chosen the East Village as their venue to reach out to such a crowd, and to make theater-going available to a very different audience. Similarly, our aim is to make classical and new music available and appealing to a different audience, and to find ways of dispelling the stereotypes people associate with classical music.

In our second concert on February 24, we performed the trio version of Stravinsky's "A Soldier's Tale." Though the orchestral version of this piece is done with narration, an actual set, and actors, the trio version is most usually performed simply as a piece of chamber music without the story or the action. However, we decided to keep the excitement and magic from the full version, paired it down a bit, and performed the trio version as a staged read-through with a minimalist set, costumes, props, and with three phenomenal actors! This is just one example of how we continue to keep music alive, fun, and full of surprises! We feel that if an audience can walk away from our concerts thinking it was a memorable evening, we have achieved the best way to preserve classical music, and to give new music a different context.

In the very near future, we will have our very own, short new music festival in the summer to feature the works by composers of our current time. We will be using smaller, more intimate venues for the festival which lend themselves to multi-media, electronic music, and other New Music. We encourage you to visit our website often, and to stay tuned for future updates, and to view the schedule of our concerts.