 create new ways of presenting. And we had Bob Wilson with us on last week on Wednesday, which was a fantastic conversation. And today, we continue our series with artists, curators, and producers who try to make sense out of the time of Corona create, create meeting. And and now after the immediate talk, which we experienced last year, we talked with over 150 artists from 50 countries. Now it's all about what do we do now? What's last tune? What to do? The big question. And with us today, we have someone who does something, John Glover. And John is also, how would you say, a triple champion. He's an artist. He's a producer. And also a presenter. So John Glover, as I read from his bio, which hopefully you all got is an expressive composer, unabashedly expressive, they say. And he has created music for concert, opera, dance, and theater. And he has received commissions from the Houston, Houston Grand Opera, Onside Opera, New York Youth Symphony, the Washington National Opera Sparks, and Byron Christ, and Milwaukee Opera, American Conservatory Theater, and Mirror Vision Ensemble. And he has many upcoming projects with artists that he is collaborating with. And a new music theater work was the American Opera Project titled Eat the Document, with his frequent collaborator, Kelly Rook. John serves as the director of artistic planning for the Kauffman Music Center here in Manhattan. This is what we have in here. He invented something, the musical storefront, things a little bit. Hey, you have to talk to John. This is essential. What he does is stunning. And I have to admit, John, I didn't know what it is. So tell us something. What is the musical storefront theater? Sure. So just a little bit too about, thank you for that introduction, and just a little bit also about Kauffman Music Center for, I know that more of your audience tends to be theater rather than concert audience. So a little bit about Kauffman Music Center is we're located on the Upper West Side, and Kauffman is sort of this whole ecosystem of what music making means. So we have basically three main initiatives here that I help oversee the artistic guidance with or help coordinate the artistic guidance with. So we have Merkin Hall, which is where we would normally be presenting concerts in our 450-seat theater on the Upper West Side, which is our professional presentations. We also have Special Music School, which is a unique collaboration with the Department of Education. It's a K-12 public school, and we provide music as the central curriculum component to that education. Our high school is the only arts high school in New York City that provides composition as a focus for instruction. And then we have Lucy Moses School, which is New York City's largest community music school. So all of that is normally what Kauffman is. And my role is director of artistic planning is to oversee presentations on the hall, but also to find ways that we can connect our professional presentation work with the wider sort of student body that also exists within Kauffman. And so the musical storefronts was one of the many ways that we responded to this last difficult year where live performance has been a challenge for all of us. And so we pivoted in a couple of ways. We did also do digital presentations, which we have going on throughout the season. But at a certain point, this opportunity presented itself to bring live music back to the city. And just a little context about musical storefronts is this is a project that it's certainly not my idea alone. And it's a real example of, I think, how things are always stronger with community and a group of people coming together to realize something. So in this case, there is an individual, Jay Dweck, who was walking around the upper side and noticing all the empty storefronts and sort of had this idea, well, why couldn't people be performing in storefronts? And of course, there have been a number of initiatives over the years where people do use storefronts for performance, whether it's theater or music. And he approached us with the idea, the sort of the broad concept, the idea, and our executive director, Kate Sheeran, and myself sort of thought into that more, hunted around for storefronts that could be a great concert hall. And also the technical possibilities, how do you really execute this? How do you do something that would be a really successful performance? So there was this initial seed of an idea from Jay and then a foundation he's connected to the Alphadine Foundation, which provided the funding. And then on Kaufman's side, it's our presentation, and we worked through how to technically realize this, curating of the artists and sort of running of the series and finding the storefront. And so it's sort of that whole collaboration that's come together, including our location at 62nd and Broadway, Milstein properties and Milford management is the landlord of that empty storefront. And they actually donated the space to us, which allowed us to hire even more musicians and present more concerts because we weren't worrying about having to rent the storefront. And then we also had Steinway and Sons donate a grand piano to the space. So it's this sort of shared collective effort to get live performance back to the city. And as a quick summary of how it works is we present the same range of music that we would present at Merckin Hall. So it's predominantly classical, but not only there's a lot of jazz, there's Broadway and music theater, there's contemporary and experimental music that whole range is being presented at the storefront. And we started on January 23rd. And the series is going up through April 28th. So we are presenting 107 concerts. Over 200 musicians are being hired all being paid standard professional wages for the concerts. And there are two concerts a day, almost every day of the week. So we have an artist or a group of artists do a set from 11 onwards, like an afternoon set, they'll do three performances of 50 minutes in length each. Then there's a break and then we do like a four, four o'clock onset with a different set of artists. So any day you walk past the storefront window, you might experience a completely different sort of short 45 minute concert from a totally different artist. And how we accomplish it technically is it was an old clothing store that's been empty for over two years on the corner of 62nd and Broadway. And we were able to convert it, we brought microphones from Merkin Hall, purchased speakers, moved the piano in, and basically anywhere from a soloist to up to a quartet of performers can be in the space. They're all mics, they have monitors, they can hear themselves. You have a sound engineer who's outside on the sidewalk, who is monitoring the levels and sort of designing as if we were in a normal theater. And the speakers are outside of the window. So the audience that's on the sidewalk can hear the performance that's happening in the storefront, as you would if we were in a standard theater. So that's sort of the broad look at it. It's also meaningful to me because it's a whole range of performers we're presenting, but one in particular that I think is vocalists, particularly right now, don't really have a lot of opportunities for live performance because of the challenges of this particular virus that we're dealing with, right, and that it's airborne. So being able to present operatic singers, Broadway singers, we've had stars from Hamilton, from Tootsie, we have singers that would normally be on the stage of the Met, they can perform at this storefront live for people because there is this glass, there's a way that it becomes a safe medium. So that's sort of the broad picture of it. And I could, if it's of interest, I could share a short sort of video clip that gives a good summary of a few performances and gives people a sense of what the storefront looks like. Oh, I don't think I can hear you right now, Frank. Okay, great. So I'll share. Yeah, absolutely. So give me one minute to share screen here. And that should. So this is sort of a summary of, this gives a few highlights of the storefront. About two and a half minutes. It gives a sense of sort of the scope of it is, you know, it really, we were trying, the idea was to be both a way to get live performance happening again in New York, which for most of these artists and most of these audiences when we started this in January, it was the first live performance that either side had experienced in, you know, since March. And part of it was really to replicate or to replicate the theater experience as well as much as possible in terms of the sound. So to have really high quality sound for the artist and for the audience. And I think also it's been a great, it's nice that it's a free initiative. And it's just been a really inspiring thing to do, especially in the middle of the winter when things were pretty, pretty tough. And the incredible thing is, you know, for anybody who was worried about, you know, where will the audiences go when we're able to come back? And where is that engagement at? I mean, we have, I think we're still, we've still got two weeks to go. I think we're over 17,000 audience members that have stopped in front of that storefront window to experience the concerts. And I think that number is even more remarkable because we can't publicize them in advance. So when we started this COVID restrictions were such, obviously they're loosening up now as we're further in with the vaccine. But when we started this, it was really early days in terms of figuring out how to safely do live events. So we had the entire series planned out, but audiences wouldn't know in advance when the performances would be. So it served as a pop-up series, even though we're just in this one location. But I mean, even in our coldest days and like late January, early February, when it would be like 22 degrees, you'd have like 100 people standing out there watching a 40-minute long concert just totally bundled up. And these aren't, for the most part, these aren't people who were planning to be there. They're people who were walking by to run an errand or, you know, to get from place A to place B and suddenly there's a live performance in front of them and they just stop. So it's been a real, a really joyful thing to do in this time and a real affirmation that, you know, there is no replacement for live performance really. You know, there's no replacement for that actual experience. So incredible, really congratulation on that. But I hadn't heard, I wasn't aware of it, but as you said, you can't really advertise it even now. It's not, you're only shortly before you will hear when it happens, but it's an intervention in a public space. It is also giving a sign that you care about audiences, that you care about musicians, and also the change. Someone has an idea, it goes to an institution, the institution has a funder, and then it's being produced. So it's a real model that works. It's very clear. It's about my space. One cannot go around the question. You're close to Lincoln Center. So how does that make you feel? I don't know. I haven't seen such an initiative coming from that gigantic big organization. Or am I misinformed? Or have they been? Well, I would say, you know, we're all, I mean, something I think about a lot, especially this year, but in general, you know, we're all, I mean, the arts at large are all part of this one giant community. And then, you know, obviously, there's the music making community. And there's many communities within there as there are, of course, in theater. And the thing I really keep reflecting on in this last year is just that, you know, we are all in the same ocean that is trying to create work in a pandemic, but we're definitely all in different boats. And so, you know, I think each we have this sort of shared challenge that we all are aware of this broader existential issue of having a living through a pandemic, which none of us have done before and figuring out how to create art in the midst of that, which often depends on at least in our fields in live experience. And I think we're all the tools we have available to us are all different. I know there are a number of other pop up initiatives going. Obviously, there's the New York pop stuff has been going on, which is through the city and the state. And I know Lincoln Center has now initiated a project called restart our stages. So I think that has started already, and I think goes mostly through the summer. So I think with us, I think it was we are a unique institution, I think in a lot of ways in that we are equally grounded in professional presentation, but also in deeply engaging with our community and a community music school that has students from ages three to 90, and then also a public school with a core curriculum of music. So we're connecting with communities in all three of those ways and we're a large institution, but we're smaller than many of our colleagues on the Upper West Side. And for that reason, I think we're more nimble in sometimes in addressing some of these things. So I think this was one of those elements where we're a presenter that normally works in a professional theater. So when this idea appears of, well, what if couldn't you take over an empty storefront? You know, for us, the answer is yes, because we have stage hands, we have audio engineers, we have even like our front of house people and our ushers, who, you know, haven't, haven't, we haven't had live audiences in our theater since last March. Suddenly, they can all come into play and they can handle crowd control management and so they can run a front of house on the sidewalk. So I think that's part of the uniqueness with us too, is that we're, you know, we're nimble in that way. So I mean, I know that there are other storefront initiatives happening around the city. Mostly I've seen it with theater companies and not so much with music presenters. And a hamburger created a great festival and some of the meatpacking districts have done it. But still, the scale of your initiative is remarkable. And one thing is the New York City, you know, opera company, I know the phalaemonics have a track, they go around, I actually saw one of the performances. It felt very small. The musicians were kind of looking to each other. They didn't want to talk afterwards. Someone was singing kind of even the show tune and dancing on the red truck they had. And it felt, at least to me, it didn't feel appropriate in a time of Corona when people were dying and to show if I feel what you are doing there in a way. Also with that glass, you know, there is something of interest that this screen we look at now, I see you through a glass, the television and all of it. But in a way it's a hybrid format. People are behind them. You hear their voices, but through a great sound system. And what's missing, the absent is kind of highlighted, but you're still experiencing. And I can think this is why a hundred people stay below freezing, if you say that or not. For 40 minutes to listen to a concert, it's remarkable. It's, I mean, I think it's, I think there is something interesting about, you know, like I say, we're not the first to do something like to sort of re-engage a storefront. But I think, you know, like I can think of projects that happened around like RISD, you know, 10, 20 years ago that have done things like this too. But I do think there's, when you're trying to, I think there's something about it that, because I didn't really, you know, we didn't really know exactly how it would come together. Would people really stay? How would the artists feel when they're performing? Would they feel like they're on display? Or would they feel really comfortable? And I think in a lot of ways we just, we took all of our expertise and our knowledge and our best practices for what works to support an artist and what works to create a concert in a theater and sort of just made that translation. And so, you know, like, you know, bringing in incredible audio engineers that would normally be amplifying performances in our theater and having them do it there and making that translation. And I think also like, for example, the artists, when we thought through how does this programming work? Like how it, when you invite an artist to come do this, what does that look like? And so we really wanted to create a situation that felt as familiar as possible. So you have a stage manager, you know, you have a, you know, five minute call, two minute call. You do a short sound check, but also that we arranged it so that each, if you're engaged for a performance on the storefront, you're given a really respectable fee. And that calls you to the storefront for a three hour period of time. So there's a sound check in there. And then you do three performances spaced out. And we, then the adjustment, of course, is that unlike a normal concert, we're not asking you to do like a first act and a second act or something like that, but more like three shorter sets with breaks in between. And that helps for us both with spacing out audiences that we don't have audiences gathering for too long. But also the artists can get a breather. But in a normal, in normal concert seasons before this, if you were hired for a concert performance at Merckin Hall, or if you were hired to perform with an orchestra or in chamber group, that probably took about three hours of your time, right? It was, you know, you'd show up at the hall, you do maybe an hour sound check, break while the audience is gathering, and then you've probably got a program of around an hour and a half of music with an intermission. So I think, I mean, I know these are kind of less interesting brass tacks, things, but I think all of those small elements created an environment that felt like a familiarity that a lot of us hadn't experienced in a long time. And I think that that allowed the artists to also feel just a little more enlivened. I mean, the other joy is that, you know, it's really, it's sort of like really elevated busking, really, right? I mean, it's they're on a street performing music is what's really happening, but elevated in the sense that we can accomplish it at a technical level, like we would in a theater, because the performance part of the space is a controlled environment. The sound is really good. The performers feel safe in their climate control. They can hear each other very well. So they can really play at the same level that they would play if they were in the theater. And then we can really control the sound and make it a very high professional level. So I think those things, you know, all and yet at the same time, it's a free outdoor experience. So I think those things help it come together to feel natural. And also, you know, it's a general philosophy of mine when doing programming in whatever context I'm doing it. But in this case, it's sort of, you know, once we had the generosity of the funding from the Alpha 9 Foundation to make it possible, and the generosity of Milstein and Milford for donating our storefront space, and providing us with the support of like their super if we had issues with electricity and things like that. And once we have that piano, it's once all those things came together, it's really all reward and no risk. So you really just reach out to artists that you're excited about or that that you trust and just sort of say, okay, here's a storefront performance. What do you want to do? What would you, you know, what's the thing that you've been wanting to play or what do you really want to share with people right now? Because obviously it's a free public event. So we're not concerned about ticket sales in the same way we would be in a normal presentation and things like that. And so I think that too allowed it to be a kind of it's sort of just like, like this, like this fire hydrant of just all this creative energy that's been building since March and we just opened it, you know, and it's been incredible to see that some really deeply emotional experiences with artists that would come up to me afterwards and say, I haven't played in front of somebody else in a year, you know, I've played in my living room on Zoom, but I haven't done this in a year or same with audience members, we've had audience members that have come up to us and just been weeping because they just haven't seen someone perform for them in light in real life. And so yeah, it's it's been, I think it's sort of hit the best of all possible aspects of being a really controlled, like a theater style environment for the artists, but also a totally open available free public experience in a high traffic area of the city. Yeah, it is really remarkable. How do the artists, did they try out things and normally wouldn't? Yeah, you know, it was it was it was interesting to see a variety of responses, you know, we had some musicians that really thought I would say each of the artists that we've invited was definitely thoughtful about what the actual environment was, you know, they understood that it was a storefront, they understood that it was the public passing by that maybe people would stop, maybe people wouldn't. And different artists had really different approaches to that. So we had like the performer who opened the whole series, Sean Lee, phenomenal violinist, when we invited him, he said, okay, well, I've been working on all the Paganini caprices, especially over the pandemic and I, you know, got them all. So I think what I'm going to do is just I'm just going to play Paganini caprices. And I'll sort of announce them as I go, and I don't know what order I'll do them in, but I'll just do that. And I think for him, he thought, you know, they're these really beautiful virtuosic incredible pieces, right, that he's he's absolutely mastered. But also they're all sort of tuneful and vibrant and short, right, they're all these sort of two to three minute things. And it allowed him to, if someone stumbled across it and stopped, they could take in one three minute piece and then keep walking, or they could take in a series of them since there is this set of 24. But also because of the short works, he could kind of play a caprice and then talk to the audience and play a caprice and talk to the audience and have it be this really interactive and casual experience. And then we had other artists, Michael Kelly was a baritone who and he did a whole, because I also offered to artists they could either do like think of 140 to 50 minute long set and do it three times since there would be breaks and you would have different audience, or they could mix and match or they could however they like. And this this artist, Michael Kelly is fantastic baritone. He actually went on a whole research thought about like windows and different he's an operatic baritone but he also does music theory theater and he thought through the concept of being through a window and glass and barriers and also the fact that he would be performing from four o'clock to seven for him it was four o'clock on. And so his first set it would still be daylight. But by the time he got to his last set, the sun would have set because this was in February, early March, so the sun was still setting earlier then. So he created a whole like three 50 minute programs that each were added like if you stayed there for the whole three hours you had this three act experience of that reflected on the time of day but also different ways of thinking about singing or reaching through barriers which I was totally amazed that that's where he went with it because it's like, I mean he puts together a bigger program than he would have ever put together in a normal concert hall. It really was like 150 minutes of music like and if you stayed for that full three hours you experienced a complete show. And I'm trying to think of a couple other examples of some artists have taken it as an opportunity to collaborate or connect with pianists that they haven't worked like some soloists. For example, we had Akash Mittal who's a fantastic jazz saxophonist and also is the lead coach for our Face the Music program at Kaufman Music Center, which is a youth ensemble dedicated to only the work of living composers. So he's a jazz saxophonist and composer and he took the opportunity because you could work with a maximum of four artists in the space and since he had to do three sets, he took it as a chance to work with three different pianists. So he had a different artist join him for each set. Two of them were artists that he hadn't previously performed with. And so I think that's a unique example also because obviously we're busy but we're busy in different ways, right? So a lot of musicians that would normally be on tour right now that are based in New York but would normally be traveling all around the globe and only here for a week at a time, they're all here. So a lot of artists, Akash is just one example, a lot of artists were able to put together projects or try out things that they haven't been able to do in a long time because normally we're all more spread out. And so in that way it had a very sort of local feeling to it in terms of the art making. Incredible. Can you choose whatever they want to do or do you ask them? Within reason, I mean we would start it as I gave them the broad sense of like we would give them the broad sense of it's a storefront, you know, the sort of setup, also the fact that you know that what you're going to be performing is people walking by in the street. So something that you think might draw people in or engage them. And just to be mindful of the fact that it is art that you're creating in a public space, right? So we're not, and it's a pop-up. So we're not contextualizing it before this isn't an audience that's coming specifically for one sort of thing. And then beyond that really just ask them what do you want to do? And some artists wanted to have more back and forth conversations and some just said this is what I want to do and I didn't that that's where it would go. So yeah pretty open ended in terms of their options. Incredible. Just think about it and in a way of course also radical you are outside your normal space it's on the street but it's not on the street it's inside. It's artist depicted by temperature or weather or weather but really great sound quality normally it's not such a great quality also great performers. And audiences are free to come and go stay. Robert Wilson is famous for his long seven or nine hour operas especially in the beginning of his live in Time of Sigmund Freud. Also Einstein on the beach where he would give to the audience the audience are free to leave and come back and take breaks on their own judgment which is a radical thing in a way to do and you play with all of that. Yeah I think it's sort of yeah we do end up delving into all those things and I think it was it was also sort of a learning as we go you know it was once we had this initial idea then you just sort of solve the problems one step at a time and you know there are things about it that were very clear to me from the beginning that would be successful about it. For example you know I have produced stuff outdoors before and so just that huge relief of well if we're in a storefront but it's amplified out like great we don't need to I don't need to worry about I can't hire you know I can only hire certain kinds of instrumentalists I can't hire you know you really it left you as open as possible and because you know it's an indoor space you have a piano which you can tune and maintain and make sure that it stays stable which is which is unique you know that wouldn't that wouldn't happen or it would be much more difficult to do outside there's just so many variables that you you remove and and I guess the only the only one that remains is will the audience stay engaged or not right because the artist is in a position where they're going to be able to go forward with the performance no matter what rain or shine and the incredible thing was just to watch I mean there's really you just watched audiences didn't matter what the weather was they just stayed with it so that part of it was really it was a much needed affirmation I think especially this winter and they allowed to take pictures and film normally you're not allowed as an audience members completely forbidden yeah as we say you can that here they just so it's also a meaningful moment if you know this is something um special what did you learn what you didn't know or say this is something we just covered and maybe people who are listening now around the country or around the world so this is a great idea we should do that um what did you learn what was important what is important sure I mean I think the first thing that we learned which I I knew it before and I think it's why I was so adamant about setting up this discussion in this way uh at the beginning is is um it really something like this only comes together with a with a coalition of people there's not one one piece of this puzzle that you couldn't have had to make the whole thing come together you know you really need um the presentation and performance and experience of an institution like Kaufman that is also willing to be flexible and nimble and creative but you need that you need that funder or that donor who's equally imaginative and and and excited and interested in an idea like this um and and again having the landlord rally around it they could have very easily said well you know if you have if you have a foundation supporting this you know we really need to charge you some kind of rent and for them they just saw this as they've had a space that hasn't been occupied for over two years and uh they they they really saw the value in just um enlivening the space you know in just energizing that part of the city um so I think that really that was probably the biggest thing to learn was just that um the most joyful and successful projects um I think tend to be ones where you really do have this coalition of people who each bring something really strong to the table and uh create a collaboration beyond what any individual organization could have done we might have been able to put on 10 concerts you know if I'd shifted some of my presentation budget from what would have gone to Merckin Hall but we would never would have reached you know 107 concerts and over hired over 200 musicians um so I think that's the big one and I think the other thing that I learned is that um you know it's which shouldn't be a surprise but it's a good reminder is um it really you really couldn't predict time of day weather and this may be unique to the pandemic I don't know but time of day weather style of music it you know the size of audiences really ranged there was no sure hard and fast rule I can't tell you I mean there were days where we had someone at the window uh we had like Jesse Montgomery phenomenal composer and violinist doing all of her own original contemporary uh work um we had hundreds of people there for the performance you have somebody else playing you know really standard repertoire Beethoven and Chopin and people would stay engaged it really didn't there was no um no hard and fast rule to what aesthetic would draw the audience in more than any other um but I think what did really have an impact was um just the engagement of the artist and and as if the artist was doing the work that they really wanted to be doing and that they were excited about and and creating in an engaging way then an audience would naturally be drawn in regardless of what what the art was that was being shared incredible um so you know some people say about democracy and we feel of course the arts always have been on the right side of history most of the time they are on this complex struggle for freedom for democracy you know excuse me well countries often get the democracy they deserve and some say well also countries get them culture the music the art um say deserve it's a community is functioning as a result you will have great arts so it's not just what it reflects the unity as just people say even about sport you have great games if things are working you know you have great exciting things is the fact that the Kauffman center is as a community it was a school a good education right you're into presenting and also creating work is perhaps that the big difference to a place perhaps from Lincoln Center where and they do really great things I don't want to say anything against them but you know still you do you did something that has an impact now um is that fact is it a working community and do you care about the community around you was it for the community around 67th street or are you using those like you know towards the gods of music we have to do something to celebrate the art so what yeah I mean I would say um I mean I think there are a couple things I think yes I think the ecosystem of what Kauffman music center is is really speaks to um a lot of it I mean there's just the fact that you're I mean also you know like the fact that we have um and pre-pandemic all these things are in the same building Lucy Moses school um this community music school and special music school and merken hall they're all in the same building and they all the people who engage with us in each of those programs and projects they all um much to our frustration sometimes but we all use the same elevator so the same elevator that takes you to the backstage of murk straight to the backstage of merken hall and onto the stage is the same elevator that takes you up to a classroom on the fifth floor of the building where um you know maybe your second grade child is going into their doll crows class to learn your rhythmics and and internalize how rhythm musical rhythm works in their body and so joshua bell and that second grader might end up on that elevator at the same day at the same time trying to go in different directions for example and I think um I I think that makes a lot of sense I think something about the fact that the full ecosystem is here at all times um does it just creates a special kind of energy um where I think for one thing I think you never feel like you're getting stuck there's always a new idea or there's always an openness to trying something else I think when you're in a place that has learning at its core that is part of it um and I also think um yeah I think that I think that is that's probably a lot of it is that that kind of um that that full ecosystem exists here I hadn't really thought about that that idea before you brought that up but I do think that that um that speaks to a lot of our interest this year you know every institution is handling it differently but during the pandemic there are many presenters who have you know taken a pause or or sort of just stepped back and and have wanted to wait and I think you know for us back in March um I mean one thing that we did say um amongst ourselves because you know March and April was just so difficult um canceling everything and calling artists and saying I don't know when this art this show will happen I'm sorry you know um so we did make this promise like look we don't want to cancel anything ever again but we did also say you know but we also can't stop I mean if we stop how will these students keep learning and how will we get artists performing and how will we maintain our community connections with our normal audience at Kaufman but also if we have to go online can we reach more audiences or the storefront for example okay if we can put on shows in a storefront for free and show the whole range of artists that we celebrate and that we present um we'll find new audiences I mean there are people stopping at that storefront that maybe have never walked into Merckin Hall and maybe because of an experience they've had there now they will um or they'll seek out that artist I guess what I should add to here again it's a more grass tax technical thing but um at the storefront so there's no um we don't announce the program in advance but when an artist is there there's a QR code at the bottom of the window you can scan the QR code if you have a phone or we our ushers have small cards that have the information you scan the QR code it tells you who's performing what their program is and then rather than um bios of the performers like we would put in a normal printed program we just it's the headshot of each artist and then a link to the bio on their individual website as well as obviously links to Kaufman so that you can find out about our digital offerings and also you could sign up for classes that are in our school but um so very quickly and in at any point during the performance the audience can feel unencumbered to they can walk right up to the window and find out who the artist is they can get to their website very easily to follow them later so it provides an opportunity for discovery I think as well um both of these artists and and and of what we do so yeah restaurants who adapted the QR code yeah exactly it's like that there are some people where I'd say like you can scan that card like you can find you can scan because people that who's playing who is this I'd say well that's you know Jordan Bach is this phenomenal be honest but you can scan that code you'll get more they'd be like what I don't get it and then you eventually you'd have to say it's like when you go to a restaurant now and they'd be like oh okay you know this something is changing and something's I also like the fact that it's not a fundraiser the beloved fact actually from the New York Metropolitan Opera and the big concert around the world which is beautiful from people so much of course it's also a fundraiser and here you say this is a free offering and in America especially we should not underestimate the effort to be doing and also appreciate and celebrate this gesture what you guys did your funders the building the spirit behind this because it is for the people by the people and with the people and caring about the community around you and yes of course maybe also someone say we support that something seems to be working but it was not right away and it's so beautifully presented the white piano it looks like a shot you know from MTV you know so you really would care into it and not say well let's do something I mean I saw also from some theaters a pop-up performances on the one from the vineyard theater and the artist you know it was next to a subway where the sound would come out the sound thing didn't work you couldn't see really you couldn't even hear the artist the microphone was working but there were about five fantastic cameras and it was filmed and you know it's going to be used for a fundraiser in a way but it's great that they did it and they do that but they had no experience and nobody people couldn't connect also the what was presented was spoken so fast so fast it was almost impossible to follow far away so they were not thinking it through in a way as you did as the music people with that experience do you think the fact that you are an artist and I think one of the great complications in American arts and culture is that artists are not really in the driver's seat they have a lot of money for art in America some claim more than Europe of course it goes often more to great museums or the symphonies and I love them it's fantastic that it should be but often on the boards there are no artists and they are not making those decisions is the fact that you are an artist did that make did that tilt it to present this or would the Kauffman Center have done that anyway or or would a normal arts presenter have said yeah well you know we can't do anything theaters are closed and let's save some money let's not pay anyone and so what is that fact that you are an artist that you felt we need to do something is that maybe it doesn't make a difference I um I mean I can't speak to what it would be like to not be an artist but I will say that in the leadership of our organization in general there's a great deal of that we have a number of artists both on the board and in leadership positions and I think that that I think that that is a crucial and important thing I think our executive director Kate Sheeran who who also is you know massive amount of credit for this project goes to her and she is a french horn player she trained as a french horn player at Eastman and Yale and she talks about and I totally agree with her she talks about the fact that you know running an organization or arts administration it's like chamber music it's like it's the same thing as chamber music it's getting getting everybody together and you know the same way when you start playing music together and you figure out you know who who are each of these people what are their strengths what are their weaknesses where does someone need to lean in to help somebody else where does this you know it's one sort of joint collaboration and so I think yes on that and I also think you know I think it's a I'm trying to remember if it's might be a Peter Sellers quote that I'd heard at one point the idea that you know the artists you know artists is somebody who imagines who who looks out into the world and sees has an idea of something that needs to exist there but currently doesn't exist right that there's there's something that when they look at the world they see that there's a gap there's something that should exist there that that isn't there yet you know that there's an imagination for that and I think that that is totally crucial to arts administration as well so I think all those reasons yeah probably contribute to why when this first seat of an idea that came from Jay Dweck to us which he presented it to a number of other institutions I think and it had never really landed and when he came to us and said I'm seeing all these empty store fronts and I just and I I'm feeling so strongly that all these working musicians in the city that are just not aren't working right now and isn't there some way we can put those two things together couldn't we somehow in in live in storefronts I think he'd said that to other organizations and they didn't pick up on it and when he said that to Kate and and then we had a joint meeting him and Kate and I and we were like yeah we can figure that out totally that doesn't sound crazy that sounds like a great idea I'd also say when you're saying about artists in the driver's seat the chairman or chairperson of our board this year is now Orly Shaham who's a phenomenal pianist who also has two children who attend school at Kaufman but you know renowned concert pianist and also curator and presenter and many places including the chamber music series of the pacific symphony and so having and we have a little number of artists on the board and Nikki Renee Daniels who's a phenomenal Broadway singer Natalie Joachim who's an incredible composer and flute player who has worked with our students and I think having people like that on your board and in leadership positions having artists there mean that an idea like this doesn't seem crazy to them you know when you say okay well we we've gotten this funding we're going to take over the storefront they they they know what that is you know they're excited by that so I do I agree I think that it's important to have people who are artists working on the administrative side of things and I for some reason there's a general feeling I think or sometimes I feel like there's a misunderstanding that someone who's an artist uh couldn't possibly also handle doing production or administration or or or that side of how we accomplish all this which I I think is absolutely not true I think most art making is a combination of you know the imagination of of wanting to create something that doesn't exist in the world and also then all the problem solving that goes along with that and all of the community building that goes along with that and all of the the collaboration and gathering people and resources around you to help you realize that work it's it's to me it's a very direct translation yeah I mean to one of the greatest artists at Lincoln Center is a great example of things to do work I went to Marsalis was in a way also on the driver's seat he said I want to have that theater walk a special way to look outside and this one to remind us of the club so he created something that made it also work and made it different and so I think this is in the significant um um statement that's coming out from you and it's also inspiring we in the theater world also have so many theaters whether it's the public new york theater workshop who knows the second stage and uh where are they all what are we doing what could we be doing and I know we all also under shock this perhaps a lump time's a little bit less money in the theater and the experimental world so it's not as easy as in the art world often or in the classical world um it gets more recognition from society and I think it should be cleared up but still what you guys did is also beyond uh just the the money and it's not right to tell they could make it you had an idea you recognized it you put it into motion and something happened and it made a difference and my guess is also you have deep roots in your neighborhood right where you are and yeah and this this has deepened them I mean this this really um I should also the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District which our Executive Director Kate is a member of that of that board um how we found the specific storefront we found ultimately because we were looking at a number of sites and many of them were challenging for different reasons and then she was in a board meeting and just tossed it out um you know to the group there and said we're you know we have this idea we're working on it we've got funding but we haven't found a storefront yet if anybody knows of any that might make sense and it just happened to be one of the people on that meeting was connected with Milstein and said I think I might know a space and so that you know we we've engaged even more deeply in our community not just audiences and the people in the neighborhood that who've passed by but um but with you know the the Business Improvement District people now a large property owner in our neighborhood is now has really produced concerts with us I mean I wouldn't have expected to say that to you a year ago that my key collaborator in a concert series is um you know is a property management company but they've really been deep in it with us what are the artists coming in what's the schedule going to look like how long should it run um and then also breads bakery which is just up the street from the theater um they uh got excited when the concert started happening and uh they're music lovers and so then they came to me and said how can we help what can we do and I said well we can't you know because of covid we're being really cautious we don't want to run a full restaurant or anything in here so we weren't really providing craft services for the artists beyond bottled water um I said what if do you do coffee and tea for the artists maybe just because since you guys have all those protocols in place and they came back and said no no no no we're not just going to do that like yes they can come by and get they just say they're at the storefront we'll give them free coffee we'll give them free tea but we want to do something else for them so every day that there's a concert our house manager goes over to breads tells them how many artists are performing in the storefront and then they get these gift bags full of like bread and like desserts and like like these huge tote bags full of like enough carbs to feed them for two weeks as a thank you um so it's just like um it's also really galvanize a community yeah and also that i mean property management company might truly appreciate or understand the value of art and the difference it makes and you guys really made a difference but we talked now a lot of your service of your work and the for other artists and we are coming closer to the end of the talk but you're also a composer so tell us a bit about your work and i think i asked you i don't know if you have it somewhere to have maybe show us a bit of your what are you working on and and what inspires you where is your work situated sure so i mean as a composer i it might be why i've ended up in this position of artistic planning at kaufman i'm really inspired by collaborative work mostly i mean i trained as a composer in undergrad and grad school undergrad at indiana university and grad school university of southern california and i also did school study classical saxophone but my my light bulb really was one summer i took an internship up at glimmer glass opera which is upstate new york and my job there was to coordinate a lot of the orchestra work and um assist a couple of the of the assistant coaches um and then uh one of the chorus members tripped uh spraying their ankle on the set for the production for fenchula del west and they didn't have anybody else to step in and i'm not a great singer but i'm an accurate singer um i'm not an operatic singer but i can sing the right notes at the right time and so they asked if i would jump in and that was a real um that was a real light bulb for me because i suddenly was in this professional opera um production and um watching all of the pieces that come together to realize that was sort of when i figured out oh this is the part of composing that i love not sitting in my room all by myself all day toiling over a string quartet or you know was but creating collaborative work and so that really shifted everything and then i studied their dramaturgy a couple more or worked as a dramaturg there for a couple more seasons um and since then all my work has been um working with singers on chamber operas um or working with dancers on sound design and then sound design for immersive theater work as well um but that's really been my primary focus um and the most current most recent work i'm doing in that vein um i had a piece called stay that had been commissioned by onsite opera here in new york that was supposed to open this fall which was an immersive opera theater work um for a house on governor's island and it was with um it's a acapella opera so for eight vocalists uh one of which plays guitar and one of which plays a lot of kitchen equipment and it was for 30 audience members and eight singers and it was sort of like if you take all the elements of an opera and operatic singers and merge those with um a sort of an immersive theater project like a sleep no more or something like that where people can get divided into different rooms we actually controlled where the audience is went uh it wasn't totally free but um sort of created this immersive opera experience um so that was the project that we workshopped right before covid and then obviously hasn't happened yet because we're not getting in a crowded theater with singers in your face uh and then the thing i'm working on right now is a an operatic adaptation of a novel by danis peota called beat the document um which is uh for eight singers and chamber ensemble and the novel circles around uh the 70s and the 90s in america and looking at um in the 70s a young couple who has done a series of actions or demonstrations against the vietnam war one of which has accidentally resulted in killing somebody because planting bombs at different uh corporations house uh the leaders of corporations houses and they've accidentally killed someone so they've had to go on the run from the fbi so it jumps between there and the 1990s where um mary louise and her previous life life and caroline um in her older life she now has a son and she lives as a single mother in the pacific northwest and her son has start is in his teenage years and he started listening to the music of her childhood but as if it's his music because that's what we do when we're teenagers so he's listening to the beach boys over and over on repeat and sees a glimmer of something in his mother that makes him realize he doesn't actually know who she is he doesn't know her past he doesn't know anything so it's a piece that um we're creating as a series of ep albums with american opera project right now um that will start releasing next season and then eventually it'll lead to a staged production but for now we're developing the work in a recording studio because that's what we can do amazing quite uh um and quite as well i don't know if you can show us 30 seconds or a minute of it or we go on um um but uh let us know about if you know about the about the work um what you're doing and do i'll just let it if you go to um american opera projects um uh and the project is called eat the document um there's a great like a sort of three and a half minute video there that summarizes the project really well but i think just if you if you head to american opera projects eat the document you can find that yeah how wonderful um to see how you know you're able to combine all that create work and that uh we always do say that um the artwork and organizing work and community work it's so so connected there is no strict division you know if we have learned anything in the contemporary art we now work living no longer in the post-modern world but in the contemporary output but there are hybrid forms of creating art of producing and filmmakers make theater theater people make films filmmakers write articles uh journalists make a theater piece so and i think this is makes it all richer and better and it is in the sense of what um bachelet aqua said it's an open artwork and i think it's a one great open artwork the musical storefront there's an ongoing long performance with some interruptions over the nights and um it is a great new york moment i think that you create on the streets it's unique and it's so meaningful for everybody to really thank you thank you for staying here and i'm sorry that i didn't know about it before but a little bit is is that you know this is important and she is she was right tomorrow we have pidge uh oh wonderful yeah pidge and he will talk about his work at the tippet rise art center you know him i guess yes i know him very well and i'm also share what they are doing and we it's a bit around the music world what we are also taking but i think we all have to listen and to learn from each other and as you said the storefront idea came also from the theater world the great squat theater a great hungarians theater that left in the 70s they were famous they had a building they performed everything in the storefront people outside would watch what the performance would go on sometimes performers were outside you never knew in that question what's real what's not really old age old question that a theater poses and um and they always had an eight o'clock scene where the company would sit down and have dinner because the kids of the company they need some dinner and uh audiences were there and there was a fantastic time and i think perhaps we are reconnecting to something that might have been lost and that spirit that you present there that is in a way new york spirit in the city will come back this is a great city over centuries it has been through many many crisis i have my prediction is there will be perhaps a roaring 20s the wild 20s as they called in berlin um but it will be different and it should be different and this is a one way to i'm sure it also transformed in a way your organization to experience something that out of necessity if you created something new and i think it will also change the way you do and think further on so the our audience also thank you for listening and um i hope you also found that as significant and meaningful as i did it's a great contribution really also you have to think about it what it means philosophically to say use an empty space don't just have the space done by the expert who can't get in even for young are used to spaces in between open spaces public spaces make partnerships and create something and try also something else so this is an important thing something that perhaps also was missing in a way um how we didn't pay enough attention for those who did but it's a great contribution in the time of corona and i think also with significance for the time after corona the tac as we say here don't thank you again really thank you for taking it so seriously and explaining as it's great work what do you do with the government center all the people who support it and congratulations and it's a great contribution to our series thanks to our listeners again for for taking time you know so much more is going on since we started large march and there were a few of these talks but it's meaningful for us but also as artists need to do great art we also need a great audience good audiences that's important also for the artists that you are there listening and over the arts managers in that sense john in his country to know that people are interested that they do care and support so thank you for taking your time and see you all hopefully tomorrow bye bye john and good luck with everything i'll come soon bye bye great take care