By Philippe Couture

“… Music and classical music tell us a lot about our heritage as a culture, but I think that we also have the power to create the heritage of the future, and that requires us to be proactive in working with the artists who are the cultural identity of society today.

The question is how to reach a broader audience, and connect even more with the audience that does come to the concert hall. Some of them do like to hear a Tchaikovsky symphony, as anyone should because it’s amazing, but it also means we have to be proactive in bringing our symphonic music into our culture, into the 21st century, and being creative about the different collaboration we can do with other artists and living, breathing musicians.

… Throughout the past year it was really about learning another way of hearing, of being much more conscious of what other musicians in the orchestra are playing or doing.

For the strings, in particular, what was interesting is that because usually they sit two per stand, they were a little bit less comfortable. I would say that now it feels even better than before the pandemic, because now they found their sound and because they’re alone at their stand, they play more in a soloistic way, which quite surprisingly made the whole sound of the orchestra even bigger than what it used to be when they were two-by-two.“

Source: The Globe and Mail