Admission is free and open to the public.
The Columbus Ohio Discovery Ensemble presents the world premiere of All that we see or seem… at Urban Arts Space. Composed by CODE’s Artistic Director, Michael Rene Torres for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion, it is an installation piece that explores how we interact with music in the 21st century with the 6 musicians separated spatially throughout Urban Arts Space’s gallery.
The title refers to a line from the poem, “A Dream within a Dream” by Edgar Allan Poe. In the poem, the character elaborates on an existential crisis similar to how the classical music community has been dealing with an existential crisis of its own: wrestling with issues of relevance, sustainability, accessibility, inclusion, diversity and slowly adapting and changing in the age of technology.
About the experience Torres says “The piece is inspired by the idea that music in the 21st century is identified as a tangible product and not as a sonic experience. We tend to lazily view the paper with notation, the digital audio file, and the CD as the music itself. Music is consumed less and less often in a live setting. We have culturally abandoned the premise that music exists only in the mind (or in time and space) and thus seem to value the purchasable, physical product as being worth more than the aesthetic experience.”
Patrons are invited to visit the Urban Arts Space at any point between 6pm-7:30pm for this experience and are encouraged to travel through the gallery, where Pattern Thinking is currently on exhibition, as there will be continuous sound for the full 90 minutes. Depending on where a visitor is in the gallery it may be a completely different experience. The performers will be wearing masks to dehumanize the musicians in the experience, bringing attention to the product of music and intentionally taking focus away from the relationship between performer and audience.
Performers:
Erin Helgeson Torres, flute
Justin Johnston, clarinet
Devin Copfer, violin
Joseph Mueller, cello
Maria Staeblein, piano
Nomi Joy Marcus, percussion