Simon Hewitt Jones - The Violin Blog

Sep

25

New Beginnings

Filed Under Future of Music, World Culture | 

juilliard penguin Writing this from the library of the Juilliard School, who seem to have their own Conservatory Penguin. Nice.

I’m in New York briefly, to lay down the groundwork for some future projects, and then I’m relocating straight away to Berlin. I’ve been very fortunate to gain the support of the Leverhulme Trust, and so I’ll be attaching myself to the Universität der Künste (University of the Arts), to research things there whilst continuing to develop concerts and recording projects in the UK.

There are also some bigger projects that I’m working on - contributions to infrastructures far bigger than my own little violin-orientated sphere - that will hopefully have a big impact on the future of Classical Music. I’ll tell you more about those things in a few months once they’re fully up and running.

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I spent the summer travelling; working with young Palestinian musicians in London, going to the Dartington Festival, playing to fascinating violinists and musicians both at home and abroad, and doing preparatory work on new projects for the forthcoming year.

These kinds of opportunity always open your perspectives further, and I’m really pleased to see that the overarching trends of change in music, certainly in the Classical tradition, are becoming ever clearer. We are finally beginning to see, as a result of the uptake of new technologies, a new set of social dynamics that are transforming the way that social cultures are created and consumed. And it’s all good, so far as I can see.

Over the next few posts, I’ll begin to explore further what that might mean in practical terms for Classical Music. I’ll also be thoroughly attempting to understand the trends and relationships - as personified by the arts and especially music - between the UK, the USA and Europe (using London, New York and Berlin as the benchmarks). In particular, the relationship of Berlin to Germany and indeed to the rest of Europe is going to be a fascinating one.

The thesis of the scholarship itself is that there are emerging contrasts and similarities between international and local trends in classical music, including how it’s performed, presented and consumed, that are constantly changing, in no small part due to technological innovation. The idea is to understand how the cultural life of Berlin has been, is being, and will be affected by the social and economic upheaval that’s been going on since the wall came down.

That unique situation (particularly when the economy there is taken into account: a long stagnation that may possibly begin to see some growth in the next year or three) is going to present a load of interesting possibilities for music’s role in society.

These possibilities will be especially interesting in terms of how they relate to the German tradition (which, though one of the richest cultures, does have a tendency to embrace bureaucracy and small-c conservatism). Or rather, how they are able to integrate and balance contemporary international influences with the best of the existing traditions, and how painful a process that will be for those involved!

Anyway, more on that soon.

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