Four Ways to view a city

PCM: The program Four Ways to View a City is your biggest project to date.

Richard: We’re always looking for larger venues. As everyone in new music will tell you the presents of an affordable nice venue is very lacking in this city. Everything affordable belongs to t theater companies and they are usually booked for their performance. We did manage to get for next season the Prince Theater Black Box for one performance next season and that other two are at the ethical society.

Richard: Yes, the audience has grown and we are working hard on building it further. The Annenberg holds around two hundred fifty in the Harold Prince Theater. So we are doing two shows, one at 3pm and one at 8pm. It will be interesting to see if we can sell it out. This show is definitely a show case of what we have been working on for the past few years. The concepts of collaboration, working with local artist, the film aspect. The venue is perfect for it. It should be a lot of fun.

Richard: The last two concerts we had people came up to us and say, “WOW! This is great stuff, why haven’t I heard about you before?”. We’re thinking, we’re been here for five years why haven’t you heard of us. It must be something we’re not doing. We have been working with a Public Relations firm trying to focus our growth that way.

Richard: Basically, like many of our concerts we have always chosen local composers. The choice of those is often looking for stylistic differences. We don’t want a program that adheres to the same ecstatic. They’re composers we have heard in the past or who have sent us sample of their work. When thinking of a full program you want to see what somebody who is more conservative, somebody who is on the more experimental side is doing. All of these things together. There is a common thread, the collaborative aspect in this case is the Philadelphia theme. We asked each composer write a piece that had something to do with Philadelphia. That being as strict as we got. That being interpreted in any way they would like to do. The same with the film makers. We found three very distinct film makers. They came from recommendations from the composers or again from them sending us samples. With Paul Geissinger we found a multi media artist who is a very talented film maker. He didn‘t need to collaborate with anyone.

Richard: There will be loop effect in Andrea’s piece but for the most part it will straight forward live cello. It will be amplified.

Richard: we sat down and the first thing was we wanted to do a multi media project I knew a few film makers so the feasibility was good. So then we needed to find an artist who was excited about the project. That being more important than anything else. What instrument is was was less important than the musician being excited about what we’re trying to do. We needed to have an artist who could collaborate with us and not come in with a set of what they do. We really needed and artist that could work with what we had in mind. That was Ovidiu Marinescu and he jumped at the chance.

Richard: David Laganella and I finished identifying and contracting the composers about a year and a half ago. It was important that with a project of this size we give everyone at least one year for everyone to work together on this so it is not rushed. It was important for that it not just be the composers idea thrown in as an after thought. It was very important for this to be a collaboration. And it has worked out very well.