Settle down kids, and let me tell you a story. The story of one of the biggest classical music industry conferences in the world. Like a phoenix, risen from the ashes of a dream, C:N has returned: bigger, better, and less focused on innovation than ever before. What follows is a day-by-day, blow-by-blow detailed synopsis of my experiences there: why? Because when you go to review things, you get a free ticket. Also, because maybe someone, somewhere (like Xani Kolac in the lead up to this year) in a country far, far away like Australia might be able to experience vicariously through the depictions; or perhaps some of my fellow delegates will get a kick out of reliving what was a [SPOILER ALERT] fantastic week, truth be told. At the very least, let it act as a testament to a week in the life of a classical musician in Berlin.
DAY 1: Monday Night. Date: 13.05.2024. Inebriation Level: 0/10, Hungover Level 0/10.
My last review opened with an introduction to the city of Hannover, which I compared to my hometown, Adelaide. In 2024, Classical:NEXT has finally returned, this time to my adopted hometown of Berlin - which is like shifting from Adelaide to Sodom & Gomorrah, so this can only bode well for the week ahead. There’s less of a buzz in the leadup when you’re visiting a large event in your hometown: even if Hannover is reputable for… well, not much really, it’s always fun to be in a foreign city for these types of events. Nonetheless, here we are, and we’re feigning excitement.
Cycling towards the opening night venue in the Pierre-Boulez-Saal (the Daniel Barenboim venture which accompanies the Barenboim-Said Akademie he’s championed), a long line outside is filled with conference delegates and performers excitedly looking around for familiar faces, greeting those they’ve seen and searching for those they want to see, with the early optimism befitting the beginning of a five-day feast of industry cavorting.
After checking in, I walk inside into a too-crowded lobby, greeted by a sound system that even with a hushed crowd doesn’t carry beyond 4 metres, and an entire room doing their best to fake their interest. I walk in as Berlin Senator for Culture and Social Cohesion, Joe Chialo speaks, seemingly completely out of his depth when discussing classical music and innovation (Chialo comes from the club scene), yet nonetheless applauding the combination of Berlin (a city of ‘innovators’) and Classical:NEXT. Mildly awkward that he eventually needs to actually ask the audience to applaud at the right moment, but considering no one could hear him and that this is a classical audience who always need permission to clap, then it probably makes sense. Chialo has been behind a push to fund the conference 1 Million Euro per year, so I suppose he’s allowed to awkwardly say things.
He inserts a quote from Barenboim, says something about bringing together the traditional industry and independent scene, and it’s onto the next speech from Board Member, Karsten Witt. Witt is the third indiscernible speech in a row, and the audience is fast losing patience with the sound system, as their mutterings raise in decibels. For an industry that has cut its teeth by enforcing silence, they seem unable to contain their boredom.
Eventually, the speeches end, and people are given a few moments to interact properly with each other. I bump directly into Xani Kolac - a phenomenal Australian violinist and some old colleagues, before getting ushered into the performance space for the Opening Ceremony Concert. On the bill for tonight: Opera Dolmuş (a side hustle of the Komische Oper), Stegreif Orchestra, Zafraan Ensemble, students from the Barenboim-Said Akademie, and finally, the Third Orchestra.
The concert opens with the standard recorded voiceover telling people to turn their phones off, and that filming or taking pictures is prohibited. As many of the topics of this conference revolve around developing the concert experience for the 21st century, and that it occurs on the heels of the CBSO shitstorm around encouraging people to take pictures and utilise social media, it seems rather backwards to be the first actually-heard words of the conference.
I walk in with an old friend, Emily Thorner (the highest soprano ever - whether that makes it better or worse is up to you), who introduces me to New York-based composer, David T. Little. Little do I know, that Little will be presenting one of the best conference sessions later on in the week! Operndolmuş opens the night, with a combination of famous arias re-arranged to be relevant or cool or something. The concept is a travelling mini-opera company that you can hire for free, with the text on their biography reading: “a fifty-minute opera show that tells its stories with multiple languages and authentic cross-cultural references, thereby inviting everyone to come along and join the ride.” Clearly developed as a Community Outreach programme for the Turkish and Arabic-speaking communities in Berlin as much as other underprivileged communities, the performance seems a bit of a strange selection for the opening of the conference. The performance is cute, though a little bit ‘dress the nerds up as cool kids and send them to prom’, and crossover of genre (classical meets jazz meets folk) is clearly a theme. As I watch and write, one of the issues of this setup occurs to me in the form of a tenor performing in the ensemble under the name of Ferdinand Keller.
The last time I saw Keller performing was at a techno festival in Poland, to at least five hundred people on a packed stage with the queer operetta collective, tutti d’amore. Their performance was truly ground- and genre-breaking, expectation defying: it was the most surprising and enjoyable performance in the most unexpected place. Tutti d’amore are the type of group that should be highlighted onstage here, as opposed to an industry-devised thing that oozes cliched, typical, and normal. Whilst I agree with Senator Chialo’s point from earlier that this conference is about bringing the independent and traditional industries together, showcasing incumbent actors instead of putting the innovators front and centre seems a) a missed opportunity to showcase something unique, and b) demonstrate what happens when a conservative board and jury is in charge of selecting the performers, or c) you fall into the age old trap of needing bigger names on a programme to justify funding and prestige. Good applause though, and the music-making obviously great, if not a little predictably perfect.
ADDITION: In a conversation with a colleague about this topic, he brought up the fact that Komische Oper have done more than many with regards to innovation and bringing together the opera and real worlds. He asked: ‘Don’t you think institutions can be responsible for change also?’ which was a great talking point: my response likened large institutional bodies to a huge bus on the road - they are great at transporting a lot of people safely, however if they need to make a U-Turn or any quick manoeuvres, they tend to take a long time and piss everyone off in the process. Can they do it? Absolutely. Does the sheer size of their organisations mean that they’re unlikely to attempt this unless they really have to? Also.
Stegreif Orchestra all play barefoot and seem awfully well rehearsed, considering their mission statement makes a big point about on-the-spot music-making. The walking around is sonically interesting, but it comes across as potentially disingenuous and a little gimmicky - as if a marching band met a flash mob, and one of their founders joined the Board of Classical:NEXT. The music making is extremely good, and the performers seem genuine enough however. Again, the music ticks the box of genre crossover, with an added bonus of addressing contemporary social issues (championing female composers and arrangers in this case). There are so many Middle Eastern musical references worked into each performance though that this event is swinging perilously close to cultural appropriation levels. One more white person singing something that belongs on the soundtrack to the Prince of Persia and I’ll call the social justice police. Someone near where I’m sitting shares similar thoughts to my opening point, asking: “Why are they called the improvising orchestra when they’re not obviously improvising” - i.e. they’re missing the actual point of making something on the spot, which is living dangerously and riskily. The only risk you take with polished improvisation is that it can came across as ‘safe’ as polished notated music.
[Discussion Point] With the amount of “we need to change the music and jazz it up to make it cool and relevant” going on so far throughout the concert, something about this isn’t sitting perfectly well. The concept is nice, but it would be nicer if we weren’t accidentally selling the message that the original music (so far each piece has been an arrangement of already existing music) on its own isn’t good enough. Like, make this one of the things, not the entire freaking thing. And also, if you’re championing female composers (who historically suffer from unvalidated accusations of bad faith comparisons), doesn’t the idea of rearranging their work imply that it indeed isn’t good enough? Not a statement, just a thought to ponder.
The BS Akademie has a lot of potential BS on their programme notes, but there’s a chance it’s actually a good model of making better prepared students - I’d be interested in speaking with those students to find out how much they’re actually working outside the box rather than on their musical boxes. Ironically, the only music not featuring an influx of Middle Eastern themes is the one populated by Middle Eastern musicians.
Every concert has featured performers wearing all black with the exception of two singers and one bandleader. How much are we genuinely concerned with changing the concert format, when the most basic engrained behaviours are still present? For every raised instrument and ‘hurrah’ given, don’t the identical uniforms suggest less liberated musicians, and more obsequious machine cogs?
Copyright Classical:NEXT, Photography by Twinematics
I’m just in a bitchy mood: there’s actually a really nice diverse spread of approaches to broadening classical music here. Even if the programming has a hint of nepotism and institutional overreach, the quality of ideas and musicianship is really at an extremely high level: Stegreif are making music that not many professional ensembles are capable of, the Operndolmus are exceptionally well-rehearsed and seamlessly transition between genres and pieces (with engaging and entertaining arrangements), and the kids in the quintet are representing their school with aplomb.
Zafraan Ensemble take the stage, and whilst they are great (if anyone has the chance to see their collaboration with Rimini Protokoll named ‘All Right, Goodnight’, please do so - one of the most impactful and meaningful artworks I’ve encountered in the past years), I’m left thinking that this is actually a pretty standard concert, and wondering what we’re supposed to be learning and celebrating here outside of excellent musicians giving a pretty standard concert.
The Third Orchestra is like a mix of Operndolmus and Stegreif, with a pinch of Zafraan, so the name should be the Fourth Orchestra, as it’s the same time we’re hearing cross genre with integration of different instruments outside the traditional mould. For the first time in the evening though, rather than incorporating various ‘non-classical’ genres into the existing setup (Stegreif do incorporate electric guitar and drum kit into their ensemble), the various genres are also represented by performers from various disciplines - such as an oud player with Middle Eastern heritage, and a Sitar player from Indian heritage; each not only dressed differently to the typical orchestral player, but also clearly representing their musical cultures. This performance is really phenomenal, especially when conductor Peter Wiegold (who holds a mix of the wisdom of Dumbledore, leadership qualities of Gandalf, confidence of Winston Churchill, and the wry, knowing smile of the Dowager Countess from Downton Abbey) invites the other ensembles of the evening for a true improvisation session, where one could feel the vivacity of every musician coming together, two days after meeting each other, and creating a truly powerful finale which befitted the goals of the entire event. It was a rare moment where objective perfection and over-rehearsed excellence was cast aside, and music for the joy of making it was observed: Wiegold in the middle betraying the fact that he was having the best time possible - which can be the most exhilarating element to witness from the audience.
The concert finishes forty-five minutes later than the programme predicted (come on now, who expected five ensembles to fit into a seventy-five minute programme), and we all return to the lobby to catch up on conversations. The energy is reserved however, with all present knowing that there are four days left of networking, learning, concertising, and chance encounters left - so after a few drinks, a long chat with fellow Adelaidean Benjamin Woodroffe, ex-employer Catarina Amon, ex-Classical:NEXT jury member Philippa Allan, agent manager Burke Turner and several others, it’s time for bed before the real excitement begins!
DAY 2: MORNING. Location: Colosseum, Berlin. Hangover Level: 2/10
On the cycle in this morning, I was thinking about a comment from Allan the night before, who explained the fact that when selecting things for programme and conference, the jurors need to ensure there’s a wide variety of topics selected in order to satisfy the various stakeholders and delegates in attendance; and that for this very reason there’s little chance of any change happening as a direct result of the conference. As the conference doesn’t have a stated theme or topic (outside of innovation and change), they need to address the entire spectrum of industry related issues. The result is onerous: like going to the world's largest ice cream store and sampling a tiny bit of each flavour. Of course, this means the conference itself is a pretext for networking and engaging with other industry folks, and it is in those interactions that the real potential for change is planted - but it seems a shame for those musicians looking for an agent, or the agent looking for a festival as it seems these carnivorous interactions are mainly the engagements the others avoid.
[Discussion Point] Continuing the reflection: the overall topic in the 2022 edition was heavily weighted towards addressing issues in racial equality and diversity - but this topic seems all but invisible this year. Does that suggest that we’ve all moved on, or is the issue that classical music is just so eminently broken that there’s no way to actually affect any real change through a meeting of industry minds? If gender equality (for performers, administrators, composers) was a main topic five years ago, and racial diversity the topic of the previous, must these conversations take a backseat on account of the need for new conversations at each successive conference? Considering the (excessively slow) movement of our industry to first identify, then rectify these issues, then does Classical:NEXT in fact aim to lead the charge for issues we don’t even perceive as an industry at large - or should it be championing the older issues until they’re consigned to history?
I run into the first ‘Pre-Conference’ session of the day, which is the traditional Higher Music Education Institutions (HMEI) Meetup, where Board Member Andreas Richter quickly introduces the event by reminding us that the purpose of Classical:NEXT is to ‘discuss all relevant matters of classical music’. Awesome, should be a light and easy week then. This Meetup was also my first direct experience in 2022, and was the occasion where I came across my favourite quote of the event: “We’ve been having these discussions [regarding how classical music schooling is failing on multiple areas] for twenty years now, but this year I’m optimistic, because we have this thing called the ‘internet’, and the potential it offers our students is astounding.” Whilst I didn’t have the heart then to point out that we’ve actually had the internet for the past twenty years also, and that the inability of schools to recognise this in any meaningful way might be slightly worrying, I was eagerly listening for the next mind-blowing discovery. Turns out I didn’t have to wait long, when the moderator displays a large Powerpoint slide, proudly announcing that in 2024:
Mic drop.
Other things learnt in the session: that HMEI’s have identified that the largest barrier to improving music schools are the teaching staff, who first need to be convinced that the change is necessary (i.e. tell a piano teacher who lives for Rachmaninoff that they should be encouraging their students to spend some practice time on developing entrepreneurial skills, tough gig), whilst also putting the blame on students a little for being too conservative. Manus Carey from the RNCM details a lot of the innovative elements that his institution has incorporated, and this sounds genuinely exciting - good work for the kids who have chosen that school out of the various British institutions!
We split off into mini-groups to workshop some various ideas, and I learn that a) people here love subtly introducing their work and skills into the most random, unrelated sentences, and b) buzzwords have arrived into classical music. New game: every time someone says a buzzword without anything behind it, you do a shot. Example: in this breakaway session, a representative from a fairly conservative international piano competitions suggests after mansplaining to the rest of the group what their individual points were, that:
“We need to change the definition of excellence!”
I asked out loud, ‘What should we change it to then?’, which receives the response:
“I don’t know.” Shot.
The HMEI chat is similar to the last edition: a group of people with the right ideas and best intentions, but neither time, energy, nor resources to activate them. Whilst the RNCM might be successfully introducing new programmes that encourage out-of-the-box thinking, their example would still surely be one of the rare ones. Interestingly, not many institutions are actually represented in the attendees, with the session filled with mildly interested voyeurs, discovering that if they were having these discussions for twenty years at the last C:N, they’ve now been having them for twenty-two years.
Conference Cleavage is still a thing - interestingly, the men seem much better at it than the women, that is, shamelessly looking down at your lanyard to see if you’re worth speaking to. Note to self: remember, ‘eyes are up here’ when speaking to people. I initiate a game with some friends, and my goal is to get the entire place to play by the end of the conference: simple rule - 1) set a timer for three minutes, 2) walk around catching people’s eyes and see how many people glance down obviously at your title, 3) the winner is the one with the most. Unfortunately I’ve lost count before the first minute is over.
The conference officially begins with a Keynote Speech with the upcoming director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin held in a room that was too small for most people to get into, so that was nice.
Buzzword Alert in the title for a different session on ‘Power Sharing and Empowerment’, a conversation with the Dorothee Kalbhenn, Programme Director of Konzerthaus Berlin (a pretty good organisation which definitely does its part for non-traditional concerts and programming) and entrepreneur Kian Jazdi. Kalbhenn discusses how her team puts together roughly three hundred concerts a year, with her own personal responsibility stretching to around one hundred and fifty individual concerts - which seems like a gargantuan amount of work; plus her desire to save classical music without changing its core seems like a fairly tough gig. The buzzword game is strong here - I feel like saying interdisciplinary opera is mildly redundant, considering opera by definition is interdisciplinary.
I spend Day One session-hopping: the sheer amount of content offered throughout the programme means it's impossible to attend everything, but I’m hoping to at least get a glimpse of the various topics presented. After 20 minutes learning about the speakers of the previous session, I run into the Australian-specific presentation titled ‘Collaborating with First Nations Artists: How to work sensitively across cultures’, which seems bang-on topically when compared to the concert the evening before. Inside, three second-nations speakers are discussing the process of combining Western Classical Music culture with Indigenous Australian culture - not only a noble cause, but one that allows Australia to stake its own place globally: as an Australian I often wonder what we have to offer to the international classical music scene, if not music that integrates the unique culture of Australia - so it’s great to briefly learn about the trends and progress back home. This session successfully walks an exceptionally fine line: each of the speakers has first hand experience working with, and a genuinely deep respect for First Nations people they work with, so their experiences are worth listening to, even if teeters dangerously close to self-congratulatory at times - however the limitations of hosting a session without full representation are obvious. Nonetheless, Claire Edwardes (Ensemble Offspring, who chaired the discussion), Felicity Wilcox, and Catherine Haridy (with a video presentation from Nardi Simpson, First Nations composer) do an excellent job. In conversation following the discussion, Edwardes explained how the issue of representation was clear from the outset, and made sure to first obtain the endorsement of Dr. Chris Sainsbury (see below), and Ensemble Offspring’s First Nations Directors Kaleena Smith and Sonya Holowell. The difficulties of representation were noted in the discussion, when she points out that Indigenous Australians count for around 3% of the entire population, and they all can’t fly around the world selling their message - hence the need for non-representative allies.
[Discussion Point] An interesting discussion point emerges via a drive-by backhand to composer Peter Sculthorpe, who integrated indigenous culture into his own works during the 1980s - Sculthorpe has more recently come under criticism for cultural appropriation (especially from Christopher Sainsbury, director of the Ngarra-Burria programme, who discusses how ‘Years of separation and misunderstanding have led to the misappropriation of Aboriginal songs and rituals in search of Australian-ness’ in this Currency House publication). Whilst in hindsight his works can be re-examined to be an example of gross artistic licence, did this not start the conversation and possibility for developing a unique Australian language, that eventually opened the door to actual collaborations forty years later? It seems easy to pot Sculthorpe for being culturally insensitive by 2024 standards, whilst forgetting that 1980s Australia was a pretty epically racist and terrible place for many non-white people living there.
The third panel discussion is titled ‘A Vision for the Symphony Orchestra: Transformative Leadership and Collective Innovation in Orchestral Music’ and you need to take a late three shots from the title alone. Chaired by Karsten Witt (Board Member, ex-Southbank and Konzerthaus Wien director, worked with DG, and since 2004, the owner of an artist management company), Simon Webb (who has just the small job as Head of BBC Orchestras and Choirs in the UK), and Fiona Stevens who is a musician-turned-CEO with Concerto Köln). I’m mildly dubious about the potential of this talk: Webb and Witt discussing transformative leadership and collective innovation kinda feels like your elderly uncles discussing TikTok. I’m seated next to a colleague who specialises in innovation within the orchestral world, and he points out ten minutes in that they hadn’t actually discussed the topic as they were still introducing themselves. Witt discusses his projects over the past five decades which demonstrates a good track record of innovation - he seems quite happy with himself, and perhaps has good reason to be. At sixteen minutes, they start another round of introductions - with the session now resembling a podcast where you listen to middle-aged men talking about their lives and experiences and not much else. Twenty-one minutes in, still introductions, and at twenty-six minutes I’ve left - this time not because of another session, but because it’s been long enough without learning much.
The names and institutions represented at this conference are simultaneously more impressive and less impactful: so many people here are representing world-leading organisations, yet because of this, the individual doesn’t have much to say as they are more or less cogs within the huge machine of the Berliner Philharmoniker or Deutsche Grammaphon. The sessions therefore seem to be filled with people talking about what they’ve done, whilst also needing to sell their organisation. As discussed earlier, this could very well be intentional in order to bring the larger institutions into the conversation - but I am left missing the element of discussion, debate, and learning that I’d hoped to gain from these sessions.
Conference sessions are far more filled than the 2022 edition - perhaps on account of the Project Pitches seeming shorter in number than previously (could be wrong), and the larger delegate numbers mean people needing a place to go. I run into my first full session of the day, titled ‘360 Degrees: Creating New Concert Formats’ - transparency alert: I love Hanni Liang, she’s a genuine innovator and her talk starts off already more engaging and personal (read: beyond humble-bragging) than many of the previous talks I’ve attended. She’s making it a story, and asking questions to the audience - it’s pleasant listening. Buzzword alert: Co-Creating. Examples of her shows are inspiring, and most impressive is her ability to actually bring the world of innovative concert design into the big halls. She’s big on audience interaction and participation and the fact it works on the large stage is the unique and intriguing element here. She introduces Sergio Roberto Gratteri, who discusses the importance of concert formats from the programmer's point of view. He discusses the merits of a holistic approach to programming and concert design, and is the first person not from an institution, talking about the benefits of not being in an institution. Buzzword alert: Immersive, multidisciplinary. Liang is also the first person so far at the conference to offer the alternative viewpoint to the music at the opening ceremony: that the product of the music is enough on its own, that it doesn’t need justification or bastardising, but that a recontextualising of the concert experience can open an interest-pathway to new audiences.
After a quick break it’s running into the Stegreif Orchestra presentation (Leading and Following in the Orchestra: Models beyond the traditional hierarchy), and whilst it’s very good, the word gimmick reappears in my mind - and one wonders whether they’d be featured twice onstage without the Board support. The tone of the presentation is similar to other talks which brings up another thought: the presenters are a bunch of successful people talking to an audience they think are boring people ; they’re not discussing the opportunity and potential of thinking and talking about how to create audiences, they don’t discuss how to grow or make actual change; rather they demonstrate and dictate what they’ve done and then get into why their artistic motivation wins out, with no space for debate and discussion or audience input. This in itself would be fine, but when it’s an entire conference it gets rather tedious rather quickly. Can’t. Control. Buzzwords. Fever. Approaching… improvising, social experiment, utopia inspiring cultural startup vision collective radical authenticity drunk.
Run quickly to see the Thirdness Philosophy Panel Discussion with Peter Wiegold, and hilariously, there’s representation from Stegreif on this panel too (in fairness, this was a ‘Meet the Artists’ session from the evening previously, so that’s legit). Brain slowly turning off after a day of engaging in countless talks, so it’s OFF TO THE EMBASSY!!
EVENING: Location: Australian Embassy, Holzmarkt and Kater Blau. Exhaustion Level: 6/10, Inebriation Level: 4/10
The Australian Embassy sent out an email a few weeks ago to the local Australian cultural representatives in Berlin for a drinks reception by Sounds Australia. Where there’s free drinks, there’s Australian artists, so it was promising to be a great party. I arrive slightly late, and breeze past Xani Kolac, yelling back at her and her conversation circle that ‘I’m here to drink, not socialise!’ only to be introduced to the Australian Ambassador in Germany who was standing with the circle when I return, drink in hand. Awkward. We decide that we’ll just tell everyone I’m a Kiwi, and can continue acting like a reprobate. Drinks, pies, sausage rolls, great chats with Emily Tulloch, Burke Turner, and Philippa Allan, as well as with several of the Classical:NEXT organisers who have also been invited, before running to the first evening of Showcase Performances, taking place at Holzmarkt (formerly Bar25) and Kater Blau.
For all the talk of innovating concert design and the need to make the concert experience meet contemporary models and audiences, the fact that the showcase performances are taking place in one of Berlin’s counter cultural hubs of creativity is really promising. The fact that the format is 100% normative (lined up silently in darkened rows, silence enforced by angry shushes, the bar closing before the majority of the audience comes in) suggests that like much of the conference, words are more important than action. Again, the music is good, really good, which is testing one of my pre-conference hypotheses - that people within classical music are really great at selecting good music, and not necessarily at identifying innovators and boundary-pushing ideas. Unlike previous years, the sit down nature of these concerts means networking and relaxing hours are being limited and I question how interested the delegates will be once they’ve caught their breaths; which seems answered by the amount of delegates opting to grab a beer and have discussions on the Spree instead of sit in stifling acquiescence.
Whilst having a drink with several members of the British delegation (danger: drinks incoming), I’m still processing why the conference talks have been so unrewarding as a general rule, and thinking that it’s the fact that until this point they’ve resembled more Project Pitch or Showcase Performance, rather than being a call for change, debate instigation, sharing of new ideas, or deep-dive into issues. It’s either more of the same, or institutional promises for change - there’s no call to action, and nothing seemingly beyond good words about DEI and concert design.
Around 22:30, the performance moves from the stodgy performance hall (only classical musicians could turn a club space into a boring space), into Kater Blau (one of Berlin’s best -IMO- clubs), and the vibe picks up and proves that eight pipe-instruments (including at least TWO bagpipers, gross) playing Philip Glass in a weird context can be weirdly compelling.
Wierdly Compelling. Copyright Classical:NEXT, Photography by Twinematics
Xani Kolac is awesome and that’s enough said. If you’re lucky enough to be in Melbourne, go check her out - for all the talk about the world-dominating international arts scene in Berlin that we rave about in Europe, and that in Australia we tend to look at with FOMO, you’ve got a bona fide genius in your own backyard. One can’t help but think that with all the talking about what’s next at this conference, it has been fairly well demonstrated onstage tonight in all of the showcases. What is most impressive in Kolac’s performance, is that while it integrates the elements of (buzzword-alert) genre-fluidity from last night, she does so with a method that isn’t just adding a Cm7 chord into an existing classical piece and calling it jazz - this is genuinely living music.
Copyright Classical:NEXT, Photography by Twinematics
DAY 3: Morning. Location: Colosseum. Hangover Level: 5/10
I’ve arrived this morning with only a slight hangover (eight years in Berlin prepares you for late nights and early mornings, as well as imminent liver failure), and I can’t help but feel just a little reticent - by and large, to this point the conference presentations really haven’t been very good. As I skim the programme this morning, I'm filled with the same optimism as yesterday morning perusing the titles and topics, whilst simultaneously recalling with trepidation the let down at several sessions the day before. Will today be any different? Well that’s what Limelight Magazine pays me to find out!
The day starts well with a quick chat with Paul Mason (Director, City Concert Hall Sydney), and Reuben Zylberszpic (RAZ Music) at the Sounds Australia stand, before jumping to the Transformation Unleashed session, which actually starts quite promisingly - rather than another German institution representative, the presenter here (Nathaly Ossa Alzate from Colombia) is good at communicating and interacting, and her content is engaging - and importantly, I walk in four minutes late and have already missed her introduction. Considering that in 90% of yesterday's programme I still would’ve had an extra 41 minutes to hear about the presenter, this is a good start! She’s bringing her experience as a Colombian in the 1990s growing up in Medellin when a form of the Venezuelan El Sistema came and inspired the redevelopment of the city, and how a music school completely changed the social, political, and economic situation of the city. It is idealism paired perfectly with research and reality.
The second session in the morning starts with a round of Schnapps (Berliner Luft, a peppermint schnapps brand synonymous with the trashiness of the city), so we’re 2 for 2 in terms of upgrades from yesterday. David T Little is engaging, convivial, and promises a good session to start the day. The talk is about embracing setbacks and is genuinely inspirational. He talks about an operatic project that was 10 years in the making, which continuously fell over at several steps, but eventually took place in a high quality production (and received its European premiere the following week. This is unexpected, and very good. He quotes Naomi Klein quoting Milton Friedman: ‘Only a crisis real or perceived can create change’ - here’s a huge element: people in the industry and larger institutions purport to see the crises, but they’re not actually forced into proper change. They say they acknowledge the issues, the need for equality or diversity, bringing in new audiences etc., but more often than not, they’re paying lip service and nothing more - because they don’t genuinely perceive any crisis large enough to make them move.
We go into breakout sessions to explain our failures, where I’m paired with director Fabienne Krause, who discusses her feeling of failure as the moment C:N had to take a break in 2022 and rebuild from the ashes, and it’s really heartening to learn more about just how far this conference has had to come. Ironically, Jennifer Dautermann (the original founder) discusses the founding of C:N as a result of crisis development, an old geezer that spent much of a previous session mansplaining (whilst using buzzwords!) everything is here, my bets are on him mansplaining the presentation to us, and before I finish typing the sentence, I’ve already cashed out. Maybe just get your own talk?
Quick break between sessions, chats with Emily Tulloch (Nexus Arts Centre) and Eugene Ughetti from the Canberra International Music Festival, and now into ‘The Future of Music Education: Will music conservatories be relevant in the next 20 years?’ with representatives from Germany, Mexico, and Czechia. Andrea Tober, Rektorin of the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, which is known for its conservative nature, is a welcome voice, with her recent appointment being very much against the grain historically (one of the first education background directors, as opposed to a pure performance background). The session begins on the slow side, with the panellists detailing what classical music education is, which is probably redundant on account of the fact we probably all went there, but it quickly picks up. Tober gives away the main issue to evolution: politics and entrenched professors. Tober seems defeated - she’s had all the good ideas, but she keeps coming against brick walls. Overall it’s a great discussion, but there’s absolutely nothing that responds to the actual question posed in the title, so we might just need to wait twenty years for the answer. Buzzword alerts: holistic education, cross-pollination, intersectional, interdisciplinary.
Speaking later in the evening with Enrique Marquez who led the conversation, he tells me how he pitched the discussion to the conference, and was then paired with the other two speakers for the discussion - which might explain the low cohesiveness and lack of direction witnessed in several panel discussions here. Rather than a focused exploration, it tends too often towards an extended introduction, and that could very well be because the presenters are still actually getting to know each other. Theirs is not the only example of a panel put together by conference jury: but hey, like any great chamber music ensemble, the best model is lumping together strangers onstage and making them perform, right?
Another observation: when you have representatives of institutions, their job specifics include representing the institution. Therefore they won’t be shitting on them, they’ll be selling them. And this is not super conducive to hard hitting discussions. More anarchists on stage please. Buzzword alerts: redefining success, advocacy.
It’s going to be a big afternoon session, with multiple talks locked in one after the other. The first is a mildly nepotistic display titled ‘Music Journalism - How It Should and How It Could Be!’ with the Head of Communications of the conference given a full session. From my experience with the communications team until this point, I’m dubious. Turns out I’m completely off the mark - this is great. Paul Bräuer is fun and interactive, and there are a lot of frustrated music journalists here. The content delivered is right from the startup industry - we’re talking Miro boards, 124all, business-model and value-proposition canvasses; and there are some good ideas being thrown around by a diverse audience including journalists, PR figures, and musicians. Again, breakaway working groups are formed, and we’re tasked with designing a utopian product for music journalism without any limitations, but our group gets monopolised by one fellow who has the genius idea of creating a website that allows for more reviews for his orchestral concerts. Whoops.
Running into Xenia Hanusiak’s talk, and from the start it’s obvious that she’s serious business and knows what she’s doing. The entire presentation is a buzzword alert: ‘The Musical Art of Curation’. Another session with a C:N board member on the panel in Nikolaus Rexroth (RCCR Projects; also Karsten Witt Musik Management), who doesn’t seem to have much to say - but to be fair he’s been thrust onto the panel last minute with someone pulling out. Hanusiak is a fantastic presenter, but the topic is failing to excite at this point of the day, so I leave prematurely to seek inspiration and intellectual stimulation from another source.
Liquid inspiration is the order of the day, so I spend the last two hours of the conference programme today going between the various stands at the exposition centre and delighting in what they’re sharing and representing: Welsh seaweed rum is the stand out, Irish whisky is pretty good, Belgian beer is typical, French Canadian wine is probably not as good as French wine, Latvian beer is weird but Latvian chips and delegates are delightful, and Estonia is trying a bit too hard to seduce friends with their veritable cocktail bar.
Estonia providing snacks and drinks to everyone in return for attention. Copyright Classical:NEXT, Photography by Twinematics
EVENING: Holzmarkt and Kater Blau, Inebriation Level: 5/10
Quick trip home to sober up in time to get tipsy again at the Showcase Performances! A little less exciting tonight perhaps, on account of the Australian contingent not representing again, but apparently the cost of drinking copious amounts of Irish whisky was that I had drunkenly promised that I’d support the Irish ensemble performing at 21:00. Those sneaky limericks. The mood tonight is subdued: we all seem a little exhausted from the two days of relentless activities, be it networking, meetings, sessions, pitches, drinking. The band playing tonight is more free jazz-prog rock than classical, which suggests in the endless quest to find what’s next, the jury occasionally swerves towards anything-other-than-classical. The music is wonderful, every time, but the emphasis seems to focused on what is different, not next. And if one of the many themes this week has been recontextualising, why are we seeing the opposite? Fun music performed in typical ways is not the equivalent of typical music performed in a fun way, and one can’t help but feel these showcases are more of a circus sideshow rather than something that can be integrated into the global classical music consciousness.
Everyone is too tired to mingle for the most part, with a noticeable lower energy level amongst the late-night revellers. Friends are still easy to make, but by Day Three, alliances and communities have formed in our mini-society, and people are more at ease in their smaller groups as they eschew the carnivorous networking mode. The showcases are interesting, but perhaps by this stage, a bit hard to engage with on account of the complexity of the music presented when compared with the exhaustion of the delegates. The b-l duo from Singapore did have a moment of giving most people a heart attack with their first performance, which I daresay was their intention. They take the stage as the final set of the Wednesday evening, with a large synthesiser setup, with the first six or seven minutes playing almost silently: the pianist smashing the Nord Stage II, but with no discernible sounds coming out of it - so much so that the sound technician starts playing with the cables, thinking something is going wrong, but is waved away. Out of nowhere, the most sforzando fortissimo death-metal-esque noise, at a decibel level that was near white-noise proportions, sends the audience quite literally jumping back in shock. I’m a huge fan of shocking the audience - and it feels like in the 21st century, this is the closest we’ll get to a Stravinsky or Debussy-style riot in response. However, two points: one new friend, a singer recovering from an inner-ear bleed was in the audience, and this desire to be radical was seriously dangerous to her profession and health; whilst the sheer violence of the shock would have been enough to put anyone with a weak heart in hospital. There’s a fine line between shock artistry and unforgivably dangerous, and this duo might need to think more about where they sit on this line. Hopefully in their own performances they have warnings (e.g. strobe light warnings), and if they ordinarily do, then the conference is severely liable for not broadcasting one.
Meanwhile, the second piece induces a motion-sickness type nausea and at this point it might be time for bed. Cool show, nonetheless.
DAY 4: MORNING. Location: Colosseum. Hangover Level: 8/10
Conferences are like weddings: you make connections, see old friends, spend a lot of time laughing and drinking, and at the end of it, a sad sort of nostalgia forms as the ending nears closer. Thankfully my hangover is so intense that I’m operating in survival mode, so I can fully embrace the final full day of programme sans emotion!
I start the day in conversation at the coffee stand with Philipp Krechlak from the Deutsche Orchestertag Conference and Fiona Stevens from Concerto Köln. Jumping into the first session of the day, I’m impressed by how David Bahanovich’s (Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London) talk begins - interactive, fun, engaging. With Manus Carey (RNCM) they’re running a session on change and how to activate it - my dubious nature is present, my cynical side also, but they’re quickly dissipated during the presentation which is fantastic. We’re asked about what changes we’ve made in our organisations: a fellow I encountered in 2022 from the Royal College of Music (London) is here again, and it’s apparent that he’s still not really interested or engaged in new practices as his change was a fancy new building at the school. The same fellow who had the ingenious innovation idea of making a review website, suggests we shouldn’t change anything really, and I wonder again how he accidentally ended up here.
Human connection in engagement practices is a constant theme of conversation here, and I have to say, either Carey and Michelle Phillips (RNCM) are great salespeople, or RNCM is doing amazing work. Either way I’m sold. Carey makes the perfect summation of the situation when he says: “Conservatoires have changed radically, but probably the only thing that hasn’t is the core element of what we do, which is the principal study element.” Absolutely illuminating and genius comment, which makes me think: what if you didn’t try to change them, but replace them? What if these institutions stopped hiring from within (i.e. old students) and therefore halted the replication of mindset in their principle study teachers? The solution almost seems quite easy - stop trying to turn leopards into zebras and instead just hire a tiger.
Boomer-Generation Representative Witt says that in his five decades working, there has been too much change, e.g. in communication channels, that the advent of the internet hasn't helped productivity or efficiency, and as much as I’d love to shrug his comments with the true arrogance of a Millenial, he has a really good point when he notes that people are against change inherently because it’s just too much work. Oh it’s a very good session - so many things to learn! Buzzword: co-creation.
Thought: when did a buzzword (co-creation) replace an actual word in ‘collaboration’?
The third full day is tough: it’s a challenge staying energised to see as much as possible, so in between talks, I find myself sitting at the Sounds Australia stand, where I have lovely chats with Claire Edwards (Offspring Ensemble) and Felicity Wilcox, Margaret Barrett, Xani Kolac, and several others. I’m not saying the Tim Tams at the stand table had a magnetic quality, but I’m not saying they didn’t.
Sounds Australia stand, slightly empty before the Tim Tams were brought out. Copyright Classical:NEXT, Photography by Twinematics
It’s so wonderful how many new friends one makes here: walking around the exhibition hall, I bump into old and new friends, making even newer ones as we go around filling coffee cups and discussing our learnings and inspirations. The networking seems remarkably less sleazy than the previous edition - many of the people I speak with are simply here to meet others, rather than simply get-get-get. Perhaps in 2022, with the recent emergence from the Covid cold led the interactions to be more consumer-driven, so I’m hoping this congenial interaction model is the actual norm for this conference.
‘Data: The New Gold - How to generate revenue using your and your audience’s data’ is chaired by an old friend (George Percy - Wildkat PR), who is actually delivering really useful information, and quite promising is the eagerness with which people are listening to the session. Even better is the quality of the presentation - professional, hugely informational, and extremely fun. The conference sessions have trended better and better: today it seems each panel features people who specialise in specific topics - and one only hopes that the energy levels of delegates are still strong enough to engage in them. I wonder if this is by design: in the first days of the conference, when the motivations to network are stronger, the less useful topics (and higher profile institutions) are presented; and by the last day when we’ve all made new connections, there’s more time to actually attend a session or two. One can’t help but feel that the entire conference should be at this talk; for all the discussions of change and how to engage, a lot of it revolves around simply getting audiences through the door. Whether it’s audience retention or development, utilising your own data is a massive part of the solution.
[DISCUSSION POINT] My exhausted and hungover mind begins to wander, and an image emerges of fish being eaten by bigger fish being eaten by an even bigger fish. These are the delegates who are here primarily looking for work: they’re here to consume and be consumed. They’re not here to learn or engage in discussions - maybe they already have their own solutions to the questions posed, or maybe they don’t value the topics, but in any sense, their main motivation to be here is to get a gig. Not saying this is bad in any sense, but I’d argue that this mentality doesn’t contribute to the NEXT aspect we’re purportedly searching for, and instead is purely engaging in the constant cycle of head-in-sand-mentality that led us into many of the issues being discussed this week. If an artist looking for a gig here instead learned how to make themselves into the coolest artist from these sessions, wouldn’t we end up needing a bigger pond for all these massive fish?
More. Coffee. Please. At some point the Chileans opened wine and then I can’t much remember what happened after that, but I met Miguel from Basque Country and I told him I’d write about it in the review. I think I also promised a Spanish composer that I’d learn one of his piano pieces, so now I have more work to do.
EVENING: Location: Colosseum, Inebriation Level: 10/10
Joo from Igudesman and Joo finally pulls the drunken collective energy together (we blame both the Welsh and Irish and Scottish delegate who magically appeared with a bottle of, you guessed it, Scotch), into the final session: the Innovation Award!! As the speeches rattle on, I take the time to reflect on the week so far. I arrived pessimistic as a result of seeing some of the presentation discussions, and whilst it has been a really phenomenal week, I’m still unable to say whether or not this conference is worthwhile or not. I wonder if the facade of the conference (‘Shaping the Future of Art Music’) is needed to simply give people an opportunity to meet others. The answer is: yes. By having such diverse, broad, unfocused, not-too-forward-thinking-and-therefore-not-overly-challenging concepts that resonate superficially with almost everyone, it ends up bringing together a remarkably diverse group of excellent people, all searching for answers. The result? Buzzword alert: cross-pollination.
Joo is excellent at moderating, making it fun, energising the audience to pay attention for the final ninety minutes after three hardcore days of networking and lessons. After taking 1.5 out of 3 awards at the last edition, it’s a bit disappointing that out of ten nominees, not one Australian concept is nominated. After our premature Eurovision ejection last week, this one hurts even more.
The three winners of the innovation award clearly demonstrate the overall (and very important) focus on DEI: a Chilean community education and orchestra platform, a music festival in the USA that showcases musicians of African-descent and a British disability focused opera-video installation. These are all extremely worthwhile winners. But… if I’m being critical, not necessarily innovative? Perhaps this should be called the Humanism Award (an award that celebrates projects who raise humanity to higher levels, aka an even nobler and more important goal than innovation), and the Innovation Award becomes a side-show with less fanfare, but still rewarding groundbreaking work?
If the conference sessions got better as the conference progressed, the showcase performances have become less engaging. The final performance is great in a sort of fluxus-meets-beat poetry way - but the artist here is not the issue, the programming is. The programmers should have predicted the exhaustion levels of the delegates, and understood that half an hour of intense experimental performance art was not necessarily the way to finish. From a showcase perspective, Tuesday night was bang bang bang, Wednesday was hit and miss, Thursday makes me wish I missed this.
But we’re not done yet! After the closing ceremony, we’re all invited to a post-conference performance at the nearby Gethsemanekirche. Interestingly, the post-show entertainment is billed as being sponsored by Steinway & Sons on the programme, but is actually set up by Fever, who have spammed all of us for years with the kitsch Candlelit Concerts series. Ironically, the business model of Fever is probably one of the more innovative elements at play here; however the underhanded approach to tricking a bunch of classical musicians into their space seems a little cheeky, and suffice to say, we didn’t last long in watching before opting for the safe comforts of a bar instead. Great chats with composer Matthew Whiteside (who ran an excellent DIY Sector Meetup earlier in the day, and has backed up with an ongoing WhatsApp Community to demonstrate that there can be more to the conference than just words) and Mark Pemberton (ex-Director of the Association of British Orchestras). Too many drinks later, it’s the third night cycling home, and already some sad farewells have begun.
DAY 5: Location, Boat on the River Spree, Hangover Level 11/10
Hungover is my new normal. I no longer remember how it feels to be not in constant pain and regret, or drunk in between. I blame the Welsh. They blame the English.
The conference has more final events than an Elton John Tour, so there’s one last hurrah for those of us still standing - a boat trip down the River Spree, with a short provocation provided by David Taylor. The grey hairs in Taylor’s beard suggests that it’s been a while since he was a Forbes 30-under-30, but the ideas he’s presenting demonstrate that he wasn’t a one hit wonder. I bump into Emily Tulloch as we wait to embark, and it is so beautiful how new friends already seem like old friends!! People I’ve met this week genuinely seem like good mates, and I’m sad that it’s almost over.
Hanging with New Old Friend, Fiona Stevens. Copyright Classical:NEXT, Photography by Twinematics
We sit and chat through our exhaustion with some other new friends, and it’s just delightful sitting on an open top boat in the beautiful sunny weather, as we cruise past Museum Island, the East Side Gallery, Reichstag, Tiergarten, and Treptower Park. Dave’s talk is perfect - all about doing and not just talking, the perfect reminder that all we’ve learnt is useless if we don't take action, and he uses the session to get us to network with those we haven’t yet had the chance to meet. I find myself in a group with Anna Handler (who recently accepted a post as the Assistant Conductor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra), Dominique Thomann Etchegaray (Director of the Centro de Extensión Artística y Cultural Universidad de Chile), Monica Tomescu-Rohde (Pianist and founder of Norwegian record label dedicated to female composers, Kvinnelige Spor), and Jasmien Dieltiens (who founded her own artist management company in Belgium), which demonstrates just how incredibly international and high quality the level of people are at this conference. It’s impossible to think that almost everyone I’ve encountered this week is so nice, interesting, and interested - and that also I’ve only managed a fraction of a percentage of interactions possible at such an event. It’s enough to fill one with hope that even if our industry is doomed, we at least get to be around really good humanity as the ship sinks.
Almost everyone here has the same passion: the betterment of the classical music industry. We come together as artists, administrators, and stakeholders, all wanting our main love to prosper and flourish. We might not have the same ideas, and there’s plenty of disagreement over the models, but to simply surround yourself with others who share the same intensity and drive is both inspiring and motivating.
After a few hours, the boat docks, and we all say our final farewells, splitting off back to the real world. We exchange details, hug our new old friends, and all agree that we can’t wait until next year's edition.
Interestingly, I entered this conference with so many critical questions, yet once again it has made a fool out of me by being such a magnificent experience. I am genuinely grateful this conference exists - it seems it was all too short and sweet, and whilst I’m still dubious that the event will ever facilitate change through the event itself, it might just allow it through facilitating the space and fostering friendships that could in turn lead to the one or two partnerships that do change the world. If the above words have been overly critical and pessimistic, what one should take away from this review is none of those negative elements, but instead, an overwhelming gratitude to Fabienne Krause and her team, for working so hard to put this together again. They responded to the overwhelming pleas of past delegates to find a way to make this happen; and they pushed themselves to their limits to ensure it did. It is patently clear that the organising team (including administrators and jury members) do this not from greed nor power, and certainly not for fame or fortune, but purely for the benefit of us delegates, and for the love of music we all share; and so for that, a hearty thank you. Buzzword alert: blessed.
Huge love to this mega team for their work in producing a gift for us! Copyright Classical:NEXT, Photography by Twinematics