CLASSICAL AUDIENCES WANT TO BE MOVED – TO BE TRANSPORTED

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Many people see the arts as separated completely from the world of the ordinary, mundane, and every day. Each classical concert is a living, unique event that is constitutive of (not set aside from) social life.  While an important part of the event is its role in facilitating engagement, a recorded performance may supply ‘perfection’ but can it also convey a combination of ‘enthusiasm’, ‘personal expression’, and ‘character ‘a personal, individual experience?

The capacity for variance, a sense of uniqueness, and the immediacy of the experience creates anticipation in the concert goer. 

Enjoying the classical concert as an event (rather than merely as a performance) can come from engaging with the music/performance and/or with one’s inner dialogue. 

We have so many components happening simultaneously in our organ and multi-media concerts that help transport a concert goer to another place, another world. Johann Sebastian Bach couldn’t have written harmony more tightly woven than these experiences. Orchestrated in our dramatic concerts is that the whole truly becomes one. It is why people are transported. 

In live performances, people are lifted from the present to another place. Live performances areexperiences for the senses.

Concert goers commented on live concerts as…a holistic perception that was greater than the sum of its parts… in live performances you get to know the pieces and the artists…the concert hall’s a detachment from everyday life…it is some form of ‘sacred space…in the simple audience context…they will be invested with a sense of the sacred.

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Dr. Jeannine Jordan, organist, with her husband, David Jordan, media artist of Pro-Motion Music are the creators and presenters of the dramatic story-driven organ and multimedia concert experiences, From Sea to Shining Sea, Bach and Sons, and Around the World in 80 Minutes.   #DrJeannineJordan  #OrganAndMultimediaConcert

CLASSICAL AUDIENCES WANT TO HAVE A UNIQUE CONCERT EXPERIENCE

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Classical Audiences want to have something exceptional.  They love the sense that this is a shared experience, but one from which they can each take away something personal and special. They love the uniqueness and excitement of a live performance, the sense that it is a one-off, an experience created there and then.

They love the  enjoyment being shaped by watching star performers and hearing new interpretations. They like that live experience offers authenticity: it allows concert attenders to experience the work of performers whom they know they like, but in a live capacity: therefore, witnessing performance quality in the most direct way possible, as well as being privy to a performance by a well-regarded player that will never be repeated exactly.

The importance of shared ethos and experience when attending classical concerts has been expressed by many people.  Sharing social experiences, including using arts events to ‘build bridges’ with distant acquaintances.

It has already become evident that the live nature of classical performance mediates the influences of familiarity: making unfamiliar works engaging and accessible, while also helping to retain experienced listeners’ interest in familiar music performed.

Concerts are viewed as unrepeatable entities that could only be experienced through the action of deciding to attend, and so in this capacity the unpredictable and therefore distinctive nature of live experience is a primary attendance motivation.

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Dr. Jeannine Jordan, organist, with her husband, David Jordan, media artist of Pro-Motion Music are the creators and presenters of the dramatic story-driven organ and multimedia concert experiences, From Sea to Shining Sea, Bach and Sons, and Around the World in 80 Minutes.   #DrJeannineJordan  #OrganAndMultimediaConcert

Around the World in 80 Minutes at SOU

Around the World in 80 Minutes is coming to Ashland, Oregon on Sunday, January 20th, 2019.  Join us at the Oregon Center for the Arts on the Southern Oregon University Campus at 3:00 p.m. for this fascinating trip around the world.  It is an audience-engaging concert experience presented by Dr. Jeannine Jordan, organist and narrator and David Jordan, media artist.  You’ll make fascinating discoveries, hear incredible music, and be transported via stunning visuals to such far-flung locales as Australia and Zimbabwe.  Live camera projection of Dr. Jordan’s playing are interspersed with videos making it a captivating experience.

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Dr. Jeannine Jordan, organist and David Jordan, media artist of Pro-Motion Music are the creators and presenters of the dramatic story-driven organ and multimedia concert experiences, From Sea to Shining Sea, Bach and Sons, and Around the World in 80 Minutes.  #DrJeannineJordan  #OrganAndMultimediaConcert

Yes, she loves being an organist

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This even took me by surprise. I asked Jeannine;

If you had it all to do over again would you do the same thing, become an organist?

Within a nanosecond she said “Oh absolutely, I wouldn’t change a thing. My music has taken me to great places where I met incredible people and experienced things I never would have in other occupations. I love my life and work.”

Experiencing dramatic and diverse people, encountering unbelievable obstacles, and getting through those barriers is rather like the stories that we tell in our story-driven dramatic organ and multimedia concert experiences.

Our concerts take a plethora of skills, much time, much practice, much correction, much effort to create, and much work to contact the right people to host a performance. The creations themselves are outside-the-box and even though people love them when they attend one, they have no idea what to expect because they’ve never seen a concert like ours before. Performing, narrating, acting, drawing, video-making, getting corrected and directed. It all adds up to what we are doing, and it is my joy to be a part of the creation and performance of our concerts with my incredible husband, David.

She really did say all those things. I think she must be pretty sure she’s happy with her life as an organist. And I’m glad.

To all of our newsletter readers — thanks for being part of our community and supporting us outside-the-box. 

Thanks, David

PS: The stories of Jeannine’s Hooky Precision Ice Skating Club, her past life with goats, peacocks, and ducks, the weeks spent in primary research in church attics and museums up and down the East coast, and her piloting a 50’ long narrow boat up and down the Oxford canal will have to wait for another time. 

Alexander Schuke organ of 1906

Dr. Jeannine Jordan, organist and David Jordan, media artist of Pro-Motion Music are the creators and presenters of the dramatic story-driven organ and multimedia concert experiences, From Sea to Shining Sea, Bach and Sons, and Around the World in 80 Minutes.  #DrJeannineJordan  #OrganAndMultimediaConcert