Not many people walk into a bedroom and find a vibraphone, let alone a vibraphonist, waiting there. Or pass through the living room to find a harpist in the hall on the way to the kitchen. But that’s just the kind of unexpected twist one can expect from “Brownstone.”
This site-specific electro-acoustic composition living art installation by Jakub Ciupinski will not only be performed this weekend, but it will be performed by Metropolis Ensemble through the historic, Victorian-era Kimball House at the Capitol Center for the Arts.
“This was our first ‘ambulatory’ piece,” said Grammy-nominated conductor Andrew Cyr, who is the artistic director for Metropolis. “But we often experiment with finding ways to give audience members new types of experiences. It’s sort of part of what we do from time to time, when there’s a strong enough artistic idea leading the way, and we’ve the right elements in place to produce the project.”
Metropolis Ensemble is a professional chamber orchestra and ensemble dedicated to making classical music in its most contemporary forms. As patrons walk through the house sipping wine and taking a light nosh, they will encounter musicians scattered throughout. Think of it as a choose your own adventure chamber concert. The audience is free to wander anywhere, at any point in the piece.
“Well, for example, they could be in a room with solo harp, yet hear music bleeding in from another room with a wind trio,” Cyr said. “The closer you get to the harp, the less you hear the trio, so in a sense, an audience member controls her own ‘balance’ of the piece. Some people might prefer one texture or instrument combination over another while some will search for a ‘sweet spot,’ where you can hear many rooms at once and experience what it’s like to be in the middle of a symphony.”
In addition to the musicians who make up six groupings of solo and chamber ensembles, an electronic soundscape will pipe through the halls and stairways, creating an emotional backdrop of rhythms and sounds. But instead of adding nuisance noise to the experience, each sound complements the music playing in any room of the house.
The idea for “Brownstone” originally came from Jennifer Salomon, a visual artist and Metropolis Ensemble board member, Cyr said. She pictured a concert in her home using multiple rooms and incorporating an art installation.
“I approached Jakub Ciupinski to develop the idea and he began to develop a compositional technique that was modular, allowing each room to exist as a separate piece but with each individual room contributing to a whole,” Cyr said. “We did a test midway through his process and found it was missing an element.”
Through a friend of Solomon’s, the group was introduced to a sound artist who had access to, of all things, the entire BBC archive of recorded animal sounds.
“Jakub used and adapted this source material to create a secondary electronic music tapestry which turned out to be the missing piece of the puzzle,” Cyr said.
Here also is a narrative element to the music in the sense that despite all the individual “rooms,” there’s a larger structural arc in Brownstone with a beginning, middle, climax and final resolution, Cyr said.
“I think what is interesting is that there are so many ways to actually experience the piece. For example, if you hover close to the solo violin room, you might think this is a violin concerto, but stepping further back, you might hear a symphony, with a gorgeously sweeping violin section,” Cyr said. “Keeping close to the percussion might give you a more post-Philip Glass type of experience.”
In addition to the music, audience members are free to speak to each other during the performance. Drinks and hors d’oeuvres will be served throughout the evening and there will be opportunities to interact with the musicians.
“My hope for audience members is for them to leave feeling inspired and more connected to each individual layer that is present in a piece of music,” Cyr said. “Of equal importance, we’ve found audiences take away meaning from the unique social aspects of the experience. You can walk around alone, or with a friend or partner, sit on the floor next to a player, just find a couch, or whisper quietly with your child. No matter what, you’re doing this with others around who are finding their own way too, which is symbolic about how we all experience music, except here, it’s a more interconnected one.”
“Brownstone” will be performed Sunday. Festivities begin at 6 p.m. Tickets are $50 and include drinks and hors d’oeuvres. The Capitol Center for the Arts is located at 44 S. Main St. For information, call the box office at 225-1111, or visit ccanh.com where a video of another ambulatory Metropolis performance is also available.