Boyce Lancaster talks with Maestro Albert-George Schram, former staff conductor of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, about how orchestras sometimes need to tap into the inner child of adults, to get them on their feet and moving to dance music. [audio src="http://wosu.org/audio/classical/2006/Dance.mp3"]
Highlights From This Interview:
Boyce: "People laugh at Andre Rieu, but he stands up there, and has himself a good time, and wants people in the aisles dancing." Albert-George: "And he hooks into large audiences. And so if symphony orchestras and the mighty Maestri ignore that, they do so at their own peril. We need to go where the people are, and where the people want to be, as an alternative, or a possible alternative...to getting us out of our formal settings where we don't talk." Albert-George: "When I do children's concerts, especially outdoors, I encourage kids to dance around, because a lot of the music that we do is dance music. By the time people are adults, they are so homogenized and pasteurized and sterilized, we barely are in touch with the dance within ourselves, let alone to exhibit it, to let things wiggle where they may." Albert-George: "Dance as if no one's watching, or dance as if there's someone watching, but who cares? And if symphony orchestras can somehow be involved in that - we need to be. We need to be."