Stefan Metz, the well-known cello player of the Orlando Quartet and founder of the Dutch String Quartet Academy, gives a masterclass to the promising Matangi Quartet at the Walter Maas Huis in Bilthoven. Metz takes the players and the listeners into the string quartet by Bartok, and discusses his ideas about artistry; he shows us what it means to go from playing really well to excellent performance.
What is the perspective of the artist on all this? Artists reflect on their practice, their collaboration with people from other disciplines, and their view on art as a societal domain.
What is the perspective of the artist on all this? Artists reflect on their practice, their collaboration with people from other disciplines, and their view on art as a societal domain.
Bert Mulder, information expert and adviser to the Dutch government, speaks about the fundamental transition our society is currently going through; as the ‘society of meaning’ is coming into being, the role of culture and art is also changing. Many people seem to experience a gap at the heart of our modern world, and they go looking for new meanings; very often art and artists represent the site where these new meanings are found. The experience of art can teach us something: the way personal inspiration goes together with everyday practice and work. There is a need to further deepen the dialogue between the arts and business, to define more clearly what exactly is the art of the new professional. Such Connecting Conversations are what Art in Conversation is about. [Movie in Dutch]
Helena Gaunt and Bart van Rosmalen, the initiators of the project Art in conversation, explain where the initial idea for the project came from. At a conference on music education they felt something was missing: there was a lot of talk going on about music, but music itself somehow was not there. That’s when they said: we should play together as well, instead of just talk. We should try and meet musically. And so they did.
From this initial meeting onwards they started investigating the similarities and differences between improvisation and conversation. What can we learn from improvisation that we can use in conversation? And since our conversations are increasingly between people from different disciplines (music, art, business, science, philosophy), we can also ask what art can contribute to the quest for more innovative ways of talking. Because conversation, in the end of the day, is an improvised form.
