A Postcard from Paris - The World's First Musical Art Gallery

An intriguing first session of the IAMA conference in the Cité De La Musique ten days ago was bolstered by the considerable presence of Pierre Boulez. We saw the presentations of new concert halls in Paris, Porto and Miami, with the latter visible on this link: //www.nws.edu/NewCampus/ImageGallery.html

Being Miami, intentionally or not, image comes right to the fore. In this case the images are those projected onto parts of the new concert hall, to complement or accompany the music made by the New World Symphony, or as projections to accompany DJ mixes.

This last point is worth exploring, as more and more classical venues seem to be throwing wide their horizons and casting off their aversions to the other genres, embracing the possibilities instead.

I was briefly mulling over this while having a beer to Tom Middleton's DJ set before the Stereo MCs' gig on the South Bank the other week, the Royal Festival Hall seemingly able to adapt itself to all kinds of music without being compromised. The Clore Ballroom had been turned into a club, as had the RFH itself a few months earlier when Carl Craig came to town.

It's encouraging to see this cross pollenisation taking place. I wonder if it means we'll see Mozart symphonies at the Ministry of Sound, or Paul Weller playing at the Wigmore Hall?

Both are unlikely of course, but in this session, Pierre Boulez came up with several pithy phrases of wisdom. One was the observation that his teacher, Olivier Messiaen, used colours for chords. This was all very well, Boulez said, but he did not operate in the same way. Instead he chose to say he was not sceptical about the concept, but actively negative - the same way he felt about the new concert hall. "I don't want to see the open mouth, that is why I am not a doctor!" he offered as a comparison.

Proof, then, that there are many ways of taking in a classical concert - and that this new approach is going to walk a fine line between bringing in new concertgoers and frustrating the current ones.

More thoughts on the IAMA conference to follow anon...