On the Crowd and I
“Set to Tognetti’s rhythmically dynamic reworking of the music of JS Bach, Mela reflects on pilgrimage and the ways we are drawn to celebration. Rufus Blackwell’s footage takes us to the Kumbh Mela festival in India, where millions gather to bathe in the holy water on the banks of the Ganges. We travel to the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, a buddhist celebration in Thailand, and the Coachella Festival in the US, revealing in the color, energy and joy of shared communion.”
“Concert Program: The Crowd and I [featuring music by Beethoven, Chopin, Ives, Shostakovich, Sibelius and Richard Tognetti],” Australian Chamber Orchestra, https://www.aco.com.au/whats-on/2022/the-crowd-and-i. I had the chance to visit the recently renovated Sydney Opera House this weekend for the ACO’s Crowd & I performance. This is one in a series set to video such as their previous Reef (2013), Mountain (2017) and River (2021). This edition juxtaposed the vastness of space and the Australian Northern Territory’s Tanami Desert with the intimacy of the human gaze between strangers in New York, Tokyo subways, British football fans and the eyes of masked medical workers. Crowds themselves featured as mosh pits, traffic riddled freeways, refugee camps, riots, peaceful protest movements and religious festivals. The final movement took the audience on a high speed train journey from Tokyo to Kyoto accompanied by the solo piano Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 1 by Frederic Chopin. The visualization of so many divergent facets of human encounter emanated a rather ghostly spectral quality. It was both disorienting and cathartic after the pandemic. One moment of levity used polka to transform a football match into a coordinated dance. It made me think of the intersubjectivity of Hannah Arendt’s vita activa.
