Department of Music

Chamber Music Ensembles

A video thumbnail featuring Eric Hollander playing viola in front of a black and white video of a mill

Video: Cowboy

An audiovisual collaboration, undertaken as part of MUS 116, featuring PhD candidate Eric Hollander.

Playing (in both senses of the word!) with fellow musicians in small groups, exploring great repertoire, one-on-one coaching with renowned faculty performers, and the joy of working collaboratively are at the core of the chamber music experience at Brandeis. And of course, we’ll refine skills and acquire tools along the way. Rehearsals are opportunities for sharing ideas of phrasing, trying out tempos, and beginning the process of creating your performance. As we work together toward the final goal–a polished, imaginative performance–you’ll get inside your piece and discover its unique dramatic story line.

As your group refines its ‘take’ on the piece, we’ll dive into existing youtube performances for ideas to help you create your own interpretation. As lead coach, I’ll be available for mini-lessons and weekly coaching throughout the process. Most importantly, we will co-create a welcoming, supportive safe place to try out ideas and take the risks all artists (humans!) need to take to grow.

Artists witness, listen and respond to the world we live in. As a class of performing musicians, we will spend some time exploring repertoire beyond the Western European art music tradition, so that we can take an active role in dismantling notions of who makes, performs and listens to chamber music. We will also be working together to create sustainable two-way community partnerships outside of the university.

Whether we meet and perform on a stage together or online, or some hybrid combination, we will create! Whether our final performances are simultaneous in/streamed from Slosberg, or are multitracked videos, we will perform! More than ever, the world needs artists–answer the call!

 

Resources