Rehearsal process is incredibly quick and it's always going on. But within that rehearsal process, you yourself can take a moment to think about how the music will sound if we do it right. And then you just have to let it go and join the flowing river of rehearsal. It seems like a unique super power that you're able to switch gears and just be a listener. Music is such a universal language, and you can cut up, just sit in a chair and the audience, and suddenly are an audience member.
Our ears perk up when we hear about different systems practicing self-management. That was the case with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, a Grammy-award winning group that rehearses and performs without a formal conductor. Instead, the orchestra decentralizes power and leadership among its members, who rotate in between positions and treat each other as equals. Collaborative decision-making; multi-filled roles; shared ownership; clear feedback agreements—Orpheus embodies the very practices we love to talk about.
In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans ask James Wilson, a cellist with Orpheus and one of the ensemble’s three artistic directors, and Alexander Scheirle, Orpheus’s executive director, about the group’s democratic underpinnings and how it’s experimented with emergence for more than 50 years.
Learn more about Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at orpheusnyc.org.
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