Development of an innovative concert concept, 01/02/2024
Trailer and full concert video on the bottom of the page.

At the end of October 2023, my friend and colleague, Sofia Baptista Torgal, invited me round for a cup of tea to tell me about an idea she’d had for some time. Her boyfriend’s job is to manage the sustainability aspects of a larger company; she was very impressed by this and wanted to do something similar with her own resources. She also said that Dominik “Dome” Rösler was also involved in the project, which made me very happy as he is one of my closest friends here in Trossingen. The idea was simple: to find a way to get people to care more or do more about the climate crisis.

Goals

We have all seen countless means of expression in every form trying to draw attention to the problem of the climate crisis. Our goal as Inner Decision was not to be another one of those, but to go a step further and actually move something in people to get them to act. This would prove to be much more difficult, but music happens to be one of the most powerful forms of expression ever.

I was on the phone with a good friend who studies climate science at Yale University in the US. Her key advice was that the solution to the climate crisis lies not in daily sacrifices like using paper straws, recycling, etc., but in society’s decision-making bodies, like parliaments or city councils. Creating a concert experience that makes people feel like they are making a choice or putting them in the shoes of the people we all so often blame.

We prepared this project for the university’s internal competition “Innovative Concert Formats”, which also served as a pre-selection for the nationwide competition D-Bü 2024 with the same theme.

Brainstorming

From October until the day of the concert, we had countless Zoom and café meetings to discuss our concept. These were crucial meetings that allowed us to clearly recognise our abilities and limitations, develop our ideas together and agree on a common end result.

We naturally wanted something that would appeal to the audience. I thought back to the quote from Apple founder Steve Jobs: “Instead of inventing something and thinking about how to market it, think about a user experience and work backwards to discover the technology you need.” I treated this project very pragmatically as a product that we wanted to serve to the audience on concert day. We had a certain amount of time available and we had to make the best use of it.

Me in Turkey, brainstorming with my group via Zoom

Synesthesia, Chromesthesia and Poem

The division of the piece into 6 sentences was originally a pragmatic way of organising our thoughts. We chose a colour and two or three main feelings or concepts for each movement and brainstormed about each movement in this way. We agreed to compose original music as well as use excerpts from well-known pieces to reinforce the associations between the music and the concepts. We also added some LED lights in the corners of the room to make the whole room the corresponding colour. Lastly, Dome and I wrote a poem together in English with 7 verses. Each sentence got its own verse, and together they would tell the story of life on earth. In the end it was like this:

I. Blue

Concepts: Ocean, rivers, rain
Represented by: Water

Beneath the azure sky, where rivers gently weep, A tale unfolds in nature’s cradle, secrets to keep.

II. Green

Concepts: plants, forests, birds, wind
Represented by: a tree leaf

In the verdant embrace, where forests weave their lore, Life dances in the shadows, a vibrant encore.

III. Light Gray

Concept: Man in harmony with nature (hunting and gathering or agriculture)
Represented by: a stone

Amid the twilight grays, humanity did blend, A thread in nature’s tapestry, hand in hand.

IV. Dark Gray

Concepts: Man in disregard of nature (Industrial Revolution)
Represented by: a spanner

Yet shadows grew darker, as disregard took hold, Harmony disrupted, a narrative of untold cold.

V. Orange

Concepts: Earth takes back control, uninhabitable conditions
Represented by: a bloodstained bone

A somber palette emerges, as orange hues ignite, The planet takes control, reclaiming its might.

VI. Red

Concepts: Total destruction, fire, death
Represented by: Fire

Beneath the crimson canvas, a requiem unfolds, Total destruction, where silence takes hold.

Coda. Darkness

Concept: Hope; reminder that this timeline is avoidable

A tale ancient yet poignant, of a planet’s plea, Cherish the Earth, or face a destiny we decree.

One evening I asked my good friend Sebastian Gwilt, a native English speaker, to come over and record the poems at my house. This made me appreciate my Zoom H6 recorder again.

The room is covered in green colour. You can see Dome on stage placing the leaf in the bowl filled with water.

Bowl

During our brainstorming session, we had the idea of placing the representative object of each movement in a glass and changing the glass between movements. And then came the big idea: what if we put everything gradually into one bowl and burn it at the end? If it were just me, I would never let that happen because it could be so exhausting, time consuming, distracting and dangerous, but my group was adamant and democracy won out. Looking back, I’m amazed at how well Sofia managed it, because in the end everything worked out perfectly.

At the concert, we had the bowl on stage near Dome so that he could walk and put the object in it. I also arranged the music so that everyone had at least one opportunity to perform the ritual of putting objects in. We also played the appropriate poetry readings while this action took place.

Sofia places the spanner in the bowl in IV. Dark grey

Voting & Deciding

One of the most important parts of our piece was that we asked the audience three times during the piece to choose between two imaginary situations and thus change the course of the piece of music. We placed the piano not on the stage but in the centre of the audience and placed the chairs in a circle to enhance the tribal feeling and really give the experience of coming together to make a decision. People would cast their vote by raising their hand and showing either a closed fist or an open hand. This process was explained to the audience in the program.

For each possible outcome, I composed two different versions of music and we practised and prepared them. e.g:

III. Light Gray

✋ after a few seconds of the movement, I get up from the piano, start to walk around the room and explain the situation: “You find yourself in Northeast Asia, camping in front of a mountainous landscape as part of the Yamnaya tribe. You are faced with the difficult decision of either remaining hunter-gatherers or settling down and farming. Which one is it going to be? Vote with your hands.”

If they choose hunter-gatherer, fast music is played, symbolising the adrenaline-fuelled chase, followed by slower, calmer music representing the gathering part.
If they choose farming, music based on the chants of the Black Sea people will be played, representing the harsh conditions of working on a farm.

I have tried to use similar musical elements, but framed in a different context, to minimise the effort involved in practising.

Voting process in concert

Music

I used my usual Dorico notation software to compose everything directly on my computer. Everyone kept track of the score via iPads, which made distributing newer versions very easy.

The music is a mixture of original compositions and quotes from other pieces. The piece has the main theme Hu-ma-ni-ty (B, A, E, F#), which serves as the basis for almost everything.