Forget going to your local symphony hall, there’s now an app that lets you book an orchestra to come play in your living room. It’s called Groupmuse, and it’s basically Uber for classical music.
Forget going to your local symphony hall, there’s now an app that lets you book an orchestra to come play in your living room.
The app was founded in 201 by Sam Bodkin and had since booked over 1,200 young classical musicians to play small concerts in living rooms across the States.
Bodkin fell in love with classical music when a friend played him Beethoven’s Große Fuge Opus no. 133 in college.
“It was such frantic and bothered music, even though it was written in the 1820s,” Bodkin told Wired in a recent interview. “I became an overnight evangelist, making mixtapes for anyone who would listen.”
But his new found affection for the genre was met with a frustration for what he saw as a lack of accessibility to it in its live format. After meeting a group of young musicians studying at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Bodkin fully realised the power of live chamber music.
He was convinced that other young people would feel the same way, if it weren’t for the excessive entrance cost to stuffy symphony halls. And so, Groupmuse was born.
Each show consists of two 25-minute sets of instrumental music. The first set is all about the classics, and the second the performers’ choice. “We’ve had Dvorak and then string quartet arrangements of Guns and Roses, we’ve had Chopin on the piano and then Brazilian choro music,” says Bodkin.
Professional musicians and those studying in conservatories can upload samples to a Groupmuse profile, which are then approved by an internal team. Then the Groupmuse pairs performers with hosts who volunteer to host strangers and musicians in their home: a soloist for 10 people, a quartet for a house that can fit 50 listeners.
Around 20 Groupmuse shows happen across the US every week, mostly in Boston, New York and Seattle. Groupmuse suggests each attendee pays $10 for the show; musicians go home with an average of $160.
“It’s amazingly intimate,” says Jude Ziliak, a baroque violinist who has played on and off at Groupmuses since 2014. “In 90% of concert environments, you’re elevated on a stage with dimmed lights, removed from listeners, without a sense of what people are experiencing,” he says – a far cry from playing in cavernous music halls to a faceless audience.
Bodkin hopes the partnerships can convert new classical music enthusiasts into returning listeners, just like himself. “Classical music and establishment venues shouldn’t be on the margins,” he says. “We can wake communities up to the cultural endowments all around them.”
We’ve got to say, it’s a pretty fucking cool idea.
[via Wired]
