Interactive concerts to combat social isolation

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The new concert series has turned out to be an incubator in terms of skills development: for the artists, for the Career Center team and also for the audience.

Loneliness, social isolation, lack of conversation - the headlines in the press are piling up at the beginning of April with reports that the lockdown is hitting older people particularly hard. The aim is to combine music and conversation: "There is an endless supply of concerts online, which are streamed via YouTube, Instagram and similar platforms. platforms are streamed. This is wonderful and yet there is a lack of concert formats that enable interactivity and conversation," the HfMT Career Center team noted in mid-April and developed the new format from the home office.

The new concert series was launched on May 7, 2020. The "Interactive Concerts" combine music and conversation online. They invite you to listen to music, tell stories and ask questions. A 30-minute moderated live concert is followed by a discussion with a selected audience and the artists. The program is broadcast live every week.

"The great thing is that music has such a power to really take your mind away from a problem, such as Covid, for a moment," says Isabelle Vilmar after the first concert. As a music therapist at the Hospital zum Heiligengeist, she is working on the implementation on site: "We were enthusiastic about the idea right from the start and did everything we could to make these discussion concerts possible for our senior citizens, taking into account the relevant safety regulations."

Watching a live concert without the audience in front of a running camera in an empty hall is also a completely new experience for the students. The lack of applause at the end of the concert is unusual, the silence in the hall irritating. The situation requires a great deal of concentration, stage presence and musical skill. Experience in presenting concerts is also necessary. This is followed by a quick internal switch to the conversation situation: communication skills and empathy are valuable for the subsequent conversations, as many of the audience members are using the online tools for the first time. The face mask regulations make things even more difficult. However, the musicians and the very music-loving audience at the Hospital zum Heiligengeist quickly get used to the new format. During the 30-minute talk, there is a lot of questioning, praise and laughter. The artists receive feedback in conversation and there is applause. Antonio di Dedda, who played the first concert together with Benedikt Loos, says after the conversation with the senior citizens: "I personally found it very nice to see how excited they were about the online concert and the entire project. "There was a good atmosphere on both sides despite the physical distance.

This format offers a huge opportunity for universities and concert halls to reach new audiences. The technical challenges of interactive concerts currently lie in achieving a high sound quality for the concert and creating interactivity for the conversation. There is currently no communication tool on the digital market that can do both. The concert is broadcast live via YouTube and then switched to a program for synchronous information exchange, which is usually used for video conferencing.

"Expanding skills to create opportunities" is the motto of the Career Center at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama. The new concert series has turned out to be an incubator in terms of skills development: for the artists, for the Career Center team and also for the audience. Lémuel Grave, HfMT alumni, pianist and professional audio-video recorder, has quickly familiarized himself with live streaming and now broadcasts the concerts with high sound quality, supported by Katrin von Gladiss and Emanuel Werres.

Developing innovative concert formats is one of the core tasks of the Career Center as part of Concert LAB / Stage_2.0: Alsterphilharmonie. The stage as a place for artistic knowledge transfer and social participation - funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
The concerts are currently taking place on a weekly basis and are planned until the end of October. The parish of St. Johannis-Harvestehude is making its parish hall and its network connection available to the artistic team for the live broadcast, as the university is currently only open with restrictions. "We are very pleased about this cooperation and hope that as many people as possible can benefit from it," says Pastor Dr. Claudia Tietz.

Text: Prof. Martina Kurth, Head of Career Center

Note: The current interactive concerts, including a link, can be viewed on the event page