Chamber Music Society Interview

Introduction (00:00:01) - :: With me today are the two artistic directors, Wu Han and Mr. David Finkel, and the director of education, Mr. Andrew Berger.

Mr. Finckel discusses Chamber Music Society history (00:00:10) - :: Sure. I’d love to. The Chamber Society at Lincoln Center is one of twelve, what we call, constituents of the Lincoln Center campus, as we call it here. That includes the organization such as the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the New York State Theatre, and the Film Society, etc. So, we are representing the art of chamber music at this great presenting institution which is known as Lincoln Center. We have been here since 1969, at which time, we had our very first inaugural concert. We’re very soon celebrating therefore our 40th Anniversary. Basically, what we do is present chamber music here in all it’s various forms from the earliest works that were written for small ensembles to newly commissioned works which are happening with us every season.

The initiatives of the Chamber Music Society (00:01:02) - :: : I also like to add that Chamber Music Society, besides presenting chamber music, has many many different initiative. Of course the education Department is a very important one for all of us. We also have our own radio show, have our own recording contract, has a national and international touring program. We also, especially in the education Department, cover tremendous amount of activity including school concerts are, family concerts, lecture series. It's a very, sort of, all cover -- all area of the chamber music presenting situation.

How did you become involved with the Chamber Music Society (00:01:43) - :: Host: Now, how did you become involved with the Chamber Music Society? Let's start with you.

Wu Han talks about coming to the Chamber Music Society (00:01:48) - :: Wu Han: Well we both are musicians. I play the piano and David is a cellist and Chamber Music Society has the history always hire musicians as their artistic directors. So, when they select both of us, of course, probably because one, our playing careers, second is because our specific love and devotion to chamber music. David plays in a string quartet called the Emerson Quartet. I have been in many many festivals and being soloist but also being chamber musicians, so we know this repertory well and we also know many many musicians so I think that's how our qualification become obvious for the board to hire us as artistic directors

Mr. Berger's career (00:02:44) - :: Andrew Berger: Well, I've been here for just about two years. My career -- I did study music, although I'm not a professional musician, and my career started in Arts Administration. I've worked in broadcasting and in programming and running a concert hall prior to this. And then I got involved in the education aspect of performing arts presentation. I've worked here at Lincoln Center previously, but also for a number of different organizations running education programs in the past. And I've been working mostly outside of the city and I was interested in coming back and working, and Manhattan's sort of the center of the artistic universe for many people. And so this position was open and that's how I got started here. And I've been very involved with chamber music in my career in the past. In fact, I was very involved with Chamber Music Society many years ago in helping start broadcast series I think, I don't know, 15-20 years ago with the society when they first started broadcasting nationally through[ national public radio stations back in the early 80s. So, I do have a relationship -- I do have a history with the Chamber Music Society specifically.

Why are there two Artist Directors at the Chamber Music Society? (00:04:15) - :: Host: wonderful. Thank you. Now, I find it interesting that there are two artistic directors here at the Chamber Music Society. Could you give me some -- let us know some of the benefits of having two, and really why are there two?

Mr. Finckel responds about his relationship with Wu Han (00:04:26) - :: David Finkel: Well, Wu Han and I, who are -- we are married. We've been married for 23 years. We have, since the beginning of our relationship, worked as artistic partners. The first -- that first incarnation was as a cello and piano duo and that wonderful music, which is written or two instruments in combination to something that has tied us together ever since I've known Wu Han. We have a very special relationship based on that. And then out of the excitement over that partnership grew many other projects for us. We founded our own recording company primarily for us to document our own work. The also have run and also founded music festivals, summer festivals and administered them as joint projects. In terms of the arts, we've always done everything together. The only thing I don't do with her is the Emerson Quartet because there's already three other guy's there and four makes Quartet so there's not room for her. But she actually does come and play with us sometimes -- piano quintets -- and that's for me. Then ny -- all my worlds are in one place. So it was natural when this position -- when we were -- I was approached about this position, I immediately thought of it is as not being something for myself but something for the two of us because the sum of our parts has proven, in many cases, to be more than just if we were the individuals. So, we came to the job as a duo and we bring our varying talents and strengths here together and hopefully it fits the bill and we are certainly having a wonderful time.

Mr. Berger discusses the reach of the Internet (00:06:36) - :: Host: Wonderful. Wonderful. That's really great. Thank you very much. For nearly a year now, the Education Department of the Chamber Music Society has been publishing numerous videos for interactive media and posting them on their website for worldwide viewing in places such as Columbia, Ukraine, Germany, and Tokyo. Were you surprised you saw this? Andrew Berger: Well, you know, not really does the Internet has worldwide reach and reaches into just about every country everywhere so that people might be accessing this material from all over the world didn't really surprise me all that much. But it is interesting to see where people are logging into it from.

Wu Han is delighted with the global response to the Chamber Music Society Videos (00:06:59) - :: Wu Han: I think it is more of a delight than surprised. We all know Internet had that power of cross the boundary and it's wonderful that we have Internet to really publicize or be able to do our education activities through this incredible modern age invention. Really there's no border in Internet. Anybody can access to that and it's just a wonderful wonderful advantage that the earlier generation did not have and we are so happy that we’re taking advantage of that.

The ramifications of using web-based video (00:07:34) - :: Andrew Berger: You know, to work with our education department here in partnership with a company like Raptive is not only is more exciting for us to actually produce the event but in thinking about them ahead of time, we think now not only about our own audiences right here at Lincoln Center, but audiences, like you mentioned, in the Ukraine, possibly all over the world who may be watching this and learning from our work here and in a way it kind of informs the thinking that goes into forming and creating these events. So, these companies, these partnerships have opened up what we do at this organization not only to a larger world but to a much larger way of thinking and it doubles the excitement of all the preparation, all the hard work that we do here.

How long were you thinking of using online video? (00:08:27) - :: Host: wonderful. Thank you. So, Mr. Berger, you started the video program here at Chamber Music Society about a year ago and how long were you thinking about using online video before you discovered Raptive media?

The research into online video (00:08:41) - :: Andrew Berger: Well, the way it happened really is that David and Wu Han, when I first started here two years ago, David and Wu Han said to me, "We want to do something to expand our education area of the website." So, we had to do some careful thinking about ways to do that that made sense for us. So I started looking at what was out there on other people's websites, and some of the very interesting things I found, for example, that universities are doing with online courses that incorporate all kinds of media, video and audio, and that really interested me although, universities has enormous resources to produce these things. So I started to think about also what we could do with things we were already doing. So, rather than try to put a lot of text on the website and compose our bios and program notes which, if you're web savvy, you can find hundreds of sites that have these material. I started thinking about what could we do to really capitalize on things that we were already doing and that we are unique to what we were doing here. That lead me to the idea of thinking how we could share, through video, some of the really great lectures and master classes and other kinds of events that we were already doing. That's really how it happened.

What Raptive Media features attracted you? (00:10:19) - :: Hosts: All right, thank you and what features of Raptive media helped you make that decision of choosing Raptive media for your video work online and what were the features that attracted you the most of those? Andrew Berger: okay. Well, one of them was certainly the indexing capabilities -- the tagging capabilities which would allow us very easily to pinpoint different places in any program that viewers could jump to to see topics or pieces that they were particularly interested in. Not only was that available but it was very easy to do. So, that was probably one of the most attractive features of this particular service that I saw.

Tell us about doing your own video production (00:11:15) - :: Host: So, I understand that your staff actually does all the video shooting and editing of these videos. Can you elaborate on that a bit more?

The advantages of streaming video of events (00:11:46) - ::

Video professionals are not needed (00:14:16) - :: Host: And so, your staff members here, would you consider them video professionals or does that really not have to be a qualification for them to do this? Andrew Berger: They don’t have to be video professionals at all. You have to have a little bit of an eye but not much more of an eye than you would if you were shooting something at home, I think. And to operate the software, some of the software -- some of the editing software is a little bit complicated, but again you don't really have to be a specialist cause it's really designed for the home market, it's really designed for the consumer. So you really can learn it -- can learn most of it very easily -- sorry, you can learn most of it very easily and start doing all kinds of interesting things pretty quickly. I mean, it does allow you to do all kinds of fades and fun sorts of effects if you want to incorporate them and it just takes a little bit of time to figure out what those are.

The possibility of a Chamber Music Society events video library to distribute for educational institutions (00:15:15) - :: Host: Wonderful. Thank you. And one final question. Have you talked to any schools or any other educational organizations about linking these videos for educational purposes and is that part of your plan?

Mr. Berger discusses the benefits of developing a library of video content (00:16:01) - :: Andrew Berger: Well, we’re just getting started with this and our main interest, as I said, is opening up our events that are already happening to a wider audience, whoever is interested in that. And we haven’t thought too much about specific applications that might help support specific educational goals related to our school programs or our family programs or things like that. That’s something that might happen in the future but we really haven’t started looking at that quite yet. But once we have a lot of material available and we can sort through it easily and index it easily, and as I think we’re heading with the software – with Raptive’s capability, where we can tag all of the video that we have stored – right now we’re just tagging particular specific videos, but once we can develop tags across twelve or twenty-four hours of video material, then we have a tool where we can really, sort of, organizing things in a way that might be really valuable to educational institutions.

Zander discusses his video background and experience (00:16:51) - :: Host: Very nice. And would you consider yourself a professional videographer. Xander Evans: No, not really. I have a background in music which is what drew me to the Chamber Music Society, but, really, it’s just – it’s a way to be around the music and it’s been an interesting experience to also learn the video skills. Host: Very nice. So, would you consider that that would be – I mean, that you don’t have any previous video experience and that this is really... Xander Evans: I mean, I have about as much video experience as most people in the US at this point of working consumer video camera but that’s about it. Not really a whole lot of editing experience or anything like that before hand.

Was it difficult learning to shoot, edit, and tag the Chamber Music Society Videos? (00:17:53) - :: Xander Evans: No. Not really. The system was pretty simple for me in general. It took a little at a time, obviously, you know, learning a new set of skills and new set of software but, really, it was very intuitive.

The global response to the Chamber Music Society videos (00:18:11) - :: Host: So, are you aware of the global response to these videos and if so, how do you feel about – are you at all surprised? Xander Evans: I was surprised. I mean, when I first heard that the videos were being viewed all over the world in places that seemed extremely far off and exotic to me. I mean, I think it’s amazing. I really expected these videos mostly to be used by the people who come to the lectures and who already saw the lectures or who want to show the lectures to their friends; a very specific New York demographic. But, it’s very exciting that this is giving a great deal of exposure to the Chamber Music Society and to this kind of classical music and these fantastic lectures all over the world in very far off places from New York. Host: Wonderful. That is very exciting. And, one more thing, do you enjoy the video work here? Xander Evans: Yes. It’s been really great for me. These lectures are fantastic and the video work has been very interesting. Learning a new set of skills that are, you know, extremely applicable in the arts world and in general today. I think that it’s been fantastic. Obviously, in terms of video skills and also in terms of the specific work here at the Chamber Music Society.

Overview of Chamber Music Society history -

Involvement with the Chamber Music Society -

Two Artistic Directors -

The video program at the Chamber Music Society -

About video self-production -

An events video library -

Zander Ebin - video production intern at the Chamber Music Society -