T.These days, being in the crowd has even more of an advantage. Will this crowd crush or crush me? Now we ask, Will this crowd make me sick? Will this crowd kill me? As new waves of Covid and new variants keep coming, we are wondering.
Richard Tognetti, artistic director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, has been thinking about crowds for several years. From his home in Sydney, the musician and composer is working with director Nigel Jamison on a new production called The Crowd and I. It combines crowd footage and a live orchestra, from Black Lives Matter protests to Spain’s big annual tomato battle. play in time.
Tognetti herself doesn’t particularly like crowds. “I personally hate being in them,” he said. “I’ve been to a few arena concerts, but I’ve decided never to go again. I saw the Rolling Stones at the arena show, but I wanted to see them at Enmore.”
what about when he was younger? “Never been in a mosh pit because he didn’t want to break his arm. That would be the main thing.”
Over ten years in the making, The Crowd and I is divided into 13 chapters, containing footage of crowds of all kinds from around the world. Crowds of Coachella, sprawling refugee camps, packed commuter trains, drone footage of protests, close encounters with rioters. Some of the footage was shot by artists such as his Ai Weiwei and cinematographer Jon Frank who worked closely with his ACO on The Reef.
Tognetti has edited soundtracks that alternate between Chopin, Sibelius, Beethoven, contemporary US composer Morton Feldman, and even his own. Each work evokes different emotions in the viewer. To handle the dramatic shift in mood between chapters, ACO expands its ranks of performances to feature Brass and Woodwind, Live Electronics and Song Company vocalists.
The performance, which kicks off in Canberra on the Saturday before the tour, is as deeply emotional and evocative as some of ACO’s best work over the last few decades, including 2005’s Luminous with photographer Bill Henson. I promise to be rich in
Through the performance, the crowd changes shape. Sometimes menacing, sometimes celebratory, sometimes uplifting, sometimes dangerous. We have a spectacular clip of the mosh pit. Hundreds of young bodies scurry toward each other and collide with no ill intent. This is accompanied by his Tognetti original song titled Mosh Maggot. But the most influential chapter (among many) is Tide, which contains CCTV footage of the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter march around the world.
“When you see the footage, it’s overwhelming,” says Tognetti. “The march spread like a tsunami around the world. I didn’t want to imbue the music with the drama of an opera, it didn’t need to. Like any good art, the more the sermon, the more There is less room for poetry.”
And even now, years later, it’s still overwhelming to see footage of the Cronulla riots captured by photojournalist Craig Greenhill. “Some people might say, ‘I’ve seen this, I don’t need to see it anymore,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah,'” she says Tognetti. “No one is innocent. No one is innocent.”
The show’s origins were in 2008 when Tognetti was given funding to “dream wicked and wild.” I wanted to do something for the crowd and put it together very quickly, but it lacked an overarching directorial vision, so Jamieson came on board. The two men started working again during the 2020 lockdown, saying, “It’s the last 3% of him that takes 99% money and time. It took years to make and sculpt.”
Cloud and I have changed in the last decade. Darkness was easier than light. ’ In the final version, we have both interactions. Yes, crowds are dangerous and scary. But as the pandemic has taught us, we often need and crave communal experiences.
Fear of crowds also affects the earnings of artists such as Tognetti. Art needs crowds to survive.
“I hope people will continue to buy tickets. Come on out!” he says. “Not only for the big gilded theatrical events, but also for the ecosystem underneath, every smaller show or venue, or all the undergrowth he will be out of here in five years. must support it.”
-
The Crowd and I will tour Canberra (6 August), Melbourne (7-8 August), Sydney (9-14 August) and Brisbane (15 August).
