What inspired you to create concerto?

Charlie Khalil Prince: Personally, I was asking myself a lot of questions about how I was bearing witness to and processing the collapse that I was seeing happen all around me... There was the Beirut explosion in 2020, which deeply affected me, the genocide taking place in Gaza since 2023, and more recently the attack on Lebanon by Israel. All these events spoke to me on a very profound level, and I found myself dealing with major questions: How do I react? How do I grieve? And how do I not give in to despair?

Olivia Tapiero: The workings of imperialism, extractivist approach to resources, rise of totalitarianism, and climate, inter-relational, and political crises are subjects that interest each of us in our respective practices. All the same, we both felt that there was an element missing in our individual reflections on them, or at least something we were looking to add together through music and sonic improvisation. Slowly but steadily, as our artistic languages meshed, our collaboration became a space in which our ideas could be expressed differently.

What is the role of music in concerto?

O.T.: Charlie and I were both trained as classical musicians, even though it might not look like we belong to that world. There’s a kind of disconnect between the histories we come from and the world of the Western institution of classical music. We’re now fugitives from it, since our current practices lean more toward experimental music rather than traditional Western virtuosity. Over time, our relationship with virtuosity became a metonymic object through which we reflected the Empire in a larger sense. The general perception of classical music is that it should be detached from material circumstances. But if you look at the material circumstances, which do in fact exist, what you find is a history of colonization and genocide, ecocide, and the hierarchization of the living. In this work, we show images of the Russian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz, who fled Europe for the United States. In America, the humanity of this gay Jewish man was recognized only because he was a veritable prodigy. It was as if he achieved this despite his other identities. His story raises a question: what is the personal and social cost of gaining access to the institutions that define “beauty”?

C.P.: We’re not opposing the institution of classical music, but we are trying to show the other side of it. To reflect this, we use the musical concept of counterpoint, meaning two voices which say different things at the same time, but which create something together. What’s the counterpoint of classical music, its refinement, its timelessness? You can create a counterpoint to the opulence of an orchestra by contrasting it with blasted landscapes, exploded buildings, a soldier cutting down an olive tree, a young girl running behind a tank... The culture of classical music and its extremely rigid conventions helped us create our own dramaturgy. We borrowed the form of the concerto, where there’s a soloist, an accompanying orchestra, interspersed movements, and recurring musical themes. Except here, there’s no soloist, and the orchestra is garbage.

You work with different modes of presence in the piece. What are they?

C.P.: Since we come from quite different places in terms of our physicality, we had to establish a common language. Our strategy was to explore different body states which modify and combine with each other, and make those our choreographic foundation. We approached presence and movement based on four modalities of the body: the technical body, specifically the body dehumanized by work; the body of the musician or creator; the body that yields, which is the body that dances and moves, that is open to its environment; and finally, the body that bears witness.

O.T.: It seemed very important to us that we include the notion of bearing witness in the show. We’ve tried to emphasize this collective situation in which we find ourselves—of bearing witness to various political, environmental, and other catastrophes. The idea of showcasing the act of witnessing suggests a certain rhythm. The pace of observation is slow. That’s something which contradicts how we bear witness in today’s world. But once you leave enough time and space for it, the grief which is already there will suddenly have a place in which to exist.

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Interview with Charlie Khalil Prince and Olivia Tapiero

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