By Boran Zaza, Director of Communications & Development at Orchestras Canada.
From May 13 to 17, 2024, I attended Classical:NEXT in Berlin, Germany. This is part 2 of a series of 3 blog posts titled “What I learned at Classical:NEXT”
You can read part 1 here: Innovative leadership models in Orchestras
Small Changes: Great Impact
I can’t remember who said this, but it left quite an impression on me: “Environmental sustainability is not about 2% of the population changing their lifestyles completely; it’s about 85% of the population making some changes. This is what will have the greater impact.”
During Classical:NEXT (C:N), I had the pleasure of meeting Lea Brückner, a violinist, climate ambassador and Instagram influencer (no, she is not related to the composer, but I will have you know that composer Gabriel Prokofiev, grandson of Sergei Prokofiev, was at C:N!). Lea was one of the presenters at a conference session titled Positive Impact Through Sustainable Concerts, with Beat Fehlmann, Artistic director, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, and Asbjørn Keiding, Director, Danske Ensembler, Orkestre og Operainstitutioner (DEOO). For the sake of transparency, Beat and Asbjørn proactively shared the transportation decision they made to get from their home cities to Berlin to attend C:N, – and that is what inspired me to share mine as well at the end of this blog post.
Green Monday, and Eco-conscious Audiences
For the past year, Lea has been the moderator of panel discussions at “Green Monday,” a successful Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra concert series presented at Tonhalle Düsseldorf. The Orchestra dedicated 12 concerts of their season, 1 per month, to an exploration of sustainability, and invited their audience members to join on the path to a low-emission concert experience. At each concert, one environmental topic was presented through a panel discussion, the idea was tested at that concert, and the audience voted on whether they wanted that initiative to continue or not. Initiatives included: having the audience commute to the concert by bike or public transport and adding bike racks outside the hall, reducing the heat in the concert hall by 1.5 degrees, reducing the lights on stage, serving vegetarian food only at receptions, and more!
To add a musical touch to this, a small musical fragment was performed at the beginning of each concert. Eleven composers from all over the world embarked on the experiment of being inspired by keywords such as “recycling”, “energy efficiency” or “digitalization” and transforming them into music that the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra performed every “Green Monday”. At the end of the season, all eleven micro-works were brought together as one large “Green Piece” with transitions composed by John Psathas under the direction of Axel Kober. #Recycling
“The vast majority of the audiences voted YES to 100% of the proposed initiatives!” Lea proudly told me. From their experience, I learned that including audiences in the decision-making takes them from a passive role into a partner role, where they feel their voice is heard and that it matters, and that their choices can positively affect the future of their orchestra and their planet.
Additional reading: an interview with Michael Becker, artistic director of Düsseldorf’s Tonhalle concert hall, about Green Monday: https://www.visitduesseldorf.de/storys/en/2023/12/12/tonhalle-duesseldorf/
A Nordic Green Orchestra Guide
The most important driver of emissions in the concert business is not the travel of the artists, but of the audience. However, not putting on concerts cannot be the solution!
This quote is from the Positive Impact Through Sustainable Concerts conference session description. In 2022, 36 Nordic orchestras and festivals met in Reykjavík and signed a declaration of intent with the title ‘“A Future with Sustainable Culture’. A year later, and after discussions among 6 working groups, the Nordic Green Orchestra Guide was born.
Asbjørn Keiding, Director of Danske Ensembler, Orkestre og Operainstitutioner, believes that the guide is not just an internal working document, and should also be communicated to the audiences. As Asbjørn stated during his presentation, “Orchestras on their own do not have the worst carbon emissions, [their] power is in influencing the audience members as well, and the musicians. That is how you make a change.”
The guide contains 6 chapters covering the following themes:
- Leadership and management
- Communication and audience engagement
- Audience transportation
- Procurement and acquisition
- Touring and staff travel
- Measurement and evaluation
You can download and read the complete Nordic Green Orchestra Guide here: https://www.koda.dk/media/225742/nordic-green-orchestra-guide.pdf
Note: Orchestras Canada hopes to commission a Canadian edition of the Green Orchestras Guide in 2025, and we have applied for funding to bring it to life. We will share more when we know it!
Personal Choices
I live in Rimouski, a beautiful city in Quebec, Canada, that has no commercial international airport. There were not many planet-friendly ways to travel from Rimouski to Berlin, Germany to attend Classical:NEXT, so here is what I did:
I took the train from Rimouski to Montreal, and I paid the carbon offset fee for my roundtrip flight between Montreal and Berlin (which had a layover in Frankfurt because there was no direct flight to Berlin). When packing for my trip, I made sure to take my trusty reusable water bottle and a reusable plastic food container. The food container came in handy on a few different occasions. I used public transportation exclusively while in Berlin, with the exception of one night when I took a taxi back to my hotel room after a late-night Candlelight Concert that was presented as an off-Classical:NEXT showcase.
Side Story: Candlelight and Earthquakes
The concert featured a piece called The Richter Scale by German composer Boris Bergmann, which was written for a Spirio Steinway Piano (one of those player pianos, which are pianos that can play themselves! Check this video for a demonstration) and a pianist: Ji Liu. This was one of the most mind-blowing musical experiences I’ve ever had: The piece mimicked an earthquake with increasing degrees on the Richter scale. As we approached the end, the piano was playing a crazy difficult passage, and the pianist was almost in a musical duel with it, fighting it. It was a deeply emotional experience because I remembered all my friends and family who were affected by the big earthquake in Syria, Türkiye and Lebanon last year. The concert took place late at night in a church filled with candles, and the mix of that atmosphere and the innovative musical work was very appealing and fresh.
Stay tuned for the third and last blog post in this series, which will focus on new audiences and how to retain them (big cliffhanger!). In the meantime, to get a taste of the C:N experience in video format, check out the Instagram stories I posted while in Berlin! I am deeply grateful for the generous funding from the Canada Council for the Arts through the Supporting Artistic Practice: Professional Development for Arts Professionals program that made my trip to Germany to attend Classical:NEXT possible.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
