Get ready to experience music like never before with Project21st’s four summer concerts that push the boundaries of what music can be
Imagine stepping into a room filled with the sound of blenders and ovens, bakers kneading dough, and flour flying in the air. The aroma of freshly made baguettes and croissants fills the space—only this isn’t a bakery.
Instead it’s a concert called Baker’s Lung, one of four such concerts initiated by Hong Kong composer Charles Kwong and performing arts producer Sharon Chan under #musicismore, a programme that expands the idea of musical performances beyond conventional concerts.
The duo founded Project21st in 2019, an arts platform that researches and commissions experimental musical works such as Baker’s Lung, in which live music blends with the sounds of breadmaking under the guidance of Felix Del Tredici, a Montreal-based bass trombonist who became a baker during the pandemic. The show features professional bakers and brass musicians performing live together, accompanied by videos of breadmaking edited to complement the music.
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The three other concerts in the series are: Baleen, an interactive music theatre production by Zurich-based arts group Kollektiv International Totem, who uses light and sounds to create the illusion of a whale-watching tour; Made in Laterland, a concert featuring installations of damaged musical instruments that are played automatically by a modular synthesiser; and Euphonia, an outdoor performance featuring a 3D-printed organ by Swiss Dutch artist Kaspar König. The four shows will run from May to July this year.
These performances, fun and whacky as they are, boast a crew of professionally trained musicians who are giving them the same kind of treatment as they would with any conventionally classical performance.
Kwong, a classically trained musician who earnt his doctorate in composition from the University of York in 2013, says he hopes to expand people’s understanding of musical performances beyond traditional concerts to include unconventional presentations through these shows. “The earliest concept of music comes from the Greek [word], ‘mousiké’, which means ‘the arts of the muses’,” he says, which wasn’t limited to playing instruments—it also featured elements of theatre, storytelling and more.