Accessible classics

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This article was published 26/05/2021 (1605 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If any musician was prepared for the pandemic, it was Nahre Sol.

A classical pianist and composer trained at Juilliard School of Music and Toronto’s Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music, Sol has a YouTube channel with nearly half-a-million subscribers.

She explains classical music to younger generations, analyzing it from a pop perspective, and does the reverse with pop, deconstructing modern sounds and rebuilding them through classical techniques in upbeat, informative vlogs. In one of her most popular videos, she plays Happy Birthday in the styles of classical composers like Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninoff; the Liszt goes on.

“I think being a millennial, it just came naturally to me,” she says of the digital medium.

During the pandemic, every arts organization has been forced to take their show online. Sol, on the other hand, is a seasoned veteran, making her shows and videos recorded at her apartment accessible, honest, and unpretentious: a perfect mixture for the COVID era of live performance.

“I do absolutely believe the ideal way to experience classical music is in person, with a combination of hearing the acoustics live and the space itself,” Sol says. “That being said, when you transfer that to video, you’re able to provide layers of context, insight and additional narratives.” A video performance can do things a live performance can’t, or more often, won’t do.

That’s what appealed to the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra about Sol, who just released her debut album this year, and will be performing in a livestream at 7 p.m., Thursday night for the local music institution.

“She’s developed ways to present content without relying on a traditional audience,” says Conrad Sweatman, the orchestra’s marketing and communications director. “It’s hard to deny half a million subscriptions.”

When Sol started her YouTube channel, it was to peel back the curtain and show friends and colleagues what she was working on, which was increasingly becoming her own compositions; she was documenting her process for herself, and thought others might be interested too.

Never did she expect it would grow to this level, but it makes sense why: on camera, she’s charming and humble, which helps make her videos the opposite of hoity-toity, despite her incredible skill.

During the pandemic, that’s been a mixture — casual, yet reminiscent of a night at the theatre — arts organizations have tried to strike. That’s led to a reassessment of successful YouTube performers and performances, who some purists might’ve viewed disparagingly, says Sweatman. Now, it’s clear those artists know something eminently valuable: how to connect with an audience at home.

For Sol, that’s meant “performing in” New York, North Carolina, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Boston and more, all without leaving her apartment.

Her show Thursday night will feature four original pieces, three of which will be performed on a “prepared” piano, with Sol wedging bits of material between the strings to alter the instrument’s sounds, a method pioneered by John Cage.

“I found that cutting up a silicon baking mat and wedging it between the strings produced a sound I wanted,” says Sol, who also uses two screws placed carefully on the strings to create a percussive sound.

Sol was supposed to perform live in Winnipeg this year, and looks forward to visiting eventually. For now, she says she hopes music fans can continue to embrace the unique elements of video performances until live performances can start again.

Tickets for Sol’s concert are available for $20 at themco.ca. Ticket buyers can share access to the show with up to five households, and the performance can be viewed for two weeks. Sol’s is the third concert of the MCO’s Spring and Summer Festival, with four more to come.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca