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Sunday, September 23, 2007
Fringe Atlanta’s Most Excellent Debut
CONCERT REVIEW
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Viva la revolucion! Fringe Atlanta, the latest fine-arts group based in the affluent northern suburbs, made a stunning debut Saturday night. Despite the modest ambition suggested by the name, they positioned themselves near the center of the city’s classical music scene. They set a new standard, and I won’t be surprised to see the group, and the concept, take off.
Question is, in artistry and funding, can they sustain it?
Fringe’s aim is to present tried-and-true classical music in what might be called MTV-generation attitudes to entertainment. Advised to “Feel free to get your groove on,” the audience of about 200 people attempted this feat while listening to music by Zoltan Kodaly and Franz Schubert. The results were successful beyond all expectation.
The evening moved from buffet to main course. In the church lobby hung paintings and sketches by local artist Lori-Gene, mostly wispy, hallucinogenic images of classical musicians in motion. Mellow ambient-electronica was spun by Jennifer Mitchell, a local deejay with a serious club following. Beer and wine, served on the patio and consumed inside, helped loosen the knots that some people associate with an evening of chamber music.
Then the lights dimmed and, on a big screen over the altar, we watched a half-hour distillation of Chen Kaige’s 2002 film “Together,” charming and glib, where virtuoso violin playing is as competitive and ruthless as high school football. It got our adrenaline pumped.
Next came short video interviews, done like an info-mercial, with stylized lighting effects, on-screen graphics and conversational chatter (these little films were uncredited in the program notes). Here the performers made the case for themselves and the music.
Co-founder Fia Durrett is a 28-year-old freelance violinist who plays in the Atlanta Opera orchestra and elsewhere, like most of the others. She emphasized her pop-culture bona fides: at home, she doesn’t listen to classical music but prefers rock bands like U2 and Coldplay.
It was a savvy bit of publicity aimed at the captive audience. In this energized atmosphere Durrett and cellist Roy Harran took the stage for Kodaly’s Duo for Violin and Cello, a 1914 work of folkish Hungarian instincts and world-weariness, where an ancient culture felt itself on the precipice of extinction. (Interesting choice, given Fringe’s doctrine that classical music needs to be “rescued.”) Their playing was wonderfully alive and polished, at once detailed and with a wide-angle, cinematic sweep.
Another info-mercial introduced Schubert’s time-suspending Quintet in C, from 1828. In the lucidity of their conception, their spirituality and hunger to communicate, these five musicians — violinists Michael Heald and Durrett, violist Joli Wu and cellists Charae Krueger and Harran — put many of the moonlighting Atlanta Symphony Orchestra chamber ensembles to shame.
Yet for all the novelty of the approach, there’s nothing particularly edgy, radical or modernistic about Fringe. They aim to please with traditional artistic values. Their creative synthesis involves combining what’s normal inside a concert hall (performances of the old classics) with what’s normal in the rest of society (the TV-driven media culture). In this world, a pretty face and appealing persona is as important in selling the product as musical chops, and that’s bound to have rippling ramifications, for better and worse.
For now, though, on a relatively generous $30,000 budget, Fringe has its priorities in the right place and more concerts in preparation. Its next mixed-media event is scheduled for December 1.
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