For Michelle Schumann, Artistic Director of the Austin Chamber Music Center (ACMC), defining the kind of music she presents and performs can get a little complicated from time to time.
“Sometimes I struggle with the term ‘chamber music’ because I feel like it can be an outsider term. Either you know what it is and you get it, or you have no idea what it is and you avoid it,” says Schumann.
For the current ACMC Festival, she’s programmed a wide variety of music and musicians. From celebrated and solidly classical performers like Ida Kavafian and Peter Serkin, the Miró Quartet, and Trio con Brio Copenhagen, to ensembles that defy categorization and genre like the string bands Time for Three, Break of Reality, or Austin’s own indie-orchestra Mother Falcon, Schumann explores and expands traditionally held beliefs about what it is to make music with her programming.
“What I’ve arrived at, she says, “is that chamber music is the original party music. It’s simply a small group of people getting together in what is usually a small space and celebrating and communicating. That’s what I want to bring to the festival.”
She continues, “I think that in the 21st Century, what we’ve realized is that there is no such thing as high and low art. There’s just art.”
Case in point: The opening concert of the festival is not taking place in a traditional concert hall. There will be no Bach, Beethoven, or Brahms on the program. Instead, Austin’s celebrated indie-orchestra Mother Falcon will open with a performance of their signature music at The North Door, a venue that presents everything from jazz and experimental rock, to spoken word and comedy acts.
Founded in 2008 by bandleader and cellist Nick Gregg, Mother Falcon started as a regular jam session after orchestra class at Westlake High School.
Gregg shouted out after orchestra class one day, “Hey! If anyone wants to jam, come meet me in the practice room after school.”
The four people who showed up are the ones that stayed together, evolving in to what it is not a collective of twenty or so musicians playing strings, horns, guitars, and percussion.
But it was thanks to ACMC’s Young Artist Academy and the mentoring they received from Austin music luminaries Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopchinski that they began to develop their unique approach to music making.
Schumann is very proud when she talks about the role of ACMC in their development. She says, “They were able to write their own songs and record a CD. I think it gave them the tools, confidence, and wherewithal to continue to do something like what they do.”
In the years since the ACMC Young Artists program, Mother Falcon has released four full-length albums and have been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post and on NPR’s coveted series of Tiny Desk Concerts. At this point, they’ve also played in nearly every major city in the country. And they’ve done so while keeping the spirit of that initial after-school jam session.
Gregg reminisces on those early days when he was just fifteen years old, “I thought we could emote most effectively through the instruments we were trained on, and it would be cool if we could play our own instruments with inspiration from both the classical and the pop world. It’s all about self-expression.”
To find out more about Mother Falcon's performance this Friday and the rest of the Austin Chamber Music Festival happenings, please check out AustinChamberMusic.org.