(bright gentle music) (bright gentle music continues) (bright gentle music continues) (bright gentle music fades) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is brought to you by Sharon E. Glasrud, Lydia A. Harrison.

- Hello, and welcome everyone.

Thank you all so much for joining us.

My name is Jacomo Bairos.

- And I'm Sam Hyken.

- And we are the Co-Founders and Artistic Directors for Nu Deco Ensemble, America's 21st Century Chamber Orchestra.

Now, Sam and I and all of us here at Nu Deco are so thrilled to present "Four Seasons for the Five Senses," our re-imagining of the masterpiece from Italian composer and the godfather of baroque music, Antonio Vivaldi.

- The solo violin part is performed by an astonishing artist, two time Grammy Award nominee and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, our dear friend, Jennifer Frautschi.

- Now, Vivaldi was an innovator, a maverick, the musical instigator of his time.

The techniques he used, such as extreme tempos, incredibly challenging octave leaping for all strings, virtuosic running lines that put everyone through their paces, are said to have forever changed and pushed the orchestra into the future.

- We're thrilled to reimagine this timeless masterpiece through the lens of Nu Deco's genre-defying sound.

And now, Nu Deco's "Four Seasons for the Five Senses."

We hope you enjoy it.

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And also bringing like the high level of technical classical artistry to everything she does.

- I think what strikes me about her performance of this work the most is how easy she makes it sound.

- Yeah.

- We've heard this played quite a bit, and she really just tosses it off and almost makes it sound too easy in a sense.

It's really quite impressive, you know, she's a phenomenal musician, and really excited to have the opportunity to work with her.

(pleasant violin music) Originally this work was commissioned by the Adrienne Arsht Center to go alongside a hip hop dance production, choreographed by the incredibly talented, Tony Award-winning, Jennifer Weber.

One of her passions was taking classical music and putting it to hip hop dance.

And so, she had taken several of the movements of Vivaldi and with the original score created hip hop dance to that.

The idea of this commission was we're gonna flesh out the entirety of the four seasons.

With the movements that she hadn't already choreographed, there was an interest of, could we reimagine?

The works that are more true to the classical score are re-orchestrated with brand new instruments, whether it be synthesizer, even woodwinds and brass and percussion, which aren't in the original score.

The other movements, all bets are off.

You know, we changed the harmony, we changed the meter.

It's reimagined in about as many ways possible.

There's elements of hip hop, dance music, rock and roll, kind of a little bit of everything, jazz, within the context of this just incredible, iconic score.

- There is something about baroque music, the time period of baroque music and early classic music, Vivaldi, Bach.

It's kind of very much on a grid in some ways, it's almost mathematical in a lot of ways, especially Bach.

There is this like connection to some of the more rhythmic stuff we've done now and some of the traditional baroque classical composers.

And Vivaldi is like the perfect one.

I mean, it's like, it is as on the grid as it can be.

I mean, it has nuance, it has shape, it has all the classical music idioms that are important that make it special.

But you add a beat to it or you do some stuff, it doesn't feel like it's this way off thing because they were on a grid too.

That's what makes music so beautiful, it's a universal language.

And I think that language translates generations and time periods and styles.

And, you know, we just wanna be that vehicle that can express it all.

- I think that there's also just like inherent groove in Vivaldi.

"Summer 3" comes on and everyone's bopping their head to it.

And so, I think it really lends itself to reimagination.

I think, you know, in ours, we probably tend to be a bit more hip hop.

And then the hip hop variations, like "Spring 1" and "Fall 1," they kind of come from the approach of like, how would a hip hop DJ remix this?

You know, there's kind of like cutting kind of sounds in it.

It's like the bars are repeated, kind of as if a DJ would be scratching it in a sense.

So it feels really natural just because of all the palettes and just the idea of the four seasons, that you would have multiple genres and multiple kinds of energy within the work.

(waves crashing) (waves crashing) (seagulls sqwuaking) (pleasant orchestra music) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (cheerful orchestra music) (cheerful orchestra music continues) (cheerful orchestra music continues) (cheerful orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (cheerful orchestra music) (cheerful orchestra music continues) (cheerful orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (cheerful orchestra music) (cheerful orchestra music continues) (cheerful orchestra music fades) (congregants applauding and cheering) (no audio) (no audio) (gentle orchestra music) (gentle orchestra music continues) (stirring orchestra music) (gentle orchestra music) (gentle orchestra music continues) (gentle orchestra music continues) (stirring orchestra music) (gentle orchestra music) (gentle orchestra music continues) (gentle orchestra music continues) (gentle orchestra music continues) (stirring orchestra music) (gentle orchestra music) (gentle orchestra music continues) (stirring orchestra music) (gentle orchestra music) (stirring orchestra music) (stirring orchestra music continues) (stirring orchestra music continues) (stirring orchestra music continues) (stirring orchestra music continues) (stirring orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (pleasant orchestra music continues) (congregants applauding and cheering) (waves crashing) (wind howling) (waves crashing) (wind howling) (birds chirping) - Jacomo and I were both Julliard-trained brass players.

And we met both auditioning for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

So we were both classical brass players before our career turns.

- We were both very young, early 20s.

We both had a penchant for living abroad and being abroad.

He had just come from London and I had already lived in Spain a few years, playing in orchestras.

And we just kind of met in Singapore joining this international orchestra, and just really had the time of our lives both musically and professionally, but also just personally.

We lived together, we were two Americans living abroad in this Asian country.

We were touring the world with the orchestra, going on, you know, big journeys through Europe and America.

One of the things we always would talk about is, what is the future of classical music gonna look like?

And so, some of the seeds of what became Nu Deco really started there with our experimentations in different things.

- The group looked very different at the beginning than it does now.

It started as a group of really classical musicians, who happened to also play other styles to bring in younger audiences.

And as the group developed, as we started realizing that playing Daft Punk wasn't just for younger audiences, but also it was using the orchestras as a gateway to older audiences.

And then at the same time, the group evolving into a hybrid orchestra that could still stay true to classical roots, but could turn on a dime stylistically.

It brought together players of all different backgrounds.

It started something very different than it's really evolved to be.

(cheerful orchestra music) -(Vocalist) I see you looking from a mile away ♪ ♪ You like my body ♪ ♪ Don't see my face ♪ ♪ Hang with them girls, I gotta pay to play ♪ -(Jacomo) The orchestra model that people associate with is this European art tradition that was very specific.

Now, what people sometimes forget or don't know is that the orchestra was always an evolution.

Every century had new instruments coming in, orchestra's getting bigger, styles changing, new composers, new ideas.

And then you get to the 20th century, new composers were coming up, new styles were still being created.

But the evolution of the orchestra itself and that model of what it was kind of hit a wall and kind of stopped, and now it's kind of is what it is.

If Mozart was alive today, I think he would be Jacob Collier.

You know, he would take all these things and tools at his disposal, why not throw synthesizers, electric bass, drum set in?

Just do it in a holistic way.

Now we can take all music of all styles and elevate it as high as an orchestra would a Beethoven, a Mozart, or Brahms, a Shostakovich.

We can now elevate Qi Shibashi, Robert Glasper, new composers, the music of Outkast in that same light.

And I think that's been one of the most exciting things, is not only is it the evolution of the experience that people get with the actual orchestra on stage.

We're presenting a vision of what we believe it can be, doesn't have to be your thing.

Not every orchestra needs to be that way, but we can still do the classics.

We just did "West Side Story."

We've done Ravel and Copland, and so many incredible composers.

And our audiences love that, they love seeing us do that.

- It's really the idea of what an orchestra can be on so many different levels, and it really has an effect on people.

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Whether it's experiential or whether it's through immersive video, immersive audio on our headphones, which we've been doing for a few years here at the bandshell.

This was an opportunity to really put it all together and add even more.

We decided that we were going to make it the "Four Seasons for the Five Senses," and really try to have every sense heightened during this experience.

- When you smell something, it takes you back to a certain memory.

When I smell cut grass, I go right back to North Carolina when I was a kid, you know?

Everyone's got their own memories stored, and it takes you out of this view and it opens up your senses.

- [Sam] We brought in a perfumist for smells for each of the seasons, which we spent time doing sample testing throughout the whole year.

Our amazing VP of production brought in elements to make it snow here in Miami.

And, of course, the team here at the Bandshell created just spectacular immersive video content.

- I do wanna give a big shout out to our VP of production and programming, Kristina Villaverde, for just kind of seeing the vision from the beginning and understanding the pieces that needed to come in place.

(pleasant orchestra music) - [Sam] Seasons themselves are so visceral in our mind.

And so, you're creating images and smells, and it has such a strong connotation.

So it just felt like the perfect piece to explore all of this with.

- This felt homegrown, it felt very particular to us and the community that we've built and the people supporting.

And I think that's what made a little extra special for our audiences as well.

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