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Recently, I caught up with Greg Jukes, the co-founder of the Somerville-based musical performance group, The Fourth Wall, that explores a new hybrid of the performing arts in which musicians are also dancers and actors. According to Jukes, his group “stretches the boundaries of instrumental performance. The Fourth Wall commissions new interdisciplinary works and reimagines established repertoire to make music that leaps off the stage!”

Doug Holder: How has it been for you as a performing artist to live and work in Somerville?

Greg Jukes: Living in Somerville is fun. It’s a vibrant community with interesting things to do and easy access to the Greater Boston area. That said, it’s an expensive city and as a performer, I barely do any local shows. Thanks to grants from the Somerville Arts Council and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, my main trio, The Fourth Wall was able to self-produce a few shows at the Crystal Ballroom and the Center for Arts at the Armory in the past year.

We mostly perform away from home, having found a lot of success on the Fringe festival circuit around the US and Canada along with teaching/performance residencies at colleges and universities, shows on classical music concert series, and in-school performances in other parts of the state through Young Audiences of Massachusetts. Before the pandemic, we organized a series called The Fourth Wall Presents, where we brought in other artists we loved from the Fringe circuit to share a couple evenings of shows at The Lilypad in Inman and the Cambridge YMCA (RIP to their big, old theater as a local, affordable venue).

Sharing great performances with our community was wonderful and we had fabulous audience energy, but it always felt like an uphill battle trying to get the word out about the shows. Even at our best-selling events, we only ever barely covered venue rental fees plus expenses and an honorarium for our guest artists without paying ourselves. We became a nonprofit in 2020 which opened up new funding opportunities for us with local and state arts councils, without which we couldn’t have put on the local shows we did this past year.

Grant support is huge, but money doesn’t inherently solve our challenges in marketing our work and trying to build a local audience. Maybe we’ll keep trying to establish a following for shows in Somerville, but as more national and international bookings come in for The Fourth Wall and other projects I’m involved with, my identity is probably going to remain as a performing artist who lives here and works elsewhere.

DH: You are a co-founder of the Fourth Wall. On your website the you say the mission statement of your group is to “break down the barriers between serious art and serious fun.” How do you do that?

GJ: We play classical music, but we do it while riding hoverboards, dancing, or hanging upside down! Rather than doing those things for the spectacle and novelty impact of ridiculous juxtapositions of “high art” and silly tricks, we build our shows and repertoire around a desire to give audiences a unique experience where everyone will have their own favorite moments and things that resonate with them.

For some, it might be the playfulness of hearing a Chopin waltz while watching the performers zoom around on hoverboards, other might appreciate the serenity of Florence Price’s piano music performed in darkness with lights inside and on the ends of our instruments that evoke fireflies in the night sky, others still might be excited to get the inside joke that the lift we do while playing Stars and Stripes Forever is called a flag.

DH: Do you think a staid, older classical music aficionado could appreciate your hybrid approach to music?

GJ: I can say with confidence that they do! We’ve got voracious appetites when it comes to classical music and take pride in sharing a diverse spread of pieces in our shows including works by underrepresented composers, living composers, and arrangements that encourage our audiences to rethink what they consider so-called “classical” music.

We also take on iconic works from the classical cannon to offer newer listeners something familiar that they may have heard before. For many aficionados, these pieces have lost their sparkle after being overplayed in the public sphere, but our hybrid arts approach gives them new ways to experience something they’ve maybe written off. Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 has become synonymous with “relaxing classical music” to the point that it feels like an innocuous waiting room track, but it’s really a spectacular piece with an interesting chord progression and a beautiful melody that weaves in and out of dissonance with the accompaniment.

Our interpretation rearranges the music from a piano solo to a flute and vibraphone duet in which Hilary (playing flute) and Neil (not playing bass trombone) dance a counterbalancing pas de deux that has Hilary hanging upside down on Neil’s back for the whole second half of the piece. The visual interest and acrobatic spectacle give folks who are over-acquainted with the music a new way to connect to a splendid piece that they might have abandoned after hearing it 10 too many times.

DH: You and your band of performers seem to be dance partners with your instruments. It is hard enough to play an instrument; how do you manage it when you are full flight?

GJ: Well, we start off by doing it very poorly! Some of our best pieces have been developed following the words “you know what’s a dumb idea?” One of my favorite things about our creative process in The Fourth Wall is that we give ourselves permission to explore the “dumb ideas,” knowing that behind something silly, we often find something striking. It takes a lot of practice and patience to make sure a piece sounds great even when we’re doing a lift, upside down, or riding hoverboards, but that’s all part of our process and one of the greatest ways we connect with our audiences. Choreography often aids musical memory: by embodying the music, we give ourselves another way to connect to what we’re playing and give context to what happens when.

DH: I noticed a video where your ensemble performs in the middle of a highway. Can you tell us a bit about that?

GJ: Ha! That’s an oldie! As a gigging percussionist, I’ve spent many hours on the highways of America in my minivan. Sometimes I’d be the only car on the road late at night after a show and for years I thought it would be cool to do a photoshoot or short video in the middle of the road, but it never seemed practical or safe.

The perfect opportunity presented itself on I-80 in northern Indiana when traffic came to a full stop and was backed up for miles with no off ramp. We had just passed the turnoff for a rest area when everything came to a full stop. The car in front of us pulled across the grass median to use the facilities which left a perfect, protected stage space for our antics. It was pretty fun to fulfill that little fantasy. My phone ran out of space/battery during that tango, but we played a few more pieces after that since we were getting some supportive honks and cheers from neighboring cars and folks in the rest area.

DH: You offer classes and workshops. How can Somerville folks access this?

GJ: The Fourth Wall’s classes and workshops primarily happen at schools, but what we teach about creativity, communication, leader/followership, and exploration can be great for anyone! College and university performing arts departments are our biggest market followed by grade schools, though these programs usually aren’t open to the public. Sorry to say that we don’t have any public programs near Somerville on the calendar as of now.

On a personal level, I teach private drum lessons online and out of my apartment near Davis. I also co-created an electronic bucket drumming workshop program called the Beat Bus that occasionally does public events at festivals and educational events at schools, summer camps, and field days. Folks can certainly reach out to me for bookings and lesson inquiries!

DH: What will people come away with after witnessing one of your performances?

GJ: Refreshed feelings of wonder and joy! That’s the goal, at least. We want our audiences to share a delightful experience with a community of others and leave with fun memories of pieces that made them say “How do they do that!” made them laugh, and touched their hearts.