Violinist Annegret Klaua (left) and vocalist Nora Maynard (right), both Somerville residents, will be lending their talents to the Concert for One project taking place in Boston and Cambridge in September.

By Jim Clark

Celebrity Series of Boston is producing 5,000 mini-concerts September 20–29 for its Concert for One project, which brings free, one-on-one performances by solo musicians for single listeners in Boston and Cambridge. Two artists from Somerville are among the 60+ musicians participating from around the region.

Classical violinist Annegret Klaua originally hails from Hannover, Germany, but has been living in Somerville since 2003. She has been playing recently in Boston with a number of different orchestras, but she also participates in a lot of chamber music and solo recitals.

Currently, she plays regularly with a chamber orchestra that performs in Faneuil Hall with the Bach, Beethoven and Brahms Society. She also plays with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, as well as Odyssey Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic.

Modified storage containers will serve as performance spaces for the one minute one-on-one concerts.

Klaua is enthusiastically looking forward to participating the Concert for One project. “The Celebrity Series took it on for this year. It’s kind of their most ambitious free public music programming event in this season.”

“People can go listen to music for one minute,” Klaua explains. “It’s these small container spaces that they put together and one musician will be inside, with nothing amplified, all acoustic music. And there’s a selection of different instruments or vocalists, it’s not just classical music.”

“People will walk in and not know who will be there as a performer or which instrument they will hear, and that’s one single performer in the space with one audience member for one minute. We just encourage them to listen, for us to hopefully connect emotionally and just exchange the flow of music. Really one-on-one,” says Klaua.

Vocalist Nora Maynard will be sharing operatic vocals as well as some of her own contemporary songwriting pieces at the event. She is a transplant to Somerville from Rockford, IL, by way of St. Louis, MO, and has lived here for about ten years.

Maynard recently participated in the Choralies choral festival in France with the Voices 21C choir. She has her own songwriting project, Surefire Cure, and she will be presenting many of her songs at the concert. She also has an album coming up for release in October.

Maynard operates WholeTone Music Academy, a collective of teachers who are blending mind-body modalities with music education. The collective believes that there are some holistic wellness benefits, both psychologically and physically, in doing music lessons. “Especially when people are putting Alexander Technique, or yoga or meditation, or other wellness modalities,” Maynard says. The collective’s studio is located at 312 Highland Ave. in Somerville. Find out more about the collective on their website at wholetoneacademy.com.

As mentioned, Concert for One will pair individual listeners with solo musicians for 60 seconds of focused performance and concentrated listening. The idea is to provide powerful, free music experiences for thousands of visitors, and foster intimate connections between performers and audience members.

Concert for One will be staged in two locations: on the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Chinatown’s Chin Park. and at Harvard University’s Science Center Plaza in Cambridge. The concerts take place inside temporary art installations made from specially outfitted shipping containers that allow participants to minimize distractions and focus on the music. Concert for One is free, open to the public, and will run daily from 12:00 to 6:00 p.m. at both locations.

The project is based on an idea by NEC graduate and violist Rayna Yun Chou, who in 2016 conceived and produced a similar project in her hometown of Taichung City, Taiwan. Chou dreamed up the idea after talking with fellow musicians who felt isolated from the audiences for whom they were playing.  She was also concerned classical music was becoming inaccessible to younger and diverse audiences because so much of it is played in high-priced venues that may feel unwelcoming or unattainable. The Taiwan project proved a smashing success, breaking down barriers and energizing musicians and listeners alike.

“When I thought about how I wanted to overcome the hurdles growing between musicians and audience members,” Chou says, “I decided to test how courageous we could be as musicians, audiences, visitors, friends and strangers.  Could we create a space where players and listeners would spend one minute of time together? What would happen when listeners really listened, and musicians could see the immediate reaction of the people they played for?”

Nearly 60 musicians will participate in 120 hours of performance. The group comprises a mix of professionals, conservatory students and highly-trained non-professionals, all of whom will be paid to perform. All musicians went through a rigorous application procedure that required them to upload videos of themselves playing and submit short essays about why they wanted to participate. A selection committee of music professionals, music educators and arts administrators reviewed nearly 200 applicants.

In addition to the concerts, the installations will incorporate open informational areas that tell the story of the project, offer interactive opportunities with musical instruments, and encourage in-person and online sharing about the concert experiences.

More information about the event can be found at https://www.celebrityseries.org/live-performances/public-performance-projects/concert-for-one-1-musician-1-listener-1-minute-of-music/.

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