February 2, 2006

Murmers in their wings

Edwin Huizinga blogs from his tour with the Oberlin Orchestra in China:
While we play there is a constant hum from the audience that you can hear in the orchestra if there are really quite moments…they are whispering, asking questions to their neighbors, pointing, looking. It is an awesome experience for them. Some of them have never seen an orchestra perform before.

I have a theory about the audience that hums, literally or figuratively. Strangers become an audience when they trust their capacity for wonder. This is hard for people who are overloaded with opportunity. Their wonderment nerves are fried. It's not that they don't want to hum -- they really can't.

The Chinese listeners wonder so well, they have to ask. They nudge, they whisper, they hum themselves into an audience, they hum the musicians into an orchestra.

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