I was
wandering through the streets of Williamsburg in search of entertainment. One
street seemed particularly lively, and upon inquiring what the fuss was about,
I found a large warehouse full of young people listening to music. The garage
door was open but a fence was in place keeping street-people outside. People
crowded, faces pressed against the fence, enamored with what was happening
inside. Naturally, I decided to go in.
Inside this
warehouse, called the "Williamsburg Airspace", a piano and string
quartet were playing Chopin. The performers were young, probably college
students, and were playing on wooden pallets to an audience of a few hundred
other college-aged individuals, many of whom were sprawled out on the floor,
barefoot. It was truly a sight to behold.
The
audience lined rafters along the back of the room and sat in awe listening to the
masterful craftsmanship of the musicians. The pianist played so hard he began
to sweat, and seemed to be twirling out of control emotionally with the music.
The violinists moved with each stroke of their violin and reminded me of
guitarists I have seen at rock concerts, flailing and allowing the music to
visibly flow through them.
The thing
that struck me the most about this airspace and the people inside was the juxtaposition
between the informality of the setting and the complexity of the concerto. It
seemed that these people could be people who worked in coffee shops, they could
be students or artists, but the fact that so many of them were clearly
captivated by classical music and chose to spend their Saturday night in a
warehouse listening to Chopin played by their peers was marvelous.
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