Welcome to Inside Astral, a new podcast mini-series here on WRTI.org. Astral is a Philly-based musician mentoring program that seeks out artists with a vision for the future of classical music, which they work towards both on and offstage. But what does that future look like? How does classical music translate to new listeners? How does it relate to the music they know, and are these stylistic divisions even necessary? And how do we make people feel welcome to an art form that has long felt exclusive, a province of high culture?
I talked with four Astral artists about how they address these questions through music, and their answers are hopeful, interesting, and exciting.
Pianist Christopher Goodpasture, flutist Antonina Styczen, violinist Hannah Tarley and horn player Eric Huckins all had some unique and some shared approaches to how we bring classical music to new audiences.
My first conversation was with Goodpasture, who performs both solo and as part of the piano and percussion quartet Icarus. His specialty is in miniatures — pieces of roughly the same length as your average pop song. In part it’s his answer to a stubborn issue, as far as classical music and the general public: attention span. Performing short works, says Goodpasture, not only solves that problem, but also creates new expressive and programmatic possibilities.
Be sure to check back every Tuesday this month for a new episode of Inside Astral.
