“Standing room only on Monday nights is par for the course at [Revolution Café] in San Francisco’s Mission district, because on Mondays, the café hosts live chamber music,” writes Julia Lurie in Monday’s (11/3) Mother Jones. “The musicians, a mix of freelancers, conservatory students, and techies who play on the side, are volunteers with Classical Revolution, a program that brings high-level classical music into intimate public spaces. A violinist announces that they’re getting started with the Mendelssohn octet.… From outside the wall-length window, you can hear a motorcycle whizzing by. But when the musicians start to play, the crowd is enraptured.… The easy exposure to classical music, up close and casual, is exactly what Classical Revolution is shooting for, says Charith Premawardhana, the group’s 36-year-old founder, a violist himself. The reason that more young people aren’t interested in classical isn’t the music, he explains, but the setting: tickets are expensive, and you have to dress up and be quiet for hours.… His goal for Classical Revolution is simple: ‘It’s high art, but it’s not high brow.’ … Classical Revolution has volunteer musicians playing regularly or semi-regularly in 30 cities across the world.”
Posted November 5, 2014
