“A string octet is playing classical music inside the South Bend Museum of Art writes Jack Walton in Sunday’s (11/1) South Bend Tribune (IN). “Set up in a circle, the sounds of the instruments are perfectly balanced as they perform works composed by Henry Purcell, Jean Sibelius and Gustav Holst. Musicians from the South Bend Symphony Orchestra … pre-recorded their parts, and engineers Matt Teters and Eric Friedlander have fed the signals through hi-fi stereo speakers that play the recorded renditions of the music in the gallery. The cyber ‘Octet’ makes its official debut Friday at the museum [and will] be on display through the end of 2020…. Halle McGuire, the SBSO’s Director of Development Programs, says that the current exhibit allows audience members to get a better, more immersive experience than they would even in a normal chamber concert setting…. ‘The potential is huge,’ Music Director Alastair Willis says. ‘Eventually, we can involve winds and brass again. We can find entirely different kinds of music…. Maybe we can play on spatial possibilities of a call-and-response from across the room, giving that ping-pong effect to our ears. We’re already thinking of what’s next.’ ”
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