On the Verge with Valentín Garvie comes to Savannah to challenge your perception

“I see myself as a musician all around — as a player, composer, arranger and coordinator — I see many ways of dealing with the activity of making music and it’s all parts of the same thing for me,” said Valentín Garvie, former member of Ensemble Modern.

Garvie’s multidimensional approach to music is perfectly suited for Friday’s On the Verge concert from Georgia Southern University. The program, which is run by Martín Gendelman, specializes in expanding the perception of what the audience defines as classical music.

“I try to open up new fields…to show different kinds of repertories. I want to transmit some easiness in the playing and things that are coming also from listening and playing contemporary music come into my conventional playing as well. It sort of drifts into your normal playing, all these standard techniques.”

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Expanding perception is the overall goal of the On the Verge series. For Gendelson, the series’ goal is to broaden the repertoire for his students while introducing the Savannah community to contemporary music and musicians such as Garvie. To do that, Garvie will participate in a concert with Georgia Southern’s trumpet ensemble on Wednesday at District Live and then follow it up with a performance with the school’s contemporary ensemble at the Savannah Cultural Arts Center on Friday.

“There’s really cool music out there, but generally, it requires a certain level of performance difficulty,” he said. “I created (On the Verge) to show the students the best contemporary music that we can bring, and at the same time, there is really no contemporary music in the area.”

Part of this includes playing with the audience’s sense of space. Traditionally, the audience sits in front of an orchestra and they perform a variety of pieces but with On the Verge, the series aims to make that only one mode of listening.

In last year’s concert, soloist Adrianne Munden-Dixon performed a series of violin pieces but didn’t stick to one space. Firstly, the seating of SCAC’s Ben Tucker Theater was shifted to allow more room for the musician to move in the space, including in front of, to the side and behind the audience while she played.

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Gendelson said that the audience on Friday shouldn’t expect that similar experience (as they aim for a singular effect for those who attend) but knows Garvie plans to also challenge how we expect shows of this type to unfold.

“It makes it unique. That’s what I appreciate most about the arts when they’re really done without any marketing in mind, or it’s just for the purpose of that experience,” he said.

“It’s opening the whole space,” Garvie added. “Basically, the sound is surrounding the audience, it’s coming from all over, from behind. It’s a different kind of aural and theatrical experience because there’s a visual aspect to the whole thing.”

Garvie said playing with the concept of performance that we’re used to creates room for different experiences for pieces we’re familiar with, but especially those we have no concept of. “It’s interesting to open up new senses, new possibilities, especially with acoustic instruments. We are used to having this kind of thing in electrical music, but with acoustic instruments, we’re not so used to it,” he said.

“It’s always a very conventional one, (in terms of the stage and audience).”

Garvie said this performance aspect also can be an aide in allowing people to be more open to what contemporary music is doing. He said that a lot of people struggle with contemporary music because they feel a need to understand it when sometimes the point of the piece is just “trying to explain that it’s not about understanding, it’s just going through the experience of it.”

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“It’s not just about being beautiful all the time. Of course, we’re looking for beauty somehow but it’s not about being pretty all the time,” he added. “This music is really looking for mixtures of different emotions – it’s a different experience. It is also a platform for showing how society can work with different rules, different norms and getting out of the usual set of things.”

Gendelson agrees and hopes between the two shows, not only the students but also the community come to accept or at least accept the challenge of what’s happening on the stage before them. To him, Savannah has so much room for challenging the normal rules of music and he hopes this series can start that conversation.

“The crazy thing is that I’m not talking about the most ridiculous new thing, but just music from the last 30, 40 years,” he said. “I understand their fears, but I don’t entirely buy that (this type of music can’t play here). I think the job is to educate the audience.”

Tickets can be found here. They're free, but an RSVP is required for both shows.

IF YOU GO

What: On the Verge with Valentín Garvie

When: Wednesday at 6 p.m.; Friday at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Wed.: District Live at Plant Riverside District; Fri: Savannah Cultural Arts Center, 201 Montgomery St.

Cost: Free (but RSVP required)

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah GA concerts: On the Verge with Valentín Garvie