A chamber concert aims to break conventions and forge connections

Boston Globe

2 days ago

'Just like Mozart,' quipped Danielle Buonaiuto, a soprano. 'The ink was still wet.'
The moment, a joyous convergence of friends and colleagues, in a way represented the point of the performance they were preparing to put on. As ChamberQUEER's name might hint, all its organizers are LGBTQ+. So are many of the composers of the music they will perform. Making them visible is part of the point, but 'it doesn't stop there,' said Buonaiuto. It's also about a certain spirit that comes from 'existing outside normative structures.'
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By breaking a few longheld classical performance conventions, the group wants to make concert experiences a little less rigid, a little more oddball – or one might say queer.
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'We take the methodology of making a concert, the how and the where and the what are we going to do when we get there, and mess with it,' Buonaiuto said.
The BaroQUEER program, at Hibernian Hall in Roxbury on Friday and again in New York City next week, will be performed on period instruments, tuned a half step or so lower than standard modern tuning. The program features Corelli, Handel, and Dowland – but also the 20th-century minimalist provocateur Julius Eastman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Caroline Shaw, and the aforementioned Glenn-Copeland; an octogenarian transgender Black man and folk singer-turned-synth pioneer, whose 1986 self-released album 'Keyboard Fantasies' found a new audience of millions over 30 years after its creation.
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'The overarching theme of the program is: what does historically informed mean? Who are these ancestors we're talking about and how do we relate to them?' said cellist Jules Biber.
Biber, who grew up in Brookline and later moed to New York,
once ran
a chamber series in the back room of Branded Saloon, a Prospect Heights bar and restaurant that proudly advertises to 'Queers, Queens, Allies & EVERYone in-betwixt' on its Instagram biography. ChamberQUEER started out much the same way; with 'low stakes, chill vibes,' she said.
Brian Mummert, cofounder of ChamberQUEER, and Reginald Mobley, at left, rehearsing for the BaroQUEER concert on May 30. (Barry Chin/Globe Staff.)
Barry Chin/Globe Staff
That also applies to the concert rehearsal experience, Biber added. Because the group is project-based, artistic direction and decision-making power doesn't just belong to one person. Rehearsals aren't 'us telling you, 'This is what's happening now, and this is what we're doing.''
Tuesday afternoon rehearsal, at Union Combined Parish on Columbus Avenue, began with the whole group doing Pauline Oliveros's 'Tuning Meditation,' a participatory guided improv exercise in group singing and listening that also happens to be the first piece on the concert program. The audience will be encouraged to sing. That sort of participation, Buonaiuto said, is a 'cheerful, insistent welcome;' they want it to 'joyfully remind each other, we are connected.'
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'For H+H folks, this is probably a different process than you're used to,' said Mobley to the circle of 16 musicians, some of whom were new to working with ChamberQUEER.
Earlier at the cafe, Mobley had praised ChamberQUEER's staunch refusal to adhere to the top-down hierarchical model of musical leadership. Since his career went international, he said, he'd noticed Americans in particular 'tend to fall into line, into that very staid structure,' he said. When he's been in a leadership role himself, he's encouraged input from other musicians, and he sometimes finds they just 'sit and wait to be told.'
Mobley feels ChamberQUEER's process might help musicians 'be more open in thinking and making decisions. Being curious and giving yourself permission to just say, 'Hey, what if we tried this?'' He's long wanted to incorporate that approach into his work as a programming consultant for H+H, and when the organization requested a queer-themed program, he saw the chance.
Many of the modern composers on the program were or are openly queer; the Baroque composers are more complicated. Scholars have uncovered various indications that Corelli, Handel and Lully may have had homosexual relationships, but the goal isn't to apply modern terminology to historical concepts of sexuality or identity, Biber said. 'it's not about outing people.'
People tend to 'think of past figures as being two-dimensional, black and white,' like illustrations in an old book, Mobley said. But 'part of being historically informed is understanding history more fully,' Buonaiuto added. 'It's about understanding them as full people who …lived at a time in history.'
'I want us to be able to connect ourselves to that. That's time travel,' Mobley said. 'Handel and Corelli felt pain, felt joy, felt fear. It's emotions that connect us. That's a strong line that connects everyone.'
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BAROQUEER: Historically Informed
Hibernian Hall. May 30. 7:30 p.m.
; www.chamberqueer.org
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at