Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Whitnah, Luke Wachter, and David Farrell.
Hi Sarah, Luke and David, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
The group was started 17 years ago by Lamont School of Music graduate students with the desire to play their own compositions and new music by Colorado composers. Since then, The Playground Ensemble has become the Rocky Mountain Region’s premier new music group. The group is made up of professional musicians, composers, educators and fans dedicated to presenting chamber music as a living art form. Sarah participates in the ensemble as a violinist/composer, David acts as a composer and the board vice president, and Luke is the group’s Education Programming Chair.
In addition to concert seasons that feature innovative new works by local and national composers, Playground works to cultivate a thriving local composition community. Our education programs – in schools, libraries, community centers, museums, etc. – are showing young people and adults alike that making original music is vibrant, adventurous, accessible and relevant. We inspire our audiences to not only listen but to create!
Collaboration is at the heart of the Playground’s artistic vision. We work with teachers, composers, touring improvisers, dancers, poets, spoken word artists, visual artists, and multi-media artists, finding inspiration across disciplines and exploring new, hybrid artistic forms.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
– As a group with members trained in the classical chamber music tradition, we come from world with narrow definitions of what music is “meaningful” and who is allowed to make it. The challenge of breaking down these barriers is important to us and inherent in our mission.
– When collaborating with interdisciplinary artists, it requires finding a common language in which to be creative together. Each discipline often has its own language and it requires patience and goodwill to understand each other.
– Coordinating an event for us means finding an interesting and relevant concept for events and concerts, scheduling musicians and rehearsals, seeking funding, arranging venues, finding collaborators, marketing, and doing so with minimal staff and small budgets.
– Arts funding is a constant challenge. But particularly during the pandemic, the arts – despite being a multi-billion dollar industry – were not supported with government relief money the same way other industries were. This was a particular challenge for many members of our group who support themselves primarily as performing artists.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
In response to the new civil rights movements in 2020, the Playground reexamined how we make art and interact with our communities. We made fundamental changes in how we approach our programming, including reinvesting in education and focusing on broader interdisciplinary collaboration, and inclusion of more diverse voices by removing barriers inherent in our processes. Our efforts now focus on normalizing and centering marginalized voices instead of tokenizing, and inviting the artists to speak and represent themselves and their work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.playgroundensemble.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/playgroundensemble/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playgroundensemble
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PlaygroundEnsemble
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/playgroundensemble
Image Credits
Anthony Camera Brian Crawford
