Regardless of genre, we are so fortunate to enjoy our favorite music today everywhere we go thanks to technology. We find ourselves devotional to their inspiration and practice. In effect we worship music because we believe it informs and even saves us. But consider the cultural norms that exist around the music we love. For a rock and pop, we have drinks, friends to share with, huge volume, people dancing and singing along, maybe some wild behavior, characters onstage, attempts at humor and social truths, etc.. This qualifies as worship: it tells us everything is alright. Often enough we feel some genuine inspiration, if not drunken epiphany.
As classical musicians, just playing well may be fine for traditional audiences— but newbies expect us to connect in similar, immediately compelling, entertaining ways as the clubs scene. Precision is not as necessary for them. Our job here is showing the masses how to experience the same internal adventures and epiphany we do. They need to listen actively for a time; yet won’t without compelling reasons, such as a glimpse of the potential waiting for them. Realize then that we are not so much in the music business as in the inspiration business through music, and that absolutely everyone deserves this. Public domain means that where the copyrights have expired, this music belongs to all of humanity. Thus we can treat and adapt this music as we see fit to share our license for more owners to benefit.
A Chinese proverb says, Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will understand. So CutTime is going to show and involve the audience we want to come to our traditional concerts smack in the middle of our introductory ones. Because when we bring one audience member onstage for participation, the rest come onstage through them. If we can have them play toy percussion from their seats, they will listen better to fit in. Rather than art-centric, we can design audience-centric experiences that share our perspective within the music. This is fine arts taken as a means rather than as an end in itself.