The Nomadic Keyboard

The Nomadic Keyboard will travel around Governors Island, where those people are roaming. No need to travel, dress up, or to sit down. Just be there when we pass by! You are encouraged to join in, either at the keyboard, with your voice, or with your instrument.

July 20, 2024

2:45pm – 4:00pm

Harvestworks Art and Technology Program

Nolan Park, Building 10a
Governor’s Island, NYC

We get stuck in our cubicles! Concert performers are confined to practice studios and concert halls, performing in cloistered spaces. They want out! Audiences feel the barriers: long travel, high prices, dress code, quiet restraint, elite cognoscenti. They want in!

The Nomadic Keyboard will travel around Governors Island, where those people are roaming.

No need to travel, dress up, or to sit down. Just be there when we pass by!

You are encouraged to join in, either at the keyboard, with your voice, or with your instrument.

The Nomadic Keyboard has its origins with the great pianist Sviatoslav Richter. In addition to playing the big concert halls of the world, he used to travel the Russian countryside in a truck with a grand piano, bringing the classical music tradition to local townspeople. Nomadic Keyboard is a modern spin on that! Traveling less distance (and with a user-friendly setup, no grand piano movers here), we nonetheless break down the concert hall barrier by walking outside, in a peoples’ park, and even encouraging the “audience” to join in.

…the experience unfolds fractally: the closer one gets to an intriguing detail, the more one recognizes the supporting patterns that gave it context in the first place.
Anthony Tommasini, New York Times
This was classical music played like the best rock’n’roll. It was passionate, earnest, loud and more complex than the gatekeepers of high culture would like to think. Brava.
Ben Sisario, New York Press
Supové received the John Cage Award from ASCAP for “the artistry and passion with which she performs, commissions, records, and champions the music of our time.
ASCAP

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