In this talk, international viola player and music educator Graham Oppenheimer looked at how his art of classical chamber music can communicate, educate, challenge, and inspire young people and audiences. Using musical examples, he showed how great composers make their music “sound” like their national identity and find inspiration from their natural world, be it nature, emotional turmoil, or the human-made environment of objects, machines, and cities. Educational initiatives can feed off these elements and be used to create both the artists and audiences of the future. The tools of a musician’s trade are also works of art themselves, being used every day to “sing the world.”
Michael Scott, director of the Future of the Humanities Project, provided opening and closing remarks, and Kathryn Temple, a Future of the Humanities Project senior fellow, moderated a Q&A session following the presentation.
This event was sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project; the Georgetown Humanities Initiative; the Georgetown Master's Program in the Engaged and Public Humanities; Campion Hall, Oxford; and the Las Casas Institute (Blackfriars Hall, Oxford). It is part of the one-year-long series A Bent but Beautiful World: Literature, Art, and the Environment.
