TextOnline master class production in Copenhagen: Adam Erik Simonsen with Emmanuel Pahud

Hanging Out with the Pros Offical tour blogs, live streams from concert halls, opera workshops with tweeting youngsters: orchestras and opera companies have developed various internet tools to reach out, share their experiences and have the audience participate in online activities related to classical music. They are not the only ones though. Royal Danish Opera’s clarinettist Adam Erik Simonsen and horn player Sarah Willis of the Berlin Philharmonic are virtuosos on their respective instruments as well as in building net communities. Without any institutional backup, their projects gather world famous professionals, music students and fans for inspiring sessions. Adam Erik Simonsen has had a very short night. Although he took the earliest flight from Copenhagen to Berlin this morning, the lanky clarinettist with the reddish-brown curls radiates enthusiasm and looks more awake than most among the breakfast crowd at Berlin-Mitte’s Café Fleury. He is here for a day of talks with potential teachers for his online master class media library, "Play With a Pro". There, woodwind and brass students can already find an impressive range of world class musicians to learn from: bassoonist Sergio Azzolini, "Flute King" Emmanuel Pahud, oboe players François Leleux and Hansjörg Schellenberger, trumpet player Reinhold Friedrich, Radovan Vlatković for French Horn or Simonsen’s own Julliard School clarinet professor, Charles Neidich. The next step is to convince some high-calibre string professors to teach in front of the camera. Adam recounts how there are always some who need a little extra persuasion to warm to the idea: "Sergio Azzolini, for instance, usually just wants to play the bassoon. He is not at all an internet person and rather difficult to reach." The Danish clarinettist is a tiny bit proud that he was able to add the bassoonist to his list anyway. Good personal relations as well as the technical and aesthetic qualities of "Play With a Pro" won him over. "We trust Adam, he is one of us and has the same appreciation for music", confirms Emmanuel Pahud, who has supported the project from the very beginning. The flautist is always open to "innovations that make life easier". These online master class films, he explains, rank among them: Participants in his real-life master classes are already familiar with the artist’s style of teaching and much quicker to understand what he is getting at. A 14-hour-day of editing videos is just an ordinary workload for Adam Simonsen. Last year, he took a sabbatical from his permanent position at the Royal Danish Opera. Shrugging, Adam points out that "Play With a Pro" will certainly never make him rich. But it makes him happy: "I am in daily contact with people who have devoted their entire energy and passion to mastering something beautiful until they were better at it than anybody else in the world. It’s absolutely fascinating to watch them." Initial inspiration for the project came from his experiences in Brazil. For some years, Simonsen was principal clarinet in the national orchestra in Rio de Janeiro. They regularly toured all over the vast country to play in sport stadiums. When they got off the bus before a concert, there were always crowds of children with instruments: "We played some music with them, checked their instruments, gave them hints what to work on – whatever we could do in the shortness of time." When he went back to Denmark, he did not forget their hunger for learning and produced a children's DVD that teaches how to play the clarinet. On a higher level, "Play With a Pro" works quite similarly: Many music students never have the chance to take part in leading players' master classes in person. Now they can download HD movies of them for relatively little money and even study them offline as long as they want. Future professional musicians, music teachers and ambitious amateurs from over 80 countries and regions (among them Gaza, Iran, India and Hawaii) have become part of the user community so far. Adam Simonsen does not want to reveal which master classes are the most popular or how many downloads they have reached so far. For "the next three to five years", however, he still has "tons of ideas" like adding new instruments, chamber music, more interactive tools and a platform for musicians of all levels. There, everybody can ask for support, upload video questions and receive filmed answers to improve their playing.

Delicate balance between control and spontaneity: Sarah Willis preparing the next episode of the “Hangouts“

Recently, British horn player Sarah Willis has made quite an investment – she has bought a video mixing console. "We are real web entrepreneurs now", she says and laughs. She is spending the morning of a concert-free Saturday in front of the computer screen in her Berlin kitchen. Via Videochat, she and Tim Kelly are planning the next episode of "Sarah’s Horn Hangouts". The Melbourne-based IT expert takes care of the streaming and the technical side of the project. Professional as it seems, their project is not a source of income, but rather a "time-consuming, costly, wonderful hobby", as Sarah puts it. She is currently looking for investors to cover at least part of the costs, but one thing is for sure: nobody who joins the live community to watch, listen and type questions into the chat window while Berlin Phil’s only female horn player interviews legendary colleagues, soprano Anna Prohaska or conductor Daniel Harding will have to pay for the experience. "There is room for all kinds of things on the net and some of them should be for free, including the Horn Hangouts", Sarah Willis assures. Being ten hours ahead of Berlin, Tim Kelly has already spent a whole day streaming a martial arts tournament in Melbourne. "Oh, that was an easy one! People were happy simply because everything went well. Classical musicians, on the other hand, are such perfectionists." The dark-haired Australian sighs in studied desperation. "They are always concerned how they come across", he adds with a grin. Sarah Willis has no reason to worry about that. 1500 participants logged in for the last "Horn Hangouts" before the summer break in 2013. She has developed her personal style of hosting, skilfully juggling interviews and the guests' stories together with comments and questions from the live chat. Sometimes, there are so many that her guests have to get back to their fans after the show. Of course, there are musical interludes as well, from the well-tried duets with colleague Klaus Wallendorf, to spontaneous alphorn and jazz playing with Arkady Schilkopfer. Faults like complete picture loss or Carol Jantsch’s cat strolling across the tuba player's computer keyboard don't make Sarah break into sweat: "Sometimes the chat goes really wild. Musicians who lost contact years ago suddenly meet online. I often think we are one big worldwide horn section today!" It wasn't until giving master classes in Melbourne and London two years ago that the American-born British Hornist discovered her talent for this kind of multi-tasking, handling both the chat community and a real-life audience while teaching on stage. It takes a lot of preparation to maintain the delicate balance between control and spontaneity. The day of a livestream, she’s "no good for anything else", Sarah confesses. The special "Hangouts" feeling of being as close as possible to the action is highly appealing to the community, but the hostess deliberately maintains a certain amount of privacy: There are no plans to stream an episode from her own flat, for example, "even though technically, it wouldn’t be a problem and the audience would probably enjoy it." © Annette Zerpner German version first published in Crescendo March 2014 as „Neue Perspektive“