SHEFFIELD & NORTH ADAMS — Boston-based concert pianist Miki Sawada has a mission for the month of May: to perform in 13 towns and cities across Massachusetts, for free, in an attempt to inspire human connection across deepening political and socioeconomic divides. Sawada will tour the state with an upright Yamaha piano and a U-Haul van from May 6–30. She is slated to perform in Sheffield, at Dewey Hall, on May 18 at 6:30 p.m.; on May 23 at 1 p.m., she will make her way to North Adams for a concert at TOURISTS. Both performances will take place outdoors and masks are required.
“It’s been very profound,” Sawada told The Edge in a recent phone interview, of her return to performing live after more than a year’s hiatus. “The crowds have been pretty small,” she said of the first pair of venues — downtown New Bedford and downtown Brockton — areas Sawada called “pretty low traffic, kind of desolate areas, especially during COVID.” Rising temperatures coupled with declining restrictions across the Commonwealth have created an interesting intersection, one Sawada calls “such a strange time … very unique, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of history.”
Through her Gather Hear Tour, Sawada aims eventually to perform in all 50 states. The project took shape following the 2016 presidential election, fueled by Sawada’s despair over the reality of American life that was laid bare and a desire to use classical music as a positive force. The project launched a year later, in Alaska and West Virginia, when Sawada performed 25 concerts in cafes, bars, lodges, galleries, schools, and parks. By taking classical music outside of concert halls, moving it into beloved community gathering spaces, and presenting it in a friendly and inclusive manner, Sawada aims to break down the typical barriers of entry to classical music and create occasions for us to feel connected and human.
“I always want my concerts to be accessible to anyone who wants to come,” she explained, citing that as “very much part of the core of the mission,” and why she launched the series in the states she did. “Right off the bat, they are very rural, very red states … in Massachusetts, there is not so much political division, although there is some,” she said.
“It’s very important for me to be playing classical music to a diverse audience [as] so often audiences are very homogenous,” she said. To underscore this goal, she will tour with a program that reflects the past year in pandemic-age America. Florence Price, a Black composer who attended Boston’s New England Conservatory and was the first woman of color to have a piece performed by a major American orchestra, will be represented through her Piano Sonata. Also on the program is Franz Liszt’s Piano Sonata, arguably one of the most virtuosic and dramatic pieces for solo piano. A commission by Boston-based musician Ariel Friedman rounds out the program, with a piece titled “Before I Die,” inspired by artist Candy Chang’s public art project of the same name which places murals in public spaces and invites passers-by to complete the sentence, “Before I die, I want to…” with a piece of chalk.
“This will be a once-in-a-lifetime tour,” Sawada emphasized. “I hope there’s no other time like this where I’m forced to take a 14-month performing hiatus, and for the public to be deprived of the joy of hearing live music together, which can’t be replicated by any technology. We’ve all grappled with the same issues in the last year — of the Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate movements, the presence of death all around us, the war on truth throughout the election process. We’ve all been waiting for the time to gather and start to heal together, and I hope these concerts will be an uplifting experience to do just that.”
The Gather Hear Tour is fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas. In Berkshire County, the project is funded by the Local Cultural Councils of Sheffield and Northern Berkshire, local agencies that are supported by the Mass Cultural Council. The commission of Ariel Friedman’s “Before I Die” is supported by a grant from New Music USA.
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May 14, 2021 at 09:00PM
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Pianist Miki Sawada's Gather Hear Tour inspires human connection through music - theberkshireedge.com
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