Pecha Kucha
| August 26, 2012 | Posted by admin under Blog |
Last night I had a performance, not a piano performance, but a Pecha Kucha presentation. A Peca Kucha presentation is one where 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each (six minutes and 40 seconds in total). This format keeps presentations concise and fast-paced. The first PechaKucha Night was held in February 2003 by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Tokyo’s Klein-Dytham Architecture and they have since spread to hundreds of cities around the world.
PechaKuchaScranton was organized by Mandy Boyle and held at New Visions Studio & Art Gallery. This fun and informative evening featured a wide variety of speakers including an artist, another artist, a photographer of abandoned places, a postcard collector/librarian, a Belgium “expert“, and more.
I spoke about the state of Classical Music in the 21st century, a topic which turned out to be much too broad for the 6 minute 40 second time limit but I did touch on the major points: graying of the audience, accusations of “elitism”, blurring of genre divisions, alt-classical, smaller venues, etc. Interestingly, presenting in this format had similarities to any piano performance. Preparation was important, but in the end the goal was not to sound too rehearsed, rather to have an improvisatory, off the cuff feeling to your speech. Timing was crucial. With only 20 seconds per slide, it was important to keep the momentum while rounding off each phrase. With a beginning, middle and end, each presentation was like a well polished piece of music, and all ten presentations came together not as a theme and variations, but more like a suite of pieces, each with it’s own mood and style.
