Ensemble Mélange comes to Beaver Creek to engage audiences, as you select the music

Ensemble Mélange presents a type of choose-your-own adventure, or a musical party game, for audiences. Everyone at the concert receives a program with a number on it. If your number is called through a randomizer app, you select the next piece Ensemble Mélange plays from a menu.

Like a restaurant menu aiming to please a variety of tastes, Ensemble Mélange’s options include pieces from various time periods, such as baroque, classical, romantic and the 1950s to Broadway, Americana and jazz. You can even choose pieces written specifically for the ensemble. But, there are rules to the game: Once an audience member chooses a particular time period piece, that time period is off-limits to others.

“That way, you avoid repeating the same time period,” said clarinetist and Ensemble Mélange co-founder Moran Katz.

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So, decide on your first choice, but make a back-up plan by picking a couple other time period favorites.

“Ensemble Mélange’s repertory is incredibly diverse, and the ‘menu’ of music to choose from has something for everyone,” said Cameron Morgan, the executive director of Vilar Center for the Performing Arts.

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Each evening, the musicians perform at least a dozen pieces, most of which range from 3-6 minutes in length.

Ensemble Mélange began about 10 years ago when Katz, a clarinetist for Carnegie Hall’s Affiliate Ensemble “Decoda” and Trinity Church’s orchestra in residence “NOVUS NY,” and the original pianist who’s no longer with Ensemble Mélange talked about how to best support the future of classical music. He came up with the participatory concept, originally known as “SHUFFLE Concert.”

Now, the sextet of virtuosos continues to inspire the next generation of music lovers. They also have plenty of fun with current enthusiasts.

“From the pre-performance reception to the interactive format of selecting what music you want to hear, the audience will be immersed in this reinvention of the concert experience,” Morgan said.

Katz formed Ensemble Mélange from friends she either met through summer music festivals or top conservatories, like Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory and The Juilliard School.

In addition to Katz, artists include: Stuart Breczinski, a New-York based oboist, improviser composer and educator; Ariadne Greif, a soprano praised for her “luminous, expressive voice” by the New York Times; Sofia Nowik, a concert cellist who performs and teaches in New Jersey and New York City; Mika Sasaki, a piano recitalist, chamber musician and faculty member at Juilliard; and Grace Park, a dynamic violinist and dedicated chamber musician who won first prize in the 2018 Naumberg International Violin Competition.

“No one in the group does either this or that. We all freelance and perform solo. It think it makes it fresh because we all do our thing, and then we get together to do something that is more relaxed and more fun (through Ensemble Mélange),” she said. “There’s a lot of smiling and a lot of jokes. We just have a lot of history, even with every piece that we play or stories from performers and driving from venue to venue. The audience definitely picks up on the friendships on stage.”

They also enjoy being able to look audiences in the eye and interact, as opposed to being on stage in a dark concert hall.

“Even if (audience members) are not chosen, they’re ready if all of the sudden their number would be picked. They’ve marked what they wanted and have come up with plan B, and other audience members hold them to the rules,” Katz said. “I think it’s fun when you choose something and then you get this stellar performance. I think they feel like, ‘Oh, I did well.'”