‘Very often I’ve seen classical music get it wrong.” The author of these words, American violist and former BBC Young Generation Artist Jennifer Stumm, makes no apology for this candid critique of her own profession. She’s referring to that well-intentioned approach to trendy classical music evangelism in which gimmicks can so often take precedence over quality.
“If you want people to believe you, give them the best thing they’ve ever experienced in their life.” Which is what Stumm set out to do in 2015 when founding her groundbreaking São Paulo-based ensemble Ilumina. It’s a unique collective designed to unite leading international soloists with emerging talent from Latin America, youngsters whose ability to realise their potential was severely limited by lack of opportunity, never mind in some cases the basic absence of running water in their homes.
Advertisement Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. So what brought about this remarkable project, and why Brazil? I grew up in Atlanta in the American South, but my mum was a Cherokee Indian from Southern Appalachia,” Stumm explains. “That’s where all the music in my family comes from.
They’re all great singers, spectacular musicians who were untrained, and with zero chance to receive any training. “I had always been interested in the intersections between other arts and music and how that impacted society in relation to who we are as people. While visiting Brazil I saw a lot of young people who reminded me of my own family, my own background.
The chance to try and build something that changed their model and narrative meant so much to me personally. I’d been looking for an artistic home, a creative home, and I really found that in São Paulo.” She brought with her a belief in what she refers to as “equal music”, born out of the following premise “that talent doesn’t choose where it is born, that all populations of people deserve to access live performances of quality, and that a shared social mission and cultural exchange will make unforgettable musical moments on stage.
” As for repertoire, “great music is great music”, Stumm insists. Which is why, during Ilumina’s four-concert residency at the Edinburgh International Festival, including two Usher Hall “beanbag concerts”, they’ll cover complex contemporary classical and popular Latin American music in almost the same breath. “Whatever you perform, you want the audience to experience your trust,” says Stumm.
“So I personally believe that when we say to someone, ‘You might not like this, it might be challenging, but it’s only a few minutes long, so don’t worry because a big Beethoven symphony’s coming at the end,’ you’ve actually destroyed trust with your audience. Why should anyone trust you if you tell them it’s something they won’t like? You’ve already decided for them and that’s terrible marketing. Would you sell toothpaste like that? Absolutely not!” After nearly a decade of building and defining its purpose, Ilumina has earned the trust it deserves.
What began as a music festival and social equity project based at the Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza – a sustainable coffee farm on the city’s periphery – is now a roaring success. The annual Ilumina Festival regularly attracts 10,000 people. The group now operates a year-round programme encompassing educational residencies, digital projects, cross-industry collaborations.
Over 100 of its alumni have secured places at the world’s most prestigious conservatoires. Worldwide tours have included a triumphant residency at the 2022 Lucerne Festival. There’s no question Stumm’s visionary optimism is paying off.
Advertisement But Ilumina didn’t happen without personal risk. “For the first five years I funded it all myself, basically through every possible means you could imagine. There was very little early stage government funding in Brazil for a project like that, though we now have great corporate support.
“From the very beginning we had an amazing partner in the coffee farm where the festival started and also on the ground in São Paulo where a lot of people were asking the same questions about talent: that it’s not really about music, but what we owe to amazing young people who don’t have opportunity. So we’ve developed this community of people who also see the mission from the social responsibility side. They love supporting and watching the paths of the young artists who start out and are now thriving so much around the world.
” Advertisement Ilumina also struck a chord in terms of its radical presentation style, especially with audiences whose natural inclination would have been to give the traditional formalities of classical music a wide berth. But don’t be fooled by the physical antics Ilumina get up to on stage, those exquisitely choreographed, bare-footed performances. This is not window dressing, insists Stumm, but has evolved from the collective’s aversion to structured concert hall applause and its tendency to break up the presentational flow.
“Movement started being integrated organically, mostly to get the musicians around the stage at different times. We realised, too, there was no way to do that quietly other than by taking our shoes off, so another Ilumina tradition started. It was never a gimmick; just what we had to do to produce the work.
” Stumm bridles slightly when asked if Ilumina’s aim is primarily to make classical music accessible. “ Accessibility is not our aim, it's actually the RESULT of what we do,” she insists. “For sure audiences are going to hear things they don’t like, in the same way I might, but I think our mission is to ensure people have an emotional, communal experience when coming to a concert.
It’s about how you feel, and in our collective we have a whole lot of people committed to that ideal.” Is there perhaps a danger that socially-motivated projects like this – for example Venezuela’s El Sistema or evangelising powerhouse that is Iván Fischer’s Budapest Festival Orchestra (memorable for its residency at last year’s EIF) – facilitate a fragmented global picture? “A large-scale educational project like Sistema or a touring orchestra is very different from Ilumina, I hope they all represent a reawakening,” says Stumm. “There’s a long, long history of music’s direct role in society and I’d say we’re coming out of a period where you didn’t see very much of that, where music and art had become something for its own sake.
"I think we can be both: being world-class artists who bring the best of the best, but also making a statement to say, ‘This is for you’, that it’s not just about having a pleasant experience, but a genuinely transformative one. I think I see a general longing for that in our industry. But to reach these goals, quality remains everything.
” Ilumina perform two concerts at the Usher Hall on 14 August (Exploring Ilumina at 2pm, and In The Light Of Shadow at 8pm). Its Rising Stars feature in two concerts at The Hub on 15 & 17 August. For more information, and to book tickets, visit www.
eif.co.uk.
