Texans In Tune is a segment of Marfa Public Radio’s Monday classical music program In Tune, featuring live performances with students at the University of Texas Butler School of Music.
In this segment — which originally aired on Monday, October 28th — host Nick Hurt speaks with violinist Camille Schiess and guitarist Tony Mariano.
Schiess and Mariano discuss their move to Texas, duo playing, and their interest in disrupting the common notion of what a classical music concert looks and feels like.
They play two movements of Astor Piazzolla's Histoire du Tango and their own transcriptions of Claude Debussy's La Fille aux cheveux de lin and his First Arabesque.
Mariano says, for him, a classical music performance should be "less about sitting and appreciating classical music in a vacuum, and more about incorporating it into our lives, and into our social lives, and how we experience other people."
He advocates for classical musicians to find ways to give their audiences an active role in the performance space, which he sees as necessary in keeping the art form alive.