Conversation with Classical Music Express Team

Today we’d like to introduce you to Classical Music Express team: founder Tenson Liang, president Matteo Generani, and vice president Lulu Wu.

Hi Tenson, Matteo, and Lulu, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I, Tenson Liang, have been working on the KC Classical Music Project alone since 2020. But this project kept getting postponed due to the outbreak of Covid. Once Covid started to settle down, I decided to hold the very first concert at South-Broadland Presbyterian church in September of 2021. The first concert was held during a lovely evening with a decent amount of people sitting in the audience. After a great opening speech and a stunning concert performance, we got a decent amount of donations from the audience. We were all so excited about the results of the first concert. So soon enough Lulu Wu, Matteo Generani, and I came together as a team and devoted ourselves to this project. The three of us met at UMKC, me and Matteo were in the piano studio of Alon Goldstein, while Lulu was studying at UMKC for her doctorate in viola performance. We changed the name and refined the purpose and goals of our organization. With the hard work and dedication of the three of us musicians, we were able to present four concerts in our first season, which were performed from March 2022 to May 2022.

In the second half of 2022, we were able to further expand the project to 7 concerts in four different churches. Our main purpose is to let people, with or without fortune, enjoy high-quality classical music everywhere and not just in the concert hall. Knowing that there are many churches with great pianos that are rarely played other than during the services, we decided to organize a series of concerts in the church by approaching several pastors to see if they would be interested in featuring classical music concerts in their spaces and offering free concerts to the community. Another goal of Classical Music Express is to find a way to let other KC classical musicians show their talent and give them an opportunity to shine and build experience. That’s why, starting from our third season, we will present a bigger calendar with more guest artists. Our ultimate goal is to build a closer connection between musicians and their communities, make classical music as easy to reach as possible, and make it a part of everyone’s life.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
It hasn’t always been a smooth road. We sometimes found difficulty in communicating with some churches. Due to the struggle of communication, there was one time when we played for only two people in the audience.

But this situation helped us to think of different ways to attract the community, and experiment with different advertising methods. Another challenge is definitely the time we are investing. We are the ones who contact the church, make advertising, design and print posters, manage websites and social accounts, create the program, practice, and perform.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
At the base of Classical Music Express, there is the aim of sharing classical music with the community. Before any performance, we explain to the audience what they are about to listen to by introducing them to the composer, the background of the composition, and a historical overview of the period in which it was composed. Another goal is to let other artists perform in our series and let them share their talent. Every concert we offer to the community is free of charge. So far, we’ve only performed in churches but we plan to expand to performing in schools and nursing homes in the near future. We want to deliver classical music to all families. To make people feel that listening to classical music is as easy as ordering food from Uber eats. Besides live concerts, we also share our music by live streaming for people who can’t go to the venue.

Not only people who live far from the church, but also old people, or sick people who cannot leave their homes. This is an additional challenge for us since we need to deal with several technological aspects along with preparing to perform. We’ve also faced issues such as copyright (even though we perform very old music, Facebook recognizes the sound and blocks it, because it’s too similar to CDs that are under copyright), sometimes they blocked the audio completely even during the live stream of the concert. We are conscious that all of these challenges are important as learning lessons and experiences for future improvements.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
First, we would like to thank Alon Goldstein, Rosa del Carmen, and JoZach Miller for their mentoring and support.

We’d also love to thank Jessica Gattorna from St. John’s United Methodist Church, Emily Scott and Ann Zarate from Kansas City United Church of Christ, Robin L. James from Grace Episcopal Church in Liberty, Nicole Richardson, Tracy MacClement, and Susan Howard from South-Broadland Presbyterian.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.classicalmusicexpress.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/classicalmusicexpress?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/classicalmusicexpress