A Reimagined Concert Experience: Vigorous Tenderness’ Quest To Create Radical Chamber Music in Maine

Meaningful, innovative arts experiences fuel a culture of curiosity and connection, and in Maine, organizations like Vigorous Tenderness are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible for art and music.

Vigorous Tenderness reimagines classical music and the traditional concert experience by centering artists and composers from marginalized backgrounds. Since fall 2020, the organization has held 18 outdoor concerts — one on each equinox and solstice — connecting imaginative classical music compositions with Maine’s natural landscape and audiences hungry for something different.

Vigorous Tenderness’ values — equity, inclusion, creativity, and learning — resonate deeply with ours at the Onion Foundation. And we’re proud to have supported the organization since 2021. By putting these values at the center of everything it does, Vigorous Tenderness is actively promoting a new, revitalized repertoire of chamber music in Maine, including both new music and pieces that historically have been overlooked.

Not the Classical Music of Old

Chamber music has been a true throughline of Vigorous Tenderness founder and artistic director Kal Sugatski’s life. As an accomplished professional violist, Sugatski has witnessed firsthand the inherent contradictions of the style: “It has these beautiful traditions and histories, but also has this space for wild and wonderful innovation,” they say. “What can radical change look like in this artform that’s really about tradition?”

Sugatski created Vigorous Tenderness to answer this critical question. Through the organization’s 18 performances to date, it’s introduced more than 7,500 audience members to more than 90 new classical compositions from Black, Indigenous, disabled, LGBTQ+, and other composers typically left out of traditional chamber music performances — many with strong connections to Maine. While events are free to the public, audience members are invited to make voluntary contributions to support the artists.

Each 90-minute event is embedded within Maine’s natural environment, featuring seven or eight ensembles scattered across the landscape that play simultaneously. Audiences receive hand-drawn maps they can follow to move through and between each ensemble. “If you haven’t been to one of these concerts, it’s a little hard to imagine what it’s like,” Sugatski says. “It’s not audiences sitting still and having music played at them. Audiences follow their own path through the music.”

In this way, Sugatski encourages audience members to reflect on the interplay among the ensembles and put the music in the context of the natural sounds around them: wind blowing, birds chirping, bugs buzzing, or waves crashing.

The timing of the events on the equinoxes and solstices provides an added layer of meaning to each performance: “It helps us find an earthly and grounding way to mark the passage of time, using music to connect the environment, the seasons, and the community,” says Sugatski.

The Revolutionary Potential of Chamber Music in Maine

While the audience for Vigorous Tenderness’s first performance in 2020 comprised about 150 music-lovers, audiences have since grown to upward of 600 or more — largely due to Sugatski’s innovation and commitment to inclusivity. “I’ve been really motivated to find a way to make this vibrant, living music really relevant to the community and to Maine’s landscape,” they say.

Using funding from the Onion Foundation and other sources, Vigorous Tenderness has launched groundbreaking performances to engage these audiences in music they’ve likely never heard before. Here’s a look at just a few of the featured performances.

The Burnurwurbskek Singers Collaboration

On March 19, 2024, Vigorous Tenderness celebrated the vernal equinox by joining up with the Burnurwurbskek Singers, a Wabanaki drumming and singing group that performs millenia-old traditional songs.

Sugatski centered the singers throughout the production process: “I asked them, ‘What would you do if you had access to a bunch of classical musicians? How do you want your work to be heard?’”

What they developed together was an emotional, engaging translation of traditional northeast woodland songs into a collaborative classical rendition. Set in an open field against a sunset backdrop, the performance captivated audiences, many of whom participated in songs via call and response.

For Sugatski, this — and so many other performances — marked the intersections of art and social justice to shine light on an often overlooked and underappreciated musical form. “I want more people in Maine to know about the living Wabanaki people and the vibrant art they’re still creating,” says Sugatski.

Piano Burning

During the winter solstices, in true darkness and often feet of snow, a Vigorous Tenderness musician plays a connective piece on a piano — one that’s broken beyond repair — until the instrument burns to the ground.

The piece, titled “Piano Burning” and written by composer Annea Lockwood, encourages deep, critical thoughts about the impact of art and community. “At first, this piece can feel like chaos and destruction,” Sugatski says. “But it’s actually about light and warmth and bringing people together and inspiring questions about what art actually is.”

As the piano burns, audience members are afforded light to see each other’s faces and warmth to protect against the cold, all while the pianist’s music slowly transforms into “a symphony of flames, with the piano returning to the earth where it came from,” says Sugatski.

Last Winter

For 2022’s winter solstice, the organization made space for Darian Thomas’ piece, “Stephon Clark.” The performance honors the life of Clark, an unarmed Black man killed in his grandmother’s yard by Sacramento police in 2018.

During the performance, four percussionists play drums while speaking words from actual court documents, police body camera transcripts, Clark’s mother’s writings, and other relevant documents related to the event. “Sometimes the drums feel like a heartbeat,” says Sugatski. “Sometimes they feel like gunshots, and sometimes they feel like the tension rising in the community around this devastating loss.”

It’s a powerful musical performance that stays with audiences long after the concert. “The piece carries this incident, this moment, this life, this injustice well beyond the moment it happened,” Sugatski notes.

A Lasting Community Impact

Performances like these underscore Vigorous Tenderness’s commitment to creating radical, democratized events that uplift unheard voices and redefine classical music altogether. Sugatski intentionally combines music with activism to ensure all community members — regardless of their identity or previous relationship to chamber music — can find something fresh and relevant to their lives. The lack of dress code, immersion in rural areas, affordability, physical accessibility, and innovation of these events fulfill Sugatski’s inclusive mission.

And the community is responding with enthusiasm and appreciation, as evidenced by their own words, solicited during recent events:

• “It’s not just a concert, it’s a bold, political, and creative act — just fabulous!”

• “The artists honor the natural cycles and the universal language found in music and art, always in the elements for the equinoxes and solstices. Always in beauty. Always honoring marginalized communities.”

• “It’s always different, and you never know what you’re going to come across. It’s always surprises and delight and a beautiful way to move through the year.”

Composers and musicians, too, find performances immensely rewarding. As one musician states, “It’s truly such a gift to be able to perform in this way, [with] nuanced exploration and discovery through repetition, and a joy to experience.”

As the next equinox or solstice approaches, Vigorous Tenderness will offer another opportunity to step outside and join the hundreds of Mainers, musicians, and composers bringing a new approach to classical music to life.