On to our final tweet seats event of the 2012-2013 season, Alison Balsom, trumpet and the Scottish Ensemble at Hill Auditorium.

Meet the participants.

UMS: Tell us a little about you.

Sydney Hawkins: I am the new Communications Marketing Manager at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Professionally, I have a background in radio and digital marketing. Personally, I love road tripping, coffee drinking, music making, ice creaming, fun running, skydiving, and trying new things. I’ll be tweeting from @ummamuseum (I moonlight at @sydneyhawkins when I flip handles).

Angela Elkordy: I am an educational technologist; my passions are instructional technologies, teaching, learning and leading (K-20) as well as connecting with others through technology.

Megan Pfiester: Since a very young age I have been fascinated by all things musical whether it be Beethoven or the Beatles. I work as a communications coordinator and create as much music as possible all day every day. I am currently a member of the Ypsilanti Symphony Orchestra and hope to study violin performance and music education in the fall. You can find me at @MusiGeek on Twitter.

Jared Rawlings: I am a process-centered innovative teacher, and an emerging researcher. I tweet @Jared_Rawlings and my website is: www.jaredrawlings.com.

Cody Takacs: I am a recent graduate of the School of Music earning my BM in Double Bass Performance. I appear frequently as a soloist specializing in new music with performances ranging from the University of Michigan’s Collage Concert to Carnegie Hall. As an educator, I have been the double bass instructor for Skyline High School’s orchestra and chamber music coach for Michigan Bass Bash.

UMS: In one sentence, how would you describe your relationship with technology?

Sydney Hawkins: My relationship with technology is pretty balanced – it keeps me connected, but I don’t let myself disconnect from what is happening around me.

Angela Elkordy: Connected!

Megan Pfiester: I would say I’m pretty tech-savvy.

Cody Takacs: I use technology to build and maintain a strong musical network and also to share and express my musical ideas.

Jared Rawlings: My relationship with technology is necessary in order to build my personal/professional learning network.

UMS: To you, what does it mean to “be present” during a performance or another arts experience?

Sydney Hawkins: To me, to be present is to have the ability to clear your mind and ‘check out’ of the real world when you enter through the doors – it is an opportunity to relax, to recharge, and to get inspired.

Angela Elkordy: Being present, to me, means being immersed in the experience and making meaning by sharing the experience with others.

Megan Pfiester: Being present during a performance is so much more than simply taking a seat in a hall or an auditorium. To me it’s blissfully leaving whatever happened that day at the curb and not only listening to someone else’s creation and ideas. It’s taking it all in, sight sound and smell, and letting it stir your imagination.

Cody Takacs:  To be “present” at a performance to me means 1) that the listener is physically present and 2) that they are mentally experiencing the performance on one or a combination of any of Aaron Copland’s three planes of listening that find best suiting for their own listening experience (the sensual, expressive, and sheerly musical planes).

Jared Rawlings: Being present means it’s a way of capturing the “lived experience” of the concert goer.  Also, given the temporal nature of music, theatre, and dance the tweet seats project is a way of focusing in on this phenomenon that is exclusive to live arts in Ann Arbor.

Meet the tweets.

After the performance

UMS: How did tweeting affect your experience of the performance?

Sydney Hawkins: It made me ‘think’ about the performance in more of a conceptual way – how can I articulate what I’m seeing/hearing to someone who isn’t here? How can I describe this in words? Is there a way for me to educate or inspire people who aren’t here? As I was tweeting from the @ummamuseum handle, I was also thinking about ways that I could relate and connect the performance to the museum (which is something that I’d definitely do a bit more research on prior to the performance next time).

Angela Elkordy: In sharing the experience in real-time, I was more conscious of trying to communicate what I thought would be of interest to others who were not at the concert. It was really interesting to read the tweets of others experiencing the same event…. and hence tweeting provides a unique experience for participants who can share as the event is on-going. How else could that be accomplished? and how powerful is that? 🙂

Jared Rawlings: I was more aware of the people around me. More specifically, I was looking for audience body language, facial animation, and vocal reaction when audible. I tried to be a thorough “twitter correspondent” and with Ms. Balsom’s performance, I had to remind myself to tweet. She was absolutely captivating.

UMS: Did you expect this effect or are you surprised by this outcome?

Sydney Hawkins: I think that I learned quite a bit from the performance because I was actively watching/listening for things about it in which I could relay to others. I was also following the hashtag to see what other people in the tweet seats were saying about it too – it was a way of having a conversation without talking. I wasn’t completely surprised by this outcome – there are many conferences or lectures that I’ve been to that offer hashtags and I believe that it makes people pay attention and try to relay the important parts of the conversation. It provides for a more attentive audience.

Angela Elkordy: I usually share snippets of information while attending events, but in being part of a group tweeting was a great experience. I think we all wonder on some level how others experience things and the tweeting together made the event more social without being imposing. Yes, this was a pleasant surprise 🙂

Jared Rawlings: I was much more interested in the audience’s reaction of the performance. I could not believe the number of people who were there to see a trumpet performer. The upper balcony was almost full. I did not expect this outcome.

Are you interested in joining our tweet seats section? Sign up & we’ll let you what’s coming in the 2013-2014 season.

On to our fourth tweet seats event! This time we saw Esperanza Spalding perform at Michigan Theater on April 6.

Meet the participants.

UMS: Tell us a little about you.

Richard Retyi: I am the social media director at Fluency Media, a digital marketing agency in Ann Arbor, as well as a regular feature writer for AnnArbor.com, Concentratemedia.com and other publications. You can follow me on Twitter at @RichRetyi or read my work at RichRetyi.com.

Cody Takacs: I am a recent graduate of the School of Music earning my BM in Double Bass Performance. I appear frequently as a soloist specializing in new music with performances ranging from the University of Michigan’s Collage Concert to Carnegie Hall. As an educator, I have been the double bass instructor for Skyline High School’s orchestra and chamber music coach for Michigan Bass Bash.

Kristin Kurzawa: A graduate of the University of Michigan School of Art and Design (MFA 2009), I describe myself as a storyteller, innovator, and educator with a passion for bringing communities together through information sharing and online platforms. Photography, feature writing, content management, and social media community management/development are the tools I use to create user-friendly content and foster communities. My website is www.kristinkurzawa.com, and follow me on Twitter: @kriskurzawa, on Instagram at instragram.com/kristinkurzawa, and LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kristinkurzawa

Jasmine Hentschel: My relationship with UMS started back in my sophomore year at U of M, when I started interning in the production department. It was one of the most enriching, enlightening, and greatest learning experiences not only of my undergraduate career, but of my entire life. I currently work for Cambridge Michigan Language Assessments making standardized English language tests, and I’m headed to U of M’s School of Information to study computational linguistics in the fall. @JasmineShuree on Twitter.

UMS: In one sentence, how would you describe your relationship with technology?

Richard Retyi: The only reason I am in social media is because I signed up for Twitter back in 2007 on a whim. Since then, I’ve been kind of tethered to my phone. All the world’s knowledge in a single device, plus Instagram.

Cody Takacs: I use technology to build and maintain a strong musical network and also to share and express my musical ideas.

Kristin Kurzawa: As a self-proclaimed geek, I appreciate the technology in every tool I use throughout the day, from my anti-glare eyeglasses to my ubiquitous iPhone to the latest cloud-based software.

Jasmine Hentschel: I am wonderfully overwhelmed by the incredible knowledge and power that technological advances of recent decades have afforded people all over the world.

UMS: Why did you decide to participate in this project?

Richard Retyi: Curiousity.

Cody Takacs: As I mentioned in the second question, I like to use technology to share and express my musical thoughts and ideas. I feel that the Tweet Seats project would allow me a great opportunity to relay my thoughts and ideas to my musical network and even public at large.

Kristin Kurzawa:  I love the idea of bringing digital communities and live, in-person communities together. I’m 100% committed to increasing awareness of the arts!  The Tweet Seats is one of the most innovative and exciting ideas for involving everyone in the experience!

Jasmine Hentschel: I think UMS is an incredible organization that really brings a great deal of phenomenal art and culture to the vibrant city of Ann Arbor. Having worked as an intern for several years in the production department, I’ve been to dozens and dozens of UMS shows and I thought this would be an exciting new way to get involved. I am very curious to see how it feels to be engaged in the performance in a totally different way.

UMS: To you, what does it mean to “be present” during a performance or another arts experience?

Richard Retyi: I think unless you really know a particular sphere of art or performance (musicians, dancers, etc.), performances transport your mind somewhere else most of the time. You watch the musicians, you watch the artists and then your mind wanders. To past memories, creative ideas, whatever. And then you return to what’s actually happening. Or maybe that’s just me.

Cody Takacs: To be “present” at a performance to me means 1) that the listener is physically present and 2) that they are mentally experiencing the performance on one or a combination of any of Aaron Copland’s three planes of listening that find best suiting for their own listening experience (the sensual, expressive, and sheerly musical planes).

Kristin Kurzawa: To me, “being present” involves all five senses. The ability to really observe both the micro and macro level of the entire experience- from the smell of the auditorium, to the sounds of the orchestra’s warm-up, to the visual impact of the set design or audience reaction, to the feel of the velvet seats beneath you– to the taste of the fountain soda during intermission!

Jasmine Hentschel: Being “present” is a matter of being engaged in a performance and giving it all of your consideration and attention, regardless of your preconceived notions and expectations of what it might be. It’s about not only noticing the little things, including all of the time and effort that gets put into every aspect of a performance, but also how it makes you feel before, during and after, and how you the art you’re watching ties into and relates to your personal experiences and those of all of mankind, whether it be theater, dance, music, or some other art form.

Meet the tweets.

After the performance

UMS: How did tweeting affect your experience of the performance?

Kristin Kurzawa: I thought the tweeting experience might be a wee bit distracting to my focus, but it was just the opposite. Knowing that I was the eyes and ears of the concert for those following kept me hyper-focused on the band, the audience, and of course, Esperanza Spalding’s voice!

Jasmine Hentschel: I was so mesmerized by Esperanza and the band throughout the entire performance that it was hard to decide when to take my eyes off them to post a tweet. However, tweeting about the performance also forced me to analyze how I was thinking and feeling in a very different way than I normally would during a show, to determine exactly why I was so mesmerized, and to put these thoughts and feelings into comprehensible words. It’s interesting to have the tweets now to look back on after the fact, to recall what I was thinking at very specific moments throughout the performance that I would totally forget about otherwise.

Richard Retyi: Working in athletics and live-tweeting a number of games for work, the experience wasn’t new to me. With the hashtag, I was more curious about what my fellow tweet seaters were saying, so it was like the four of us were having mini conversations during the performance.

UMS: Did you expect this effect or are you surprised by this outcome?

Kristin Kurzawa: I enjoyed meeting and sharing tweets with my fellow Tweet Seaters. We represented such unique perspectives that we created a team. I would love to see us have more dialogue during or after the shows, but that would take a lot of multi-tasking for sure.