A Brilliant Idea: Concerto for Nora (the Cat) and Orchestra

Com­poser and Con­duc­tor Min­dau­gas Piecaitis in Lithua­nia had an idea. Why not build an orches­tral accom­pa­ni­ment around the now-famous YouTube video of Nora the Piano Cat? The result is a bril­liant, if some­times quirky piece of music that gen­tly and play­fully inter­acts with the cat video.

Despite the title ‘CATcerto’, this is actu­ally a sen­si­tive and at times con­tem­pla­tive piece, and shows just what a com­poser can do, how they can make some inter­est­ing com­po­si­tional choices in response to almost ran­dom events, and make sense of it all. As Igor Stravin­sky once said: “The more con­straints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbi­trari­ness of the con­straint serves only to obtain pre­ci­sion of execution.”

We now live in an Internet-connected world, where dig­i­tal video, com­posers and cham­ber orches­tras can all some­how blend into some­thing that’s…well, Art. I’m all for it.