Rayna Yun Chou was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music when the Celebrity Series of Boston launched its “street pianos” project in 2013. To mark its 75th anniversary, the organization wanted to begin presenting free outdoor public performances, a far cry from its institutional classical origins.
Chou, a violist, and her classmates loved visiting the street pianos while they were on display. They’d take turns improvising, or plinking out familiar movie scores. The experience gave her an idea.
Three years later in Taiwan, she debuted “One Minute of Us,” a pop-up event in which a single listener could experience one minute of solo performance by a musician. Working inside a glass-walled shed, she and the musicians she recruited wondered whether anyone would take them up on the offer.
“Classical music is still like a foreign art form in Taiwan,” Chou says. “We were joking that if no one comes, we’ll just practice.”
But an hour before the door was thrown open, curious passersby began to gather as a violinist tuned her instrument. Told what would take place, they said, “We’ll wait.”
“From that moment, we had not a minute of rest for the rest of the day,” Chou recalls. “People would get in line not really knowing what was going on.”
That successful experiment leads us to Friday, when the Celebrity Series will open the doors on Chou’s latest enterprise: 10 days of free live performance called Concert for One. For a minute at a time, visitors will sample performances by a variety of Boston-area musicians inside custom-fitted shipping containers on Harvard University’s Science Center Plaza and in Chin Park on the Rose Kennedy Greenway.
“I love the phrase ‘encountered art,’ ” says Gary Dunning, president and executive director of the prestigious Celebrity Series. “This will give people live music in a day that might have otherwise not had it.”
From noon to 6 p.m. each day, a roster of nearly 60 musicians will take hourlong turns inside the makeshift performance spaces. They’ll range from pianists, violinists, and cellists to clarinetists, a percussionist, and more than one solo vocalist. It’s not likely the musicians will have much idle time to practice, or check their phones.
“I don’t know what to expect, to tell you the truth,” says saxophonist Ken Field, who plays in the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic and helps coordinate Somerville’s annual Honk! Festival. He has plenty of ideas running through his head.
“I’ll play some of my own compositions, little bits of them,” he says. “I’ll probably play a piece of something I wrote for ‘Sesame Street.’ Some spiritual music that has really intrigued me for many years.” He may trot out the old ballad “My One and Only Love” or the Argentine tango “El Choclo.”
As a saxophonist, he’s not especially used to playing solo with no rhythm section. As it happens, he just played a gig at Truro Vineyards on Cape Cod. His bassist couldn’t make it, so he was stuck playing solo.
“People loved it,” he says, still relieved.
When she was first invited to apply as one of the performers, Veronica Robles felt maybe the project wasn’t for her. In Boston for 20 years, she has carved out a spot as a leading local proponent of the traditional music of her native Mexico. Her adopted hometown has grown much more open to indigenous music than it was when she first arrived, she says. Still, she felt the organizers were probably looking mostly for classical and jazz players.
Now she’s excited to participate. Robles will be playing the vihuela, the small, guitar-like five-stringed instrument of traditional mariachi bands.
“One on one — for me, that’s really beautiful,” says Robles, who runs a cultural center in East Boston. “I love to be connected to my audiences.”
Exactly how those connections will unfold, no one knows. Some musicians could take requests, or try to match a listener’s mood. Some visitors may want to chat a little with the performers. Others may simply want to sit quietly and listen.
“One of the fun things about doing new things is you don’t have all the answers,” Dunning says.
Field agrees.
“I’m an improviser,” he says. “That’s my basic mode. So I’ll play it by ear.”
Concert for One
At pop-up venues on the Harvard Science Center Plaza, Cambridge, and in Chin Park on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston, Sept. 20-29 from noon to 6 p.m. Free. www.celebrityseries.org
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames.