This is kind of what SIC InC Sounds like. Just listen real close. Jinjin Sun/YH

I walked the 40 blocks from Grand Central down to Le Poisson Rouge, on account of not having 250 cents to my name. I arrived around 8 p.m., bought my ticket, and settled down onto a thin leather chair in the dimly lit downstairs bar to watch Murder, My Sweet on my laptop. Film Noir. Awkward and under 21, I waited.

After a short while, Stephen Feigenbaum, BR ’11, and Steven Reineke, music director of the New York Pops and Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Pops, sauntered in. I barely looked up. Dressed like guys who go to bars in New York, with well-chosen but neatly casual outfits, these two cats ordered some drinks and made merry. Then, I was spotted. Called out, even. “Hey, you were in my Anthro class,” said Feigenbaum. Journalistic distance narrowed to nil, Reineke offered to buy me a drink. I politely refused after much moral equivocation. Now the ice was broken, and I had to talk. The first few words out of Reineke’s mouth, paraphrased: “This kid is the REAL DEAL.” Emphasis on REAL DEAL. He’ll tell ya.

Steven “kind of a big deal” Reineke spoke to both Feigenbaum’s and his own successes. A man of good taste and good position, Reineke is a veritable rock star of the conducting world, as far as I can tell. No beard, boyish good looks, multiple positions in varyingly prestigious institutions, and rather candid. But at 16, he said, Feigenbaum composed “Serenade for Strings,” a piece that made Reineke good-naturedly jealous of the young composer’s talent. It also brought them together. Now they both have their own websites. Smells like success.

Feigenbaum’s website is all composer—recent performances, commentary on his composition, and a nice picture. It’s well-lit, on a green woodsy background. He’s even grinning. Aren’t composers the pot-bellied, cigar-smoking, binge-drinking misanthropes of music? Isn’t genius supposed to wear itself loudly and tragically—a.k.a. Beethoven’s proto-metal haircut or Mozart’s abusive childhood? For Chrissakes, Feigenbaum doesn’t even have a conductor’s baton in his hand. That picture says Prozac commercial, not commercial composer.

There will be time…for all that throat clearing and handkerchief folding (his website has no shortage of contest information, for those inclined to regard those sorts of things as important), his manner is all his own. SIC InC, a badass acronym with strange capitalization, actually boils down to Student Independent-Classical Interdisciplinary Collective. The group, a campus baby, is but two years old. Feigenbaum conducts and shares compositional duties with Ellis Ludwig-Leone, TC ’11. The group features strings, French horn, piano, clarinet, saxophone, guitar, a drum kit, flute, and some glitchy, pseudo-ambient beat-work done on a MacBook. There’s also a projector. And dynamic, phosphorescent lighting. And a medium-sized menagerie featuring a rare albino tiger—just kidding about the menagerie.

During our brief rendezvous in that bar, after I had just discovered some of Feigenbaum’s deepest and darkest secrets, I asked him one (or probably many more) decidedly banal questions. “What’s the deal with SIC InC? It’s got…lights?” and he answered, earnestly, that he felt like classical music should be accessible, that he wanted to draw people his own age to shows.

Later on that night, a recent Harvard grad—who had majored in composition, and who now works for the record label New Amsterdam—told me that his label was actually trying to get non-profit status, that classical music didn’t sell. Something like 1,000 copies was enough to make the Billboard charts. I figured at 1,000 copies sold, it was conceivable the only people who buy classical music are relatives of the composer. Composers with a big family tree, like a redwood.

But the request for non-profit status is elucidating. Do classical composers look down on a public that simultaneously yells, “Save the arts,” and doesn’t buy classical music? Is it the old guard trying to stave off its own impending elimination? Does classical music deserve to be saved from the tiger’s capitalist jaws? Couldn’t tell you one way or the other, but it seems like SIC InC is doing a fine job at self-preservation all on its own, even flourishing.

As I walked down the shadowy stairs into the hip, candlelit, and cavernous performance space in the basement of Le Poisson Rouge, I was neither reminded of nor yearned for black ties and pearls, chandeliers and opera halls. Students were packed ’round the stage on low, dark tables, and waitresses with studs on their belts and pixie cuts brought whatever drinks the table could afford. The back of the stage was lit with abstract, glowing, geometric shapes of various sorts. Could have been Prince’s sign, I don’t know. After the show, I found out that the overhead light sequence, which Producer Matt Slotkin, TC ’11, handed to the venue’s technician, had originally been tossed away. Improv.

The group was so large that it looked as if it couldn’t fit on the cramped stage, replete with stands and instruments. Members cycled in or out, depending on what the piece called for. Feigenbaum and Ludwig-Leone wore studio headphones, almost DJ-like in appearance. Feigenbaum sat, as relaxed as a cat, conducting in front of the group, while Ludwig-Leone bounced to the beat in the background, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

The group performed with charisma and character: The strings, squealing or sobbing, were performed by kids in jeans or flowery dresses. Wild lights swept throughout the ensemble, gravely or exuberantly, throwing the musicians into sharp relief or just glistening on their faces. The background projection, an interesting idea, was semi-obscured by not too ideal contrast and some position issues, but generally worked well with the thematic shape of the piece.

I, however, found myself hypnotized into watching the musicians themselves. Raw or bashful, a clarinet squeak or a cello slide, the musicians drew the music so close to themselves that there was hardly room for the projector to share. In one particularly intense scene, pianist Naomi Woo, BR ’12, and cellist, Scott McCreary, TC ’11, strained close to one another in duet. After each song, Feigenbaum and Ludwig-Leone applauded or hooted wildly. It was like watching a rock orchestra.

Syncopated and stuttering background beats often drew a bleak landscape, and the mournful sound of a violin or cello wafting through the sparse background was potent and expressive. At times, especially where complicated meter changes were involved, I thought the musicians might have had a hard time perfectly following the precise computer. But, such wild experimentation had me smiling and enraptured—halting and difficult offbeat figures kept me constantly teetering—that is, until Feigenbaum administered the balm. He is a skilled surgeon.

The last song repeated a triumphant and grand gesture, while a violinist played solo. All of the musicians were smiling, tapping, jiving and giving one another looks. I thought it was appropriate to celebrate.