With its back to the community?

This week, the Connecting Arts festival takes place in Utrecht. This festival, contrary to the expectation raised by the title, revolves entirely around the organ. The instrument is in a bottomless identity crisis. The solution lies in connecting it with other art forms: connecting arts.

The organist. Such a man with a beard. Not a meticulously trimmed weekend shadow, but a wild dos of facial hair that barely tolerates daylight. Such a man who hides behind metre-long pipes and a towering wall of sound. Who always sits with his back to the congregation during worship. And not without reason. The organist seems to be the autist among classical musicians. He has a dike of an image problem. Watch and experience:

Not only are churches emptying, but organ recitals are hardly attracting audiences anymore as a result. The reason why Reitze Smits is sounding the alarm. Besides teaching at the conservatories in Utrecht and Leuven, he is artistic director of Connecting Arts. "In 20 years, there will be no audience left to play for. Organ culture as we know it has no future at all. But organists still don't realise it. They are very conservative."

And that is why he wants to inspire fellow professionals to take a new path. The theme of this edition of the festival is collaboration with other art forms. The two-day conference on 3 and 4 October will discuss the problems as well as the success stories of this new path.

The first speaker, organ builder John Mander from the UK, does not yet see much point. He denounces the "modern day mantra: accessibility". Accessibility leads to the denial of quality, to "dumbing down". Pop music? Lady Gaga who also plays the organ and builds a whole show around it? No way! Not a knee-jerk reaction, but quality!

At the other end of the spectrum is French speaker and organist Vincent Dubois. He collaborated in 2009 with artist Bartabas, who created a performance in a gothic cathedral in Rouen with horses dancing to... yes, organ music. The performance was wildly popular. "But Bartabas approached me, and it was his creative idea, not mine," says Dubois.

Reitze Smits will also give a talk. "If we don't want the organ, like the church, to function merely as a historical monument, we have to get creative." Yet organ music already functions in adjacent art forms too - think of film. Only, there, the music often symbolises a harbinger of impending doom, and the organist all too often resembles Frankenstein. Very one-sided, in other words.

There are other possibilities with images in particular: film, visual arts, dance and circus. Artists can and should work together - it's a movement you can already observe in the Netherlands, says Reitze. "With our current political policies, everyone is looking for each other. You need each other." Desire meets necessity.

Reitze shows telling examples from abroad. In the UK, 'organ improvs' on silent film are currently a hip underground phenomenon. Steetdancers give public performances to the best-known organ piece, the toccata and fugue in B by J.S. Bach:

And in Dutch practice? Yesterday, the festival opened with a collaboration between derwish dancer Kadir Sonuk, who swirled around the hypnotic sounds of Simeon ten Holt's Canto Ostinato, played on the organ in Utrecht's Dom Church by organist Aart Bergwerff. He is someone who has long been championing idiosyncratic interdisciplinary programmes. Whether it is tap dance, video art or east meets west:

And here then comes the solution: it is not the instrument that is in trouble, but its player. If the latter turns around and shows his bare face to the rest of the world, there will be plenty of opportunities for the instrument to survive in this harsh world of 'accessibility'. And if Lady Gaga plays a boudoir organ, it will probably still do well. For she is opening the gateway to original music:

Tuesday 4 October is another day of lectures (including on silent film and organ, 15.15). The festival itself continues until 8 October. After that, it will visit other European cities. www. connectingarts.org