Three metres — to the middle of the room

The club sits on the third floor of a shopping centre — and yes, we know how that sounds. You come up past the shops and the food court, push aside a heavy curtain, and suddenly it is dark, quiet, and smells of evening rather than retail. That contrast works better than any façade: people walk in and go quiet before the first note.

We started out in the skyscraper quarter — high up, with a view over the whole of Vilnius. It sounded impressive, until we understood one simple thing: people don’t come to a concert to look out of a window. They look at the hands on the keys, and at each other. So we moved.

We brought the idea back from New York house concerts — a dozen people in a living room around a piano. A pretty story? Very. But the real reason is simpler: we wanted to play close enough to see the moment a listener stops breathing. That is why the room is built the way it is: the front row is right there, within arm’s reach, and even the middle of the room is barely three metres out. From that distance you can neither play badly nor pretend.

Numbers, if you need them: a hundred and twenty seats, seventy at tables. But the measurement that matters is a different one: the back row here is closer to the stage than most front rows elsewhere.

By day this is a classroom. Adults arrive who spent twenty years saying “one day I’ll learn”, and children nobody has yet told that music is difficult. Some sit down carefully, others go straight in with both hands. In the evening, guests from Amsterdam or Cyprus sit at the same piano, knowing nothing about the morning students.

Sometimes we go on the road: St. Catherine’s Church, the Kaunas Philharmonic, the Palanga Kurhaus. A pleasure — and coming home brings the same discovery every time: in a big hall applause is a mass, here you can hear who clapped first.

The “Lab” in the name is not decoration. We test formats rather than repeat them: one night classical, the next a jam session where someone from the audience walks up to the grand, politely warning us they haven’t played in years. So far it has never once been true. We enjoy that very much.

After a concert the room smells of wine, perfume and spotlight dust for another hour. Then morning comes, the cleaner comes, the lessons come — and it all turns over again. The music here never really stops; it just changes volume.