Results tagged “Carnegie Hall” from Life's a Pitch

Knowing my penchant for quotes, my friend Abigail sent this over this afternoon from Bloomberg News:

[Clive] Gillinson, who came from the London Symphony Orchestra in 2005, made less in 2007-08 than two other New York performing- arts leaders with more complex tasks. Lincoln Center President Reynold Levy made $1.1 million to oversee a 16-acre complex that houses 12 resident companies. Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb earned $1.5 million to produce 219 opera performances...

Gillinson oversees management, raises money and develops "artistic concepts" for concerts, according to the hall.

I guess the writer doesn't consider that a legit part of the job? Or like, he does it in the way David Letterman apparently "developed" "artistic" "concepts"?

I went to Christine Brewer's Zankel (Carnegie) Hall recital tonight and now, over a glass of strawberry milk, I will tell you what it made me think about. Spoiler Alert: it's marketing and PR.

1. One of, if not the, best things about working at IMG Artists was getting to meet the clients in a non-formal setting when they came into the office. I'm not sure if he remembers, but I remember Eric Owens coming in and suggesting we rearrange the furniture in the lobby. I was all-too-happy to offer my two...dollars...on the lobby design, as was my friend Mark from the Vocal Division. I also remember washing my hands next to Renée Fleming in the Ladies Room and uncharacteristically trying not to look her in the eye because I was wearing something stupid that day and she was the real-deal glamorous. And I think Hilary baked cookies for everyone at one point? Regardless, it was fun to interact with the artists in the office, because then you'd go to a concert later that night and remember Joshua Bell talking about how he had spent all morning at the Apple Store. I never met Christine Brewer, though she is represented by IMG, so what was amazing about her performance tonight was that I felt like I had met her, many times. I'm not going to say she was "warm and natural on stage" because that is an understatement; I actually felt like she was practicing her recital in my apartment and we'd known each other for a decade. When a mutual friend introduced us backstage, he said to her, "You've met Amanda, right?" I actually almost said "yes"! Can you imagine? I had in no way met this woman and I was almost like, "Oh yeah, we've met. Many times." I write a lot on this blog about how marketing and publicity materials need to make the artists seem accessible, but there's really no substitute for an artist actually being that accessible in live performance.

2. I like a lot of concerts, but I rarely want to hear them again right after I've experienced them. This one, though, I would have bought and could have been re-listening to as I type now. "Bought," you ask? Recently, bands have been selling the MP3s from their live shows right after they happen. I realize this gets more complicated when the music is not written or owned by the artist, but that is something I would be more willing to purchase than a CD, even if the CD was of the exact same repertoire.

3. It is ironic that skinny women get fancy recording deals because, erm, that's when the music is supposed to be heard and not seen? Yes yes, I know all about "the whole package," but that doesn't make it any less ironic.

4. Christine (first name-basis, because as you know, we've met many times before) sang an encore about a review of an opera singer's Carnegie Hall recital at her Carnegie Hall recital! M-E-T-A Meta Meta woooo! Carnegie is going to post the name of the piece and composer tomorrow. The piece was Celius Dougherty's "Review". There was a genius line about the singer's recital partner. It wasn't "able" or "reliable"...but something like that. I'm sure it will be mentioned in the review. Zing!

What's that you say? You got carpal tunnel from playing the Dudamel game all afternoon on Friday? Well then, there's no point in doing any work today now is there? You should really let yourself mend.

If you're in New York, you can spend this afternoon chasing down two tickets to Carnegie Hall's opening night concert, which is this Thursday, October 1 and has a major harp component, woot. Carnegie has been Tweeting clues here all day, and if you can find their people from 5-7pm tonight, you can enter your name into a raffle for a pair of tickets. The most recent clue is, "Duke Ellington and Grateful Dead performed on this stage. Today, concerts here promote young composers and conductors."

I was en route to Molyvos last night and, even though I was extremely late and exceedingly hot, I stopped to look at the striking, massive images lining Carnegie Hall's 7th avenue wall. Just one other thing in the four years I've lived in New York (two of which were spent working next to Carnegie Hall) has stopped me outside that building, and that was when I was inexplicably, over-the-top attracted to one of Thomas Adès' press photos. Oh, here it is:

(I sleep with a copy under my pillow every night.)

Carnegie has been running a "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" ad campaign around the city this summer (most notably on subway platform walls), and frankly I'm thrilled to see them hemorrhaging money on such a worthy endeavor. The ads are eye-catching, contemporary and aesthetically appealing while not compromising Carnegie's existing image and what the institution stands for. Now, they've blown up the performance shots used in the campaign for the 7th avenue Zankel wall, and it really looks fantastic. Wallking by the building, you actually get a sense of what goes on in there, which is as it should be. Great things do go on in there! Great things that are not so much expressed by press shots of pianists in front of their pianos.  It's not TV screens or music, but I'll take it.


From the Hilton Corridor of Penn Station:

The (now not so) new Carnegie Hall programs are fantastic. I've been meaning to write this since seeing Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Orpheus there in October, but my scanner has been on the fritz. I was reminded how much I liked said programs, however, on Sunday night at the Kurtag recital (um...go Steelers?) and promptly repaired my scanner for this purpose.
 
Such nice bright colors in the calendar section! Gives the hall the opportunity to highlight specific concerts in an aesthetically pleasing fashion without using wasteful and noisy program inserts. The blocks of color are clean and distracting in a good way. There are few things worse than venues trying to be cool with their marketing materials and, in doing so, losing sight of their established brand. The new calendar pages are still very "Carnegie" just...a bit more fun than the standard black, white and re(a)d all over.. Another great improvement is the inclusion of big artist photos above the bios; MUCH better than the tiny thumbnail treatment artist photos used to get:

On Sunday, I also noticed a page I'd not seen before: "From Where I Sat", billed as a "Carnegie Hall Recollection". February's re-collector is Glenn D. Lowry from MOMA, who talks about the energy contrast between pre-concert buzzing and the hush just before the first notes. The quote is only a couple paragraphs, but it's nice to think about folks from around the city coming to Carnegie and then reflecting in print. I hope they choose people completely outside of the arts in the future, too.

I, personally, always save my programs. I put them in a basket, and then in ziplock bags when the basket overflows, and then bring them to my mom's house in Connecticut en masse whenever I visit. Some unsuspecting future relative will someday discover how many performances "crazy great-aunt Amanda" actually went to.  Every time I leave a concert, though, there are used programs lingering on the floor and on seats, not to mention boxes of untouched programs by the doors. In the interest of saving some trees and shekels, should presenters do away with printed programs?

At the point of purchase, ask if the patron would like to be e mailed the program. Get his/her e mail address. (Two birds, one click.) Advertisers will like this because they will now be able to get click-through reports from these e-programs. Patrons can print out the pages they want (most likely the actual list of pieces) and bring them to the concert.  If they print the whole thing, fine: it's not your paper and printing costs! At the same time - and they've been doing this in England, at least with West End shows, as long as I can remember -  charge $1-$2 for printed programs, and tack that charge onto the ticket price. "Would you like to add a program?", click. Print a handful of extras for walk-ups, and have the single pages with the list of pieces available at the box office just in case. Press and artist comps, of course, always get free programs included with their tickets.

While you're at it, announce that your house is "Going Green!" and get some local press for your troubles.

The New York Philharmonic is running a photo contest for their Concerts in the Parks series this summer. Folks were encouraged to submit their photos and then to vote for their favorites between July 25th and July 31st. The categories are best performance shot, best family/friends shot, best kid shot, best nature shot, best picnic shot, best NYC moment shot, most original shot, and overall favorite shot. Such a great idea! And then, just when I think we're safe...

Winners in each of the eight categories in the contest will be announced on August 1, and will receive a pair of tickets to a New York Philharmonic performance at Avery Fisher Hall.

Oh NO. No no. Why wouldn't the winning photos become the advertising campaign for Concerts in the Parks next summer? I had assumed the point of the contest was to gather unique perspectives "from the ground" (literally/not literally). And some of the photos are really amazing; they capture the excitement and fun (imagine that!) of a philharmonic concert far better than any artist publicity shot does. Ah well. Baby steps.

Update - 7/22, 2ish pm: It has been brought to my attention that Carnegie Hall has held a Playbill cover art contest for the past three years. The ten winners receive $500 and two tickets to a Carnegie concert, and most importantly, their artwork becomes the monthly Playbill covers. I did not know this, and think it's swell. The contest is open to art students, and is advertised via schools, art websites and Facebook. This year's deadline was July 17th. It would be rockin' for Carnegie to collaborate with a gallery and display the original artwork from the top 10, or maybe top 30 submissions, then work with that gallery on cross-marketing and even present a couple concerts in the space. Read your program while being surrounded by programs. 

Last.fm, an internet radio/concert listing/social networking site based out of the UK, launched an artist royalty program this morning. According to Wired's Listening Post blog, a percentage of the advertisement dollars (err, pounds) will be given to artists when ads appear next to their streaming music, regardless of an artist's position in the industry (signed, unsigned, managed, unmanaged).

By virtue of having to track the numbers for payment purposes, it seems artists will gain useful marketing data from this initiative as well. From an earlier Wired interview with Last.fm co-founder Martin Stiksel:

Stiksel told us about two tools launched concurrently with the Artist Royalty Program that show artists "how many scrobbles, now many streams, how many on-demand plays (they've had) and so on - all of these things will be broken down, because it's a prerequisite for transparency as far as the accounting of all of the royalties is concerned."

I took a gander at Carnegie Hall's page this morning:

"Care to help?" I'm like, yes, Last.fm, I am trying.

Last week, I walked by an Abercrombie & Fitch store, stopped, turned right, and started to walk inside. What the Joshua Bell is wrong with me, I thought:  I don't like Abercrombie clothes, I'm already late for a meeting, and there's no obligatory hot preppy "greeter" guy at the door. It just felt so cool to walk in.

Literally cool. The doors were wide open and the store was pumping AC into the street. Fancy hotels pull similar stunts in the winter: you'll be hustling along, face-in-scarf, and then, all of a sudden, angels are singing and you're briefly under heat lamps. Yes, maybe I will stay at The Plaza tonight, it's warm, here is my credit card.

So after narrowly avoiding Abercrombie I thought, when have I ever passed a performance venue and had a desire to go inside? I walked by Carnegie Hall every day on the way to work at IMG, and never once did I see, hear or feel anything that made me want to go into that lobby. I walked by the Miller Theatre yesterday, or, at least I think I did, since I didn't actually notice it in the mass of Columbia. There's no effort toward creating a sensory experience: nothing to turn my head, let alone my feet. Moving beyond heat lamps and AC, what can venues do to get people in the door?

Give us some idea of what's going on in there, most basically and importantly. It's "Carnegie Hall" ((jazz hands)),  but do people know the range of artists Carnegie presents? The posters wrap around the building, so unless you're circling the block, you're going to miss a lot of information. What needs to be pumped into the street outside Carnegie and any music venue, is, errrr, music. If I was walking along 57th street and heard past performances playing under Carnegie's awning, I would stop and listen, probably every time. Ideally, there would be a screen outside the doors detailing who/what/when you were listening to, along with another screen scrolling the upcoming performances.   Obviously, the rights for such a project would be a mild to moderate nightmare, since a lot of artists only allow their live performances to be recorded for archival purposes. If you can't play concert recordings, work with the record labels and play CDs from the artists on the season. Play stock music - just connect with the hundreds of people who walk by your building every day. (Incidentally, our cool friends at Abercrombie & Fitch are also known for blasting music inside and outside their stores.)

Another not-rocket-science idea is simply having screens in front of the hall playing concert video footage on loop. It would be amazing to see both historic and contemporary performances, and would really give the public a sense of the scope and legacy of the institution. It seems a bit counterintuitive not to include sound here (a la the ads at city bus stops), but we're all so video-obsessed that it probably wouldn't matter.

TV at the bus stop and dance music at your clothing store. Cookie-cutter poster of artist holding violin at Carnegie Hall. Which will get my attention?

Note: I've been told video screens are going to replace the banners at Lincoln Center when the renovations are complete, but I just spent the past 00:02:14 watching the "Lincoln Center Promenade Animation" and saw no such thing. The ticker of upcoming performances on the steps is pretty nice, though.