Audience participation

I was just in Pittsburgh, where I did the last of my "Symphony with a Splash" concerts this season. We shaved someone's head on stage during the Bacchanal from Samson and Dalilah. We asked for volunteers from the audience, and got several, including one player from the Pittsburgh Steelers! I picked someone else, though, who'd caught my eye the moment he stood up.

Our haircutter was both expert and theatrical. She actually shaved the guy's head in rhythm with the music, and paced herself so she'd finish with a flourish, just as the music ended. She bent down and kissed the bald scalp to the final chords.

The audience roared with delight, and gave us a standing ovation. The orchestra seemed to love it, too, to judge from what they said backstage and afterwards, and from their evident interest onstage. They played wonderfully, as if the whole thing tickled them no end.

Of course we had someone planted in the audience, ready to go if we didn't get any real volunteers. But we got them! We also announced that two of our subscribers were getting engaged. It's all so we can create a community with our audience.

But now for something even better. The Symphony's subscription concerts last week featured the three pieces that were finalists for the Masterprize two years ago. Masterprize is a British competition, which finished by having the audience vote on the three final pieces. A group of professionals also voted, and the two votes were combined to determine the winner, which was Christopher Theofanidis's Rainbow Body. (Available on a Telarc CD with that name, played by the Atlanta Symphony with Robert Spano conducting, along with Jennifer Higdon's Blue Cathedral, Barber's First Symphony, and Copland's Appalachian Spring.)

The Pittsburgh Symphony decided to recreate the Masterprize, by playing the three final pieces on the first half of all three subscription concerts last weekend. The people in the audience could vote for their favorites at intermission. Then Emanuel Ax played the Mozart B-flat major piano concerto. After he finished, the votes were tallied, the winner was announced, and the orchestra played the winning vote again. Yakov Kreisberg conducted, and the other two pieces, apart from Theofanidis, were Einstein's Violin, by Robert Henderson, and Tango, by Arturs Maskats.

Rainbow Body won all three nights (which meant the orchestra had to play it six times; they did it bravely). But what's really wonderful is how the audience reacted. They loved it. They got wildly involved in their votes. I led discussions each night with members of the audience, and they were very vocal about which pieces they liked (and which they didn't like), and why. At intermission, I heard, this was a hot topic of conversation. In the men's and ladies' rooms, that's what people talked about. One woman I know came alone to the concert, and was drawn into conversation with others sitting near her. Which piece had she liked best, they wanted to know.

So the experiment was a success. The audience listened, as far as I could judge, a lot harder than they normally might. Best of all, they felt involved. I asked one group what they'd do if the Symphony programmed another piece by any of the three composers. Would they come to hear it? Absolutely! they all said. They'd developed, as far as I could tell, some interest in all three composers. And, sure, we can't take their answers as stone-written gospel; most, I'm sure, might not actually buy a ticket if they saw one of those composers popping up again. But some would. And the mere fact that so many people said they'd want to come indicates more interest, I think, than the normal new-music performance would create.

Seems like a no-brainer, really. Give the audience a reason to feel involved, and -- can you believe it? -- they feel involved.