Just say hello

From Jon Farley in

w:st="on">Britain (and posted here with his

permission) comes something worth thinking about. Jon says, “I studied music at

school and though I loved the music I found the stuffiness overbearing.” And

then this:

I went to a [classical] concert

last week and the thing that struck me was that nobody talked to the audience

and that’s really weird! I listen to a wide variety of music and it’s only the

classical world that does this. Even a hello, how are you? would

do. I went to a contemporary music concert the next night – completely

different with the organiser/performer/composer

introducing the concert, performers or composers introducing pieces and you

could chat to them in the interval. It made a huge amount of difference. Having

performed myself – mostly as a singer – I find connecting with the audience

vital and I know that’s done mostly through the music but a little talking

never hurt. The concerts were all part of a festival trying to bring a

wide range of music from classical to contemporary to you name

it to a wider and younger audience with some success. Have a look at

href="http://www.fuseleeds.org.uk/" title="http://www.fuseleeds.org.uk/">http://www.fuseleeds.org.uk/ for

more info.

People don’t always believe me when I say that a younger

audience wants things the existing (older) audience doesn’t ask for. So here’s one

more piece of evidence that they do.

And now please follow that link. You’ll find the website for

a festival in Leeds (in the UK)

that looks just wonderful—and which brings together pop music and new classical

music, mostly of the outside-the-concert-hall variety. I’ve noted the natural

link between those two worlds before, and this is an exceptionally stunning

example. Too bad the festival (according

to Jon) is held only every other year.

Does everybody realize what credibility classical music institutions

would have with that younger audience everybody talks about, if they organized

something like this? Doesn’t matter whether they normally put

on events like this or not. And in fact if they don’t normally go in

this direction, they’d help themselves even more with a younger audience if

they’d try it.