Wishlist

From Dan Walter, who’s 30, says he grew up with heavy metal, rock, pop, and rap. Lately he’s been buying and downloading classical recordings, and says he’s “a little bit upset with myself for not discovering and continuing to follow this great form of music much earlier in my life. I have been reading biographies of composers and doing research on the web about all the music I am interested in and continue to discover something new on a daily basis. I have a pretty big CD collection of popular music and have decided to start a collection of classical music.”

But that’s not all. Here, with his permission, is what he told me he’d like to see in classical music today:

1.      New music!

2.      New music!!

3.      New music that is relevant to today, and is marketed with as much effort as any popular music.

4.      Orchestras taking advantage of PBS again.

5.      Orchestras without so many stifling rules.

6.      Audiences without so many stifling rules.

7.      Concert halls embracing new technologies. (recording audio, and visual tech.)

8.      Music that has some controversy. (Political, social, religious, etc.) By this I don't mean controversy for controversy's sake. But a composer who is not afraid to take some risks and a orchestra not afraid to take those risks also.

9.      Low cost or free children's concerts that when it's over the kids are allowed to go up on stage and talk to the musicians and see and possibly try out the instruments. Get the kids excited about instruments they probably have never heard of before.

10.  Everyone to lighten up when it comes to art. Far more often than not art is to be enjoyed. Not studied to death.

Many, many thanks to Dan for this. Point four might be reversed, so that PBS (which is the culprit here) would telecast more orchestras. And point nine, very happily, describes something that many orchestras have done.

But no one should underestimate how important this list is. Here’s what someone who comes from classical music from the pop world would love to see — or, to put it more strongly, what many people who look at classical music from a pop perspective would like. Dan’s not alone. We’d attract a lot more people his age — and have a much more lively time ourselves — if we did what he suggests.