February 2007 Archives

The Apple Store

A month or so ago I went to the Apple Store in New York to buy a new iPod. (I dropped mine in the toilet. Don't ask!) And the store was a revelation. It's not just a store. It's a destination. It's packed with people. Some are shopping. Some are just trying out computers and iPods, which are available in great numbers for people to play with.

And some people are just hanging out. Some bring their computers, and seem to be sitting on comfortable padded benches, working. When I bought my iPod, I didn't have to wait on a checkout line. The salesguy who brought me the iPod (80 gig video iPod, black) took my payment on a handheld device. (Which, I noticed, was actually an adaptation of a Pocket PC -- a Windows gadget, deployed in the Apple Store! But Apple doesn't make any handheld device for the sales staff to use.)

So what are the lessons here for classical music? How could we make our institutions, and even our concerts, places people would willingly go, just to be there? (Above and beyond their interest in hearing the music, that is.)

Well, suppose an orchestra or an opera company (or even a chamber group, or a presenting organization) defined itself as the musical center of its city? Then they could open a space for all kinds of music. There could be headphones everywhere, so you could listen to recordings of local groups, in every musical genre. There could be a café, with live performances, again featuring every genre of music, including chamber groups from the orchestra. You could buy recordings, either on CD, or downloadable on the spot to your MP3 player. (Maybe some software questions would have to be solved for that, but at the very least you'd know you could download the music from a website.)

And you could buy tickets to every musical event going on in that town. Not to mention music books, posters, you name it. In the evening, the café would turn into a club, and offer headline concerts. Coolest of all, of course, would be if the concert hall itself became this space. Imagine an orchestra rehearsing in a space that people could at least look into -- and sometimes go in and out of, if a way could be found to keep them quiet enough. Thus the orchestra (or opera company, or chamber group, or presenting organization) makes itself accessible. No, more than accessible -- enticing. And it says, "We're part of all the music going on in this town." Which is how people in the town think of it, in any case, since a lot of them would go to both classical and non-classical performances. Why not acknowledge that, and make everyone feel more welcome?

And, if you have a chamber group...you could open the house an hour before your concert (or however early might be practical), and let people come and hang out with you onstage. You can talk with them, answer questions, play a little to demonstrate. You might (like the Apple Store) have things around for them to play with. Maybe listening stations (aka CD or MP3 players, with headphones). They could listen to all kinds of music that you and the group like, especially including things that aren't on the program, and things that aren't classical. Just to give your performance a nice, broad context.

Toyota

A piece last Sunday in the New York Times Magazine described in some detail how Toyota has been so successful. Some tidbits:

They do extensive research. For a redesign of their Sienna minivan, someone drove the Sienna and other minivans all over the US, Canada, and Mexico -- including very remote places -- just to see what driving a minivan was really like. For the redesign of their Tundra pickup truck, they

began visiting different regions of the U.S.; they went to logging camps, horse farms, factories and construction sites to meet with truck owners. By asking them face to face about their needs, Obu and Schrage sought to understand preferences for towing capacity and power; by silently observing them at work, they learned things about the ideal placement of the gear shifter, for instance, or that the door handle and radio knobs should be extra large, because pickup owners often wear work gloves all day. When the team discerned that the pickup has now evolved into a kind of mobile office for many contractors, the engineers sought to create a space for a laptop and hanging files next to the driver. Finally, they made archaeological visits to truck graveyards in Michigan, where they poked around the rusting hulks of pickups and saw what parts had lasted. With so many retired trucks in one place, they also gained a better sense of how trucks had evolved over the past 30 years -- becoming larger, more varied, more luxurious -- and where they might go next.

Toyota also plans years ahead. They began working on their Prius hybrid 10 years before they launched it, figuring that this was going to be a product that was needed, environmentally, and that people would want.

To help launch the redesigned Tundra, they approached influential people who use trucks (influential, anyway, in the world of pickup trucks). They also sponsored NASCAR events, and country music concerts, thinking they could get closer to pickup drivers that way.

So, again, what's the moral for classical music? Well, how many classical music institutions -- even the largest orchestras -- take time to get to know opinion leaders in their cities? Years ago, when Warner Records launched the Nonesuch recording of the Gorecki Third Symphony in Britain, a smart marketing guy sent advance copies to all kinds of opinion leaders with an interest in classical music (Elvis Costello was one of them, for example, and so was a former prime minister). The idea was to get the record talked about, before it was released. And this worked.

How many classical music institutions of any size take the time to find out how people in their areas listen to classical music?

The answer, of course, is that these things don't normally happen. Many organizations don't even do basic market research. Very few will test ad campaigns, for instance, before these campaigns are launched. So they really have no way of knowing whether their advertisements have even a ghost of a chance of working. This is true, even when they're trying some new marketing concept.

I'll be told -- as I've been told in the past -- that nobody can afford to do all these things.

But can we afford not to?

From Marie Finnegan, a classical music fan "in snowy Maine" (as she says):

HI Greg, 

I found your blog this morning and wanted to share a few thoughts.

I am a 39 beginning flute player. I played tenor sax back in high school so music isn't completely new to me. Classical music as an interest is, however. My band instructor wasn't a great motivator or teacher of classical music. (Actually he lacked many talents and the band sadly shrunk because of it.) Our "band" also lacked a string section. (we were 12 to 20 strong on a good day) I came back to music as an adult because I missed playing. Now I get to play duets with my daughter.  

To me I always thought of the audience for classic music as older stuffy types with money. I know that is a stereotype and it is based on my past perceptions. Like I said my interest in classical music is very new. I never really gave it a lot of thought until recently. I had an epiphany that part of the reason I love period movies is due to the music.  

I also happened to catch a fantastic show recently on the Ovation channel about the London Philharmonic that sparked more of my interest. It had a lot of behind the scenes info which was fascinating to me. It really brought home the struggles of the orchestra as a group. Then I caught a piece on Ben Zander and was hooked. He made it even more interesting and I loved his teaching style. I now hope to go to Boston to see him conduct someday. 

I think to a lot of "regular people" classical music is seen as complicated. I know I see it that way. There are many different composers with different styles and then there are interpretations of each piece by the conductors of each performance. Personally I am thinking about getting the Idiots guide to classical music to help me sort it all out. It is intimidating to us regular (uneducated in classic music) folk and I think forgotten that you don't need to know the name of the music to enjoy hearing it.  

I bet a reality show set in an orchestra would go a LONG way to educating the public about them and classical music. It would teach the people how it all works and let them know why it is important to keep people "in the seats" so to speak. Unfortunately TV is one of the best ways to reach the masses. Obviously movies also help. How many people know the name Mozart because of the Amadeus movie?  

Call it nursing the audience if you will. None of use came out of the womb eating steak after all. You have to have a gateway into the music for the beginners to lure them in towards the hard stuff. I think in todays society many people don't want to start anything they perceive as difficult.  

Just some thoughts and ideas from the peanut gallery. I love the blog and will continue to check it out. Even though much of it is over my head.

All of us inside the biz can learn a lot from the new audience we wish we had. So thanks, Marie. And let me stress something -- it's not just that we want them buying tickets. It's just common courtesy. Let's speak with the people who get interested in us. Instead of keeping them out with forbidding rules. I know that many of us -- most of us? -- have learned this lesson, but it can't be repeated enough.

So in that spirit, I wrote to Marie, and said: If you can't understand something in my blog, please ask! Which of course goes for everyone else, too.I have to remember that not only experts are reading me.

In the old days -- which I used to think meant the 18^th and 19^th centuries -- pianists used to improvise introductions to pieces they played. This was called "preluding," and gave rise to the short, freeform pieces we call "preludes" (like Chopin's), which were written-out versions of the kind of music pianists might improvise.

But now I've learned that pianists preluded well into the 20^th century. And that there are recorded examples, from old-time like Josef Hoffman and Wilhelm Backhaus! I guess I'm late in learning this, because many people seem to know about it -- go here, for instance. But still this is exactly the kind of thing that's been forgotten in the classical music world today, since we've all been taught to believe we should play only what composers wrote. It's heresy to add something of your own, like an improvised introduction.

And yet here's a lovely example of Backhaus doing it, in a live performance as late as 1954. First you'll hear an announcement, in German, saying that Backhaus is ill, and will end with concert with a short Schumann piece, instead of a Beethoven sonata. There's a splatter of applause, and then Backhaus starts to improvise, leading into the Schumann, which grows easily out of the improvisation. It's as if Backhaus had cleared his palate with a sip of water, before starting on a new course at a meal. Nothing could be engaging. I'd even say that the Schumann sounds more welcome and more personal -- and certainly more striking -- than it would it if stood on its own.

Backhaus plays it beautifully, too. Listen for yourself, and see what happens when classical musicians take ownership both of the music they play, and of their performances.

(Many thanks to Anders Vinge, who's been studying improvisation in classical music, and sent me the Backhaus performance, along with four by Josef Hoffman. It's from a Carnegie Hall recital, recorded live, and currently available, or so I've read, on a Decca release in Japan. For preluding in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, see Valerie Woodring Goertzen, "By Way of Introduction: Preluding by 18th- and Early 19th-Century Pianists." The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Summer, 1996), pp. 299-337.)

Something wonderful in Andrew Druckenbrod's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette piece on applause...and no, not simply what he and various Pittsburgh Symphony musicians say about how people in the audience should feel free to clap between movements. And maybe even during the music.

No, what struck me even more was Andy's many links to musical examples, which bring to life so many things he talks about. He even includes both live and studio recordings of "Un bel di," from Madama Butterfly, to show what happens when people applaud over the orchestral postlude.

And this is his idea. It's not a Post-Gazette policy, but rather something Andy does on his own, because he thinks -- and of course he's right -- that it's helpful to his readers. Note that it's a fair amount of extra work (as I know very well, because I've put music online myself). But he does it anyway. Give him the hero of the day award, for making online music writing far more vivid. And no, I don't think he's the only person doing this, but he might be the only newspaper critic doing it regularly with online versions of his published pieces.

If anybody else does it regularly, please let me know, and you'll get a hero of the day award, too!

(Full disclosure. Andy once wrote a very friendly profile of me. But I'd praise anyone who did what he's doing. And in fact I found out about, not from him -- and not even from the ArtsJournal link -- but because one of my students e-mailed me about the piece because of what it said about applause.)

My 80 gig video iPod, and my Shure E5-C headphones. I've had Etymotic headphones, which I'd swear were the best in-ear earbuds I could possibly hear, but the Shures (a Christmas gift) outdo them, both in how well they isolate outside noise, and in their sound. It's so rich and detailed that at first it sounded almost phony -- too real, too rich. But then I got used to them. Perfect for planes. Two downsides, though. To get them to stay in place, you have to loop the cord over your ears, which takes a long moment, and can be a little cumbersome. Plus there's a whine when I use them with my laptop, on battery power. But still I love them.

And the iPod! I wondered how I'd feel about the small screen, but it's no problem at all, except maybe for distance shots in which you're supposed to be able to make out details like the wording of a sign. But after many hours of use, I find this doesn't bother me at all. And it's far outweighed by the convenience -- no, the intimacy -- of holding a movie in my hand. This is the perfect stress-buster for travel. I can even look forward to my weekly flights to Rochester, if I make one simple rule -- no work allowed on the plane or in the airport -- and if I look forward to 40 minutes or so of peaceful movie-watching in the air.

I should apologize for my silence on this blog for the past -- can it be? -- two weeks. Or maybe not. I'd have preferred to post, but (to bring up an issue more important than music, both for myself and others) I realized this fall that I'd been very stressed. My paying work, traveling, my teaching, this blog, meetings on future projects, composing, my online book...I've had a lot of balls in the air at once, and I noticed a lot of classic symptoms of stress. My mind racing at night, back pain, irritable bowels; and throughout it all, a feeling that I wasn't having much fun. I read a book on stress, and was struck by many things, including this: Studies show that people, queried after they've made decisions, don't regret choosing pleasure over work.

So I've been trying to change. I had a long Christmas holiday, and then launched the series I've interrupted on this blog, about what I think the classical music crisis really is about. And then I prepared the two courses I teach, one at Juilliard, the other at Eastman, both about the future of classical music. The Eastman course is a schlep, worthwhile, but exhausting -- up in the morning at 6 AM, catch a plane, fly from New York to Rochester, teach, maybe lead a workshop on entrepreneurship, then fly back, and get home late in the evening. Putting aside all my other work, of course. Which includes preparing parts for my new symphony, commissioned by the South Dakota Symphony, and scheduled for a premiere on April 19. And also making small revisions, in response to suggestions from some of the musicians, who've looked at the score and found some places that are harder than they need to be.

I'm trying not to force myself to do anything (except, of course, the things with rigid deadlines), trying not to work a full day seven days a week, making sure I take time for cooking, movies, walks, and other entertainments. I'm doing pretty well, which makes my life a lot more livable. But I haven't wanted to obsess about the blog, which unfortunately has left me silent.

Not that I don't have things to say. They'll pop up here. And I'll resume my "Where We Stand" series, with some thoughts on popular culture. I'm sorry for my silence, but, you know, I couldn't help it.

Here are some things I've thought about, watched, read:

DVDs of Mozart operas from last summer's Mozart marathon in Salzburg (they did the entire Mozart operatic oeuvre, 22 works in all, many written, of course, when he was in his teens). Really vivid, sharp productions, featuring an unforgettable giant venus flytrap in La finta giardiniera (and also a soprano riding gently on the back of a giant dove). And a rewrite of the ending of Lucio Silla, making it chilling, rather than celebratory. Though the real achievement was making that opera gripping at all, with its long string of more or less featureless arias. The production dug out the issues lying underneath, and brought them to vivid life. These productions, taken as a whole, have some of the best acting I've ever seen in opera, a tribute both to the casting and to the stage directors.

The new Norah Jones album. Quietly delectable.

Citizen Kane, which I've been watching on my video iPod, to check my feeling that the operas in the standard repertoire are getting to seem a little like old movies -- wonderful, but clearly from another era. I'll have more to say about this, of course. But I thought I'd rewatch a certified Great Old Movie, to make sure that even the best old movies come off the way I thought they did. And they do.

Georgina Born's Rationalizing Culture, an anthropological study (!) of IRCAM. And quite a detailed, serious and savage one. Does nothing to refute my feeling that musical modernism -- even if it started well -- ended up as something of a blight. Quite priceless: the comments of IRCAM's non-musical staff on IRCAM's concerts ("But no one comes to them! And the music is terrible!"). And the detailed accounts of rampant sexism.

Sheila Fitzpatrick's Everyday Stalinism, the most vivid book I've ever read on life in Stalin's Russia (and I've read a bunch of them). Unlike other writing on this subject, it doesn't simply tell a tale of horrors (though of course they were there), or expose criminality and chaos. Instead it shows what people thought about -- the strutting, macho leadership, the squalor of everyday life, the strong belief (rational or not) that things were getting better. Why, for instance, did women start wearing makeup late in the 1930s? With the approval, that is, of the Communist regime. It wasn't simply (as I've read elsewhere) that Stalin brought back many traits of older culture, so he could rule with more stability. There was also a belief that the revolution would make Russia more cultured -- that, for instance, the peasants might start to bathe more often than once every two weeks. And once you got beyond that, what then? You might learn the names of Shakespeare's plays -- and start to dress a little better. A fascinating time, the 1930s, full of hope (and not only in Soviet Russia), even when the hope didn't make any sense.