My last post sparked some lively discussion, including interesting comments from Ryan Tracy, who runs the Counter Critic site. One thing Ryan said left me thinking. He named (almost wistfully, I thought) Ani DiFranco as an example of an alternative rock figure with a small audience, and offered the hope that classical music, too, could accept small performances for relatively few people. Which of course -- in a way -- it always does. One quick (and crude) take on Ryan's point might be that classical music, compared to pop, is a … [Read more...]

Problem: How to attract a young audience Solution: I've written about this before, here and here. You can almost infallibly attract a younger audience if you combine classical music with indie rock. (I'm assuming, of course, that you do this well -- that you choose the right indie bands, and produce the concert in the right way.) The London Sinfonietta proved this years ago, and (in the first link, above) I've talked about Wordless Music, a concert series in New York that also offers proof. Last year, their first, they offered just a … [Read more...]