Defending the students

There are many good ideas here, including a number that are already part of the classical music scene. The food and drink and less casual dress commenters might enjoy attending a Boston Pops concert where the audience does indeed sit at tables and chairs (on the floor at least) and the orchestra dresses in more summery clothes. There is also a blending of pop and classical in the format Arthur Fiedler originally devised.

This would also be a good place to allow people to tweet and even allow super-projections of audience thoughts. So the ideas are not as unworkable as they may seem at first glance.

I also get the feeling that these were not spontaneous ideas. Why? The repetition of certain basic themes indicates this was an educator guided exercise, with the musicians then writing down their "own" thoughts, many of which were clearly just rehashing what they heard, and preferred personally. I don't take the fact that only one student "liked things as they are" to mean anything except that this position was clearly not one of the options offered by the discussion leader.

The Victorian manners we display in the concert hall are mostly useful, but I would agree it is time to review them and consider some changes.

Larry, as the instructor (so to speak) in this exercise, I have to take what you say seriously. But I think you've missed one stage of what took place. Or in fact two stages. Stage one was that the NOI decided before I even showed up that it would make changes in the formats for some of its concerts. So that was a given. The only question was what the changes would be, and the idea was that the choices would be made by the students.

So that's one thing, Larry, that I think you're missing here. And the second thing is how the discussion actually proceeded. I gave them many examples of changes that had been tried in various places. Some of these ideas were new to them, and some weren't. And -- very important! -- some of the students had been thinking about all this for a long time on their own, and some of them had tried out changes more audacious than most of what showed up in the suggestions.

After I gave them various examples, we then had a discussion. And that, Larry, is where the ideas that were repeated so many times came from. Not from me, but from the students making suggestions after I was finished talking. Some of the ideas that came up, from the students, met with tremendous approval from the group. After this session finished, they were asked (not by me) to write down their suggestions, and it's hardly a surprise that many of them repeated the ideas that other students had suggested just a few minutes before, and which had been very warmly received.

Your point is more clearly stated here, Greg, and I do understand the stance you're taking.

But you'll have to forgive your readers: we're human! Present us with lists of interesting, stimulating and even witty ideas and of course we're going to want to take them seriously and imagine them in action and share our personal response to them, +/-/neutral. And we're going to want to think about the underlying directions of thought the suggestions represent. The only way to avoid that is to not publish the lists.

But I'm actually glad you did. On reading the actual suggestions, especially this longer list, I'm encouraged to see that there were many fresh ideas in the mix – not necessarily original or untried, but fresh to this blog. Of course, it doesn't matter one iota if some of these things have been tried before and found to work (or not). As you say, the point is that the students are committed to making a difference in concerts for which they are responsible. Looking forward to the reports.

Thanks, Yvonne.

One of the best things about this blog, for me, is that I learn how to make my points more clearly and effectively. And more comprehensively, too, as I learn from people making comments about things I've left out, or about arguments against my ideas that I hadn't considered. I think, quite seriously, that this has made me a better professional, and even, if I dare say this, a better person.

LOVE the webcast of some rehearsals idea, and I think a bit of a chat before a work (preferably a biography that hasn't been sanitised) is a must. I think a lot of places already do the foyer concerts and I really like them, but not sure if they pull the crowds or a nice side benefit to the folks already there.

But I hate the idea of having food and drink during a concert... whilst it may attract a few 'newbies', it's also gonna annoy a lot of 'oldies'. I go insane if I have to listen to the crunch-crackle of a chips packet or a slurping straw during any kind of performance. I think trying to market a music concert as similiar to a baseball game is a dead-end, because it's simply NOT a baseball game and never will be. The only similarity is that its a bunch of people who've paid money to watch a smaller bunch of people do something.

For many years now there has been the mistaken notion, marketed as "crossover" which as practiced really translates as "you can get people to like classical music by not playing it."

Sadly, most of the ideas above are similar. If you turn a concert into a dinner, a ball game or a TV show, you are not bringing people to a concert.

Some simpler ideas, such as providing cough drops in soft wrappers (which the Philadelphia Orchestra used to do and desperately needs to do again) would be a better place to start.

Harrison, if what you say is true, why do you think an enthusiastic group of classical musicians -- who love classical music -- had these ideas?

They weren't thinking of marketing. They're trying to create concerts they themselves would like to go to.

I think some of these are good ideas, and some are less good or have been tried before and not worked. But Greg has a good point - with most ideas, it is the spirit and mood that makes something a success or failure. I can't help but mention the San Francisco Opera's simulcast of opera to the ballpark in SF. I've gone all three times and I can't possibly convey how magical it is. Opera is sometimes a hard pill for those who aren't "in the know" but at a ballpark, everyone can enjoy it, cheer for Tosca, boo Scarpia, eat french fries, drink beer, run up and down the aisles. Will it translate into ticket sales -- well it DOES. Will those folks like the experience in the opera house. Who knows. But a lot of people -- 27,500 official count - had a hell of a good time and felt something perhaps they hadn't expected to feel .....a connection to this art form. So, my feelig is...let's open ourselves to creativity and doing things differently. You can't run before you walk and you can't walk before you crawl.

Reading these students' suggestions makes me feel VERY OLD and very much out of the hustle and bustle of city life. I often refer my (very rural) music appreciation students (who I often refer to this blog) seem to love the fact that classical music concerts are different. They like the idea of a musician communicating without having to "teach" the audience about the music. They like the ability to make what they want to of the experience. The like the rarefied quality--the "otherness" and even the exoticism--of the experience.

My students would certainly agree with having low-priced tickets, and certainly wouldn't mind the idea of having a place eat and drink during intermission, but, there is something about the quality of the unadorned listening experience that they probably wouldn't like to give up. We have to give up so much in our lives to commercialism already.

Interesting, how these things play out. Many of the people who come to the Wordless Music series in NY, where indie bands and classical music are combined on concert programs, seem to like hearing their favorite bands in concert, rather than in a club. That's because they can listen more seriously.

But then your students may be a minority among younger people. As I said in respond to another comment, when younger people do come to classical concerts, they may not be a useful guide to what the majority of younger people might want, because the majority of younger people are staying away. So we need to consult them, too.

I don't know if I'd pointed this out to you before, Greg (or if you already know about this group) but the Orkestra Projekt in Indianapolis does a great number of the suggestions above during their events. Check out their "About Us" page:
http://www.orkestraprojekt.com/About.aspx

To follow up on Karen's comment, the SF Opera offered a killer deal to everyone who attended the event at the ballpark, first timers or not. You will definitely see pick up on it (50% off upcoming performances of Traviata and Tosca).

Greg, many of these comments make me think of CSO's Beyond the Score, which includes several elements that make the music come alive. I think it's one of the best things happening to classical music today.

I've heard a lot about Beyond the Score, and I saw their presentation on Shostakovich 4 when it came to the NY Philharmonic. It was terrifically effective.

But, that said, it didn't seem to attract an audience new or relatively new to classical music. I think programs like this are two-edged. They can help people get closer to the music, but they won't make people _want_ to get closer. In fact, their educational subtext ("we're going to teach you about this, because otherwise you won't appreciate it" -- which is overtly the thinking, as it was expressed to me, at the San Francisco Symphony, about the video presentations MTT has made about various pieces in the repertoire) -- the educational subtext can turn people right off, before they even show up.

Of course, if a new audience is showing up for these things in Chicago, then I'm overstating my point.

The observation about Beyond the Score rings true for me. A related concept, in which a short program of music is "unpacked" and explored by the conductor, goes on in my neck of the woods and it's very popular, regularly filling a 1200 seat hall and sustaining a strong subscription base.

This program of concerts was initially conceived and marketed as something for young adult newbies, as revealed in its original name and the continuing add-ons: free wine tasting afterwards and so on. A few from that group do come, but (and it's been amusing to see the organisation's surprise at this) it's most popular with the demographic that already subscribes to one of our main concert series. This is the group characteristed as sophisticated, well-informed concert-goers. Well, there's a reason they're well-informed!
As you say, they precisely the people who enjoy the music already and want to get closer to it.

My view is that programs like this are valuable and valued. We should definitely do them and do them well. But we shouldn't be naive and consider that they will necessarily do much to increase our audience. (Make it stronger maybe, but not grow in size.)

I attended NOI's "New Lights" concert. As was to be expected, some of the ideas tried were more successful than others. What finally made the evening memorable, though, was the virtuosity of the performance of the Adams Chamber Symphony, made more enjoyable as one watched the interaction of the performers playing the piece without a conductor.

It still seemed to me at the end of the evening that I was watching efforts to make a program of relatively inaccessible pieces more interesting by means that didn't have much to do with the music, and that the program was the key issue.

Perhaps what is needed is a greater effort to promote "gateway" music. There are composers out there with a foothold in the classical genre writing virtuosic music that is filling seats and selling albums. Edgar Meyer and Mark O'Connor are fine examples. Something like an O'Connor String Quartet might offer a better chance of drawing in new listeners than the Kirchner, the opening piece on the "New Lights" program and not something, even now having heard it, that I would buy a recording of or ticket for.

Commissioning and performing accessible pieces by artists who are enjoying commercial success with them seems to me more likely to draw and hold new listeners. Less accessible, even deservedly critically acclaimed pieces such as the Adams, don't seem to me as likely bring people in, and back, to concert halls. But anyone who appreciated and came for a piece by O'Connor or Meyer would have enjoyed the performance of the Adams.

Thanks for this.

I'll soon be posting a blog entry on that concert. People naturally will differ on how they react to what the students did. But we should understand what their goal was. They weren't trying, for instance, to make difficult music more palatable. I never heard that come up in any conversation, either before the concert or after it. The students more than anything else wanted to give a concert that they themselves would enjoy, and the nature of the program didn't make much of a difference, as far as I can see.