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Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

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Archives for November 2012

Getting out of the classical music biz

November 29, 2012 by Greg Sandow

Here I want to offer a radical idea: That all of us in classical music should get out of the classical music business. As I stressed at the end of my last post, this doesn't mean we should stop doing classical music. It means we should think about it differently. Here's an example. Someone I know, a veteran arts professional with a sterling resume (among other things, he ran one of the leading performing arts institutions in the US), emailed me about something he found dismaying at the New York Philharmonic. Alan Gilbert was about to conduct … [Read more...]

Concerts as events

November 27, 2012 by Greg Sandow

Conversation with a friend who works for a big orchestra. We're talking about attracting a new audience. He says they're identifying classically-inclined nonattenders. I say they ought to push beyond that, to attract non-classically inclined nonattenders. That's arguable, of course. Nobody would try to get people who don't now listen to country music to try it. But then country music doesn't need more listeners, as classical music does. Or more people buying tickets to concerts. And the world is full of smart people who are inclined toward … [Read more...]

A challenge!

November 12, 2012 by Greg Sandow

Austin, TX, bills itself as the "live music capital of the world." That's one thing I learned visiting there last week, to speak to students at the University of Texas School of Music. And — you saw this coming — classical music, including all the concerts given at the school, plays almost no part in Austin's live music scene. Everyone I talked to at the school said this. So there's a challenge for us. If we have a music school surrounded by what might really be the most active live music life anywhere, let's make the school part of … [Read more...]

Learning from Taylor Swift

November 8, 2012 by Greg Sandow

Or from her marketers. I've said before that commercial marketing has gone in new directions, and that we can learn from that. The Hunger Games film, for instance -- even though it was just about guaranteed to be a hit -- launched an extraordinary campaign to get fans (who already loved the book the film's based on) to promote the movie to each other. Follow the link above for more on that. And now comes Taylor Swift, with a new album, and a marketing campaign based in part on retail tie-ins -- Walmart, Target, Papa John's, Walgreen's. The … [Read more...]

Visiting Austin

November 6, 2012 by Greg Sandow

I'll be in Austin on Thursday (that's November 8), to speak to classes at the University of Texas. Don't think I'll have any public availability, which is a shame. I'd love to meet any readers who might be in the area. My host in Austin will be Robert Freeman, former director of the Eastman School, and founder of the entrepreneurship program there, which (as far as I know) is the oldest found in any music school in the US. It'll be a pleasure to meet Bob for the first time in person. Future trips this year might include Colorado and … [Read more...]

Triple whammy

November 5, 2012 by Greg Sandow

I'm sure this is something we all know about — the management/musician disputes that have hit one orchestra after another,  leading to seasons not starting on time, with no clear sense, in some cases, of when they ever might start. Tony Woodcock (president of New England Conservatory, and former CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra) in a blog post mentions Atlanta, Minnesota, Chicago, Indianapolis, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (where all concerts to the end of 2012 have been cancelled), and Jacksonville. To which we can add Spokane, where a … [Read more...]

More history

November 2, 2012 by Greg Sandow

Here — from a 1975 book by George Seltzer, The Professional Symphony Orchestra in the United States — is another bit of history. (To go along with the 1951 scene of audiences applauding after each movement of a piece, that I shared in my last post.) Seltzer's book is a collection of many articles, some short, some quite long, including a New Yorker piece from 1960 (if I remember correctly; I don't have the book with me) by Joseph Wechsler that gives the best account of what it's like to play an orchestra piece -— from the musicians' point of … [Read more...]

Greg Sandow

Though I've been known for many years as a critic, most of my work these days involves the future of classical music -- defining classical music's problems, and finding solutions for them. Read More…

About The Blog

This started as a blog about the future of classical music, my specialty for many years. And largely the blog is still about that. But of course it gets involved with other things I do — composing music, and teaching at Juilliard (two courses, here … [Read More...]

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How to write a press release

As a footnote to my posts on classical music publicists, and how they could do better, here's a post I did in 2005 -- wow, 11 years ago! --  about how to make press releases better. My examples may seem fanciful, but on the other hand, they're almost … [Read More...]

The future of classical music

Here's a quick outline of what I think the future of classical music will be. Watch the blog for frequent updates! I Classical music is in trouble, and there are well-known reasons why. We have an aging audience, falling ticket sales, and — in part … [Read More...]

Timeline of the crisis

Here — to end my posts on the dates of the classical music crisis  — is a detailed crisis timeline. The information in it comes from many sources, including published reports, blog comments by people who saw the crisis develop in their professional … [Read More...]

Before the crisis

Yes, the classical music crisis, which some don't believe in, and others think has been going on forever. This is the third post in a series. In the first, I asked, innocently enough, how long the classical music crisis (which is so widely talked … [Read More...]

Four keys to the future

Here, as promised, are the key things we need to do, if we're going to give classical music a future. When I wrote this, I was thinking of people who present classical performances. But I think it applies to all of us — for instance, to people who … [Read More...]

Age of the audience

Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Here's evidence that it used to be much younger. … [Read More...]

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