Monthly Archives: November 2012

Getting out of the classical music biz

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 a new piece, and had what my correspondent thought was a marvelously engaging conversation on stage with the composer. During the concert, not before.

When they finished talking, my correspondent naturally thought that he’d now hear the piece. But no! Alan and the composer walked offstage, and the concertmaster stood to lead the orchestra in tuning. Only after that did Alan come back onstage to conduct. Momentum gone, moment ruined.

So let me ask you: If we thought we were in the performance business, or in the art business, or in the creating depth and excitement for our audience business — if we conceived of ourselves in any of those ways (or many more that any of us could think of), would such a thing be allowed to happen?

No way! We’d understand that a terrific onstage conversation makes people eager to hear the piece, and we’d dive right into the music.

But no. We think we’re in the classical music business, or the orchestra business, and in those businesses, that’s not how things are done. We don’t think of what makes sense for art, or music, or for our audience. Or even for our own involvement. We just repeat all our rituals.

I’m exaggerating a bit for effect. Of course there’s a middle ground, where most of life (in all areas) happens. A little of this, a little of that, mixtures of opposites. And so it is in classical music.

But we have too many rituals, too many stiffnesses, too many things that don’t make sense. Which is why I say we should get out of the classical music business, or, maybe a better way to put it, drive the classical music business (and all its rules and expectations) out of our thinking. We should think of ourselves as doing something else — playing or singing or composing classical music, yes, for sure, but doing it in the service of art, creativity, performance, human interaction, communication, whatever. And we should put those things first.

I’m influenced here by something I read in an arousing business book, Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win, by William C. Taylor and Polly G. LaBarre. Like all business books more than a few years old (this one was published in 2006), some things seem a little quaint. Inevitably there are companies (Netflix and Yahoo, to name two which are praised in this book) that later ran into trouble the authors couldn’t foresee.

But still this book hit me like a powerful ocean wave. So many new ways of doing business, from wildly successful companies, almost none of which we see in classical music. That’s the subject for a future blog post.

But what stuck with me and led to what I’m writing now was something about Southwest Airlines. Its CEO is quoted as saying that he doesn’t think he was in the air travel business. Instead, he was in the freedom business. Meaning that he wanted to empower his customers, his passengers, finding ways to make them feel comfortable, unimpeded, to make air travel easy.

And, just as much, he wanted to empower his employees, make them feel free to act on their own in the best interest of the passengers. Hence the famous Southwest practice — is it still in place? — of giving all employees power to spend up to $1000 at any time, purely on their own initiative, to resolve any customer’s problem.

If someone can rethink an airline, why can’t we rethink an orchestra? Or an opera company? Or anything in classical music? The old ways are dying, losing their audience, their vitality, even their appeal for many classical musicians. (By now surely a majority of younger ones.) How do we replace them? Let’s get ourselves out of the classical music mindset — out of the classical music business.

And let’s instead think of some other business we want to think of ourselves as being in, something that will let us play/sing/compose classical music with real power and freedom. And by doing that draw in an excited, smart, artistic new audience.

A wonderful quote from someone I was talking to, yet another person with a tremendously distinguished resumé: “We have powerful, vital music. But we keep it in a cage.”

Concerts as events

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 art, who don’t listen to classical music. So — unlike country music, and other nonclassical genres — we’re not reaching people who should be in our audience.

How to reach them? Make concerts events, I say. (As opposed to hoping programming or conductors or soloists will attract new people.) My friend says — very reasonably —  that that’s hard to do when you give more than 100 concerts each year.

At which point I realize that I haven’t been clear with him, or with myself, or with all of you who read this blog, when I’ve made this point in the past. My friend, again reasonably, thought I meant that each concert should be a distinct event, different from all the others. I might have thought I meant that, too.

But no. That wouldn’t work for a large institution, and in fact might be a strain on almost anyone who tried it. And when I thought a little harder, I realized it wasn’t what I meant. What lay deeper inside me was the thought that, if you’re giving classical performances, each performance should feel like an event because you’ve found a way of performing — encompassing both how you make music, and how you present your performances — that draws people in.

It’s like stores. This is, to put it mildly, a familiar example, but whenever I walk into an Apple store, I’m happy. I like the products, like the bright, happy look, like the people who work there. But when I walk into a Best Buy, forget it. I’m a little down from the moment I step through the door.

Or Target. I’m happy there. I expect to find unexpected things I’ll like — vivid designer plastic dishes, for instance. There’s a tremendous stock of baby things. And groceries!

So I want to be happy from the moment I walk into a classical performance space, an opera house or concert hall. Design plays a big part in that, but so do expectations, built up from past visits. And also the attitude of people, both staff and performers. What are the ushers like? If I’m seeing a chamber group, or an orchestra, what’s my first thought, the moment the musicians walk onstage? Do they interest me immediately, or leave me feeling blah?

In one of my branding workshops, someone who promotes a concert series wanted to brand it as lively. One thought we came up with, in discussing that: Encourage ushers to wear bright clothes (or dress in some other way that pleases them), and show some personality.

Every institution, every performing group, should reexamine the way its performances feel. Soloists, too. And create a concert template (which of course can be varied for special occurances) that makes every performance feel like an event.

Footnote: to do that, I think we’ll have to get out of the classical music business. In our minds, I mean. We’re not going to stop offering classical music. But if we think that’s the business we’re in, we strangle ourselves, as I’ll explain in another post. If you think you’re in the performance business, or the creativity business, or simply (but powerfully) in the you business, you’ll blow the doors open, and let some energy in. 

A challenge!

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 that.

Of course, I’m in no position to work on this, since I’m an outsider in Austin. But let’s agree that this is a challenge all of us in classical music should care about. I’ve said many times that our highest priority — our absolutely highest priority — should be to build a new, younger audience. I’ve also said that music schools (especially those that teach entrepreneurship, which at this point means just about all of them) should encourage and help their students to find an audience their own age.

And where better to do that than Austin?

Again, I’m an outsider. But here’s one way they might proceed. The important thing, I’d think, is to start small. Don’t try to make the school a major player right away in Austin’s club and concert scene. It won’t work. Second, I’d carefully pick the performances that might work in Austin clubs. A lot of them, I’d think, would be new music. And few, at least at first, would be long performances of old repertoire, a complete Brahms trio, for instance.

Third, I wouldn’t try to map the path in much detail in advance. That’s because we don’t know enough yet about what will work. So I might pick some students who wanted, as performers, to make this leap into Austin clubs, and who had a chance of doing it successfully. They’d have to be carefully chosen. They’d have to be people comfortable in clubs, people who’d look right there, and who’d know how to handle themselves, how to talk during their shows (as bands do). And how to pick music that would work in clubs.

Once those students were chosen, or chose themselves, they’d get in contact with people who book the clubs. The school most likely should make preliminary contacts, to get the thing going. The club bookers would have to buy into this, at least in principle, before the students talked to them. I wouldn’t want to saddle students with all the work of blazing the necessary trails.

Finally, one thing is absolutely crucial. This is not an education effort. We don’t want to presume to teach anything to our club audience. We’ll assume that they’re smart people, overall, with lots of curiosity about music, eager to hear something new, and to roar if they like it.

So the question then is to find performances that speak entirely for themselves. Ligeti etudes, for instance. A pianist goes into a club, a pianist with a good club style, aces three Ligeti etudes, blows the roof off the place, and leaves people screaming for more.

That could easily happen, and it shouldn’t be hard to think of other music that would work. The first pieces to pick, I’d think, would be pieces whose sound blends with the music you’d normally hear in the clubs, which is why I think new music would generally work best.

But after our pianist establishes herself as someone who belongs in clubs, the next step is for her to build her fan base (something the school should be ready to help her do, with mentoring, encouragement, ideas, and maybe funding). And once she had fans, she could play things that might not have worked at first — a Chopin nocturne, a Debussy prelude, Webern’s Piano Variations. Once people like you, they’ll follow you to places they didn’t know they’d want to go.

And of course I might be wrong in some of this. Again, it’s not a great idea to plan these things too much in advance. I think my general approach would work, but once it’s in effect — stand back and see what happens! What actually unfolds (and unfolds with great success) might not be anything that we’d expect.

Footnote: the piano. Small clubs don’t have pianos. So I’d envisage getting funding, to bring pianos to the clubs. The apparition of a grand piano on a club stage would be a sensation in itself.

And if this turns out to be impractical, other instruments of course would work. Solo flute, solo clarinet. Solo bass. Tuba! And of course violin and cello. Find the right player, find the right music, and go.

Second footnote: this approach would work anywhere where there are clubs — in any reasonably large city, for instance. But if Austin really is the live music capital of the world, with a major music school in the middle of it, that would be a perfect place to start.

Learning from Taylor Swift

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 retailers might do in-store promotions, or Swift might provide special songs for the albums sold at certain stores. Or a 96-page book that’s part of a special edition of the CD sold only at Wal-Mart. Or Swift-branded guitar picks, sold only there.

This is bigtime stuff, and might seem out of reach to classical music institutions, let alone classical ensembles or soloists. Or it might even seem distasteful. Some people might not want to get into bed with Wal-Mart to sell records.

But we can do this! In our own way, of course. And with full integrity, for those bothered by big-business tie-ins. If you’ve got a recording coming out, look at your own situation. Who supports you? Who are your friends? Where have you played? Is there a coffeehouse, an art gallery, a club, a boutique, an indie bookstore where you know people, where you hang out, where you’ve played or worked, where you feel at home?

See if the boutique or gallery will partner you, or at least help out, with the album release. Why not some in-store promotion from a hair salon you go to, and where you played, the day they opened, and had a celebration?

The only limit here are your contacts and your imagination. Big classical music institutions can surely find some bigger partners.

See my post on actively finding an audience for related ideas.

 

Visiting Austin

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 Norway. Details when available. And, of course, things can change.

I love making these visits, I should add. It’s not just that I get to hold forth on my specialties. But I meet terrific people, and — very important — learn what’s going on in places I otherwise might not know about.

And I love spending time with students. Teaching is one of the great pleasures in my life, and meeting students at places where I don’t teach feels like a special bonus.

What I always tell people, when they invite me somewhere, is “Drain me dry.” If you’d like me to visit your institution, please contact me.