The New York Philharmonic is hosting a “Bloggers’ Night” for their CONTACT! new music series on December 17th at Symphony Space. The evening promises free booze, specifically Finlandia Vodka in honor of composer-in-residence Magnus Lindberg (one hopes we would have gotten PBRs or “Natty Light” if it was an American composer-in-residence), and the opportunity to hang with the artists after the concert. Blog posts about CONTACT! will be aggregated on WNYC/WQXR’s new Q2 website.
I have an e mail in to the Philharmonic’s press office asking whether or not bloggers will be encouraged to live-blog or live-Tweet at their Blogger’s Night. Many other orchestras have hosted Bloggers’ Nights in the past, mainly, it seems, as a way to get non-classical writers into the concert hall. Here’s how the St. Louis Symphony, which recently hosted its third (!) Blogger’s Night, does it, in the words of Publications Manager and in-house blogger Eddie Silva:
We invited a whole host of local bloggers around the St. Louis area, mostly folks who wrote some sort of music-related blog, usually about rock & roll, to our October 30th program of Stravinsky’s Song of the Nightingale, Tan Dun’s Water Concerto, Bright Sheng’s Colors of Crimson (Marimba Concerto), and Bartok The Miraculous Mandarin Suite. David Robertson conductor, Colin Currie percussion [Life’s a Pitch editor’s note: “swoon”]. We offered them two free tickets, two drink tickets, and a post-concert conversation at a bar down the street. All they had to do was write about their SLSO experience on their blogs.
We got nine bloggers, many of whom had never been inside Powell Hall or at an SLSO concert. A couple musicians joined us for pre-concert meet-and-greet. Then came the show and everybody had a fantastic time, and then drank a few beers afterward at the bar down the street. I then linked to their entries via the SLSO blog.
Blogger reviews can be found at Gateway Groupies, Lockwood & Summit, Chase After Wind, Tony Renner, the arts blog of St. Louis Magazine, and South City Confidential.
This is fantastic, and I am so happy for the SLSO’s continued success. I’m hopeful, though, that orchestras will make the leap from their Bloggers’ Nights to live-blogging and live-Tweeting nights. We are a generation that cares not only what celebrities are doing every minute, but what our siblings, neighbors, co-workers and ex-boyfriends are doing every minute. Not only is a review in a printed paper a day or two after a concert considered “too late,” but now it seems a review posted on a blog hours after a concert finishes is already old news. Number three on Trendwatching.com’s recently posted 10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010 list is “real-time reviews.”
With even more people sharing, in real time, everything
they do, buy, listen to, watch, attend, wear and so on, and with even
more search engines and tracking services making it easy to find and
group these ‘live dispatches’ by theme, topic or brand, 2010 will see
ready-to-buy consumers tapping into a live stream of (first-hand)
experiences from fellow consumers…
Next: Just because they can (Twitter’s Direct Messages come to mind),
consumers who will need more specifics after reading a review, will
want to get in direct touch with the reviewer. And because of the
self-selecting nature of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, these direct
conversations will actually be welcomed by the reviewer, too. By
posting reviews for his peers, he or she is almost angling for a
follow-up. This will lead to real conversations between like-minded
customers and potential buyers, without the brand even being able to monitor what’s being said about its products, let alone being able to respond.So, in 2010, expect numerous services to capitalize on this
burgeoning ‘global brain’, and its endless real-time reviews and
verdicts.
I asked Eddie Silva if they would ever transition into live-blogging nights at the St. Louis Symphony, and here’s what he said:
Sure, we might do it live sometime. The concern: distracting other members of the audience. We know that people are already tweeting during the concert–as a matter of fact, one of October’s bloggers was doing that–even though we give the turn off cell phones, no recording devices, no photography Voice of God message before each concert. But we recognize that there is some conflict between those who want a concert experience disconnected from the e-messaging world and those who want to connect in the moment with those beyond the hall. We defer to the contemplative and undistracted.
Also, at least so far, the bloggers who have joined us prefer to take the time to compose their thoughts–whether those be with words or paintings or cartoons. I think we attract a lot of former English and Art majors. We get some wonderful, thoughtful responses; but it would indeed be curious to read those in the “first thought, best thought” style.
Live-blogging/Tweeting during live performances is distracting for performers and other audiences members, as commented on by my client Hilary Hahn here. I have a wacky idea, though, that I cannot take complete credit (/blame) for. My co-ArtsJournal blogger Judith Dobrzynski over at Real Clear Arts accompanied me the Punch Brothers‘ recent Carnegie Hall concert. As we were crossing the street from Molyvos, she told me about a friend of hers who has a box at Carnegie, “and would always bring a flashlight and magazines to read during concerts.” Apparently, no one would say anything to this woman, it seems, because she was a major donor or some such thing, and with her being in a box and not in the orchestra section, the light didn’t really distract anyone. We both wondered, then, if Device Sections would be, could be, successful. The back of the orchestra, for example, or a box or two, in which audience members could buy tickets for seats and use their devices, or be given live-blogger press comps. Sure, some of the light and clicking might spill over into the non-device section, just like the smoking section on that 1996 Alitalia flight from JFK to Rome that probably took 5 years off my life even though I was squarely in the non-smoking section. I wonder, too, if a section or evening of lights and clickers would
actually be more distracting than folks scattered throughout a hall. Thoughts?
Let me anticipate some of the comments: “If people are allowed to leave their devices on, their cell phones
will ring.” Well, OK, but that happens even when no phones are allowed
to be on anywhere. I also realize that I am never going to win the
(flash-less) photo battle, which I blogged about here.
But maybe a presenter can try a Device Section, or, better, a Device
Night (but please call it something more clever!) and see how it goes.
If the orchestra/chamber ensemble/music director/soloist is prepared
for the clicks and lights, maybe it will be OK? There has to be a middle ground. Device Sections or Nights may not, are probably not, it, but I have to believe we can find a compromise somewhere! For better or worse, I can real-time review everything in my life except classical music concerts.
And yes: all this could be perceived as rude to the artists on stage.
Why come to a live performance if you’re not going to concentrate, one might ask?
There’s a difference, I think, between reading magazines or texting
your girlfriend during a performance and actually real-time reporting
on one. What could be a higher compliment to a performer than having to
tell other people about it right that second?
The Edmonton Symphony has held a few blogger nights in the past 3 years, and we’ve pretty much started a tradition in inviting bloggers to review concerts at our annual outdoor festival – live blogging or otherwise.
As for twitter, last April we invited some bloggers/tweeters to two different concerts. Some live-tweeted (although as someone pointed out, the “live” part is perhaps redundant for twitter) and it certainly was an interesting experiment. There was some controversy generated when one of our tweeters, a local social media guru, mentioned the initiative in a radio interview… one caller-in was particularly against anything of the kind happening at an orchestra concert. I wrote a blog post about it here, which pretty much sums up my thoughts about the whole thing:
http://edmontonsymphony.blogspot.com/2009/04/all-twitter.html
(My post also links to the tweeter’s blog post about the whole thing.)
Anyhow, my next initiative is to move away from “blog nights” and get as many different concerts as possible reviewed on various blogs. As local arts coverage dwindles away, we’re going to expand our reach through bloggers… some of whom have more avid and devoted followers than any media outlet!
Hey, Amanda – nice post. To clarify, my friend isn’t a major donor, just an annual subscription holder. I don’t think anyone said anything because her tiny light didn’t bother anyone. And it’s not as if she were reading War and Peace — she often looked up from her magazines to listen carefully to the music. In fact, she lent me a magazine, a tiny light, and I read too. I loved it, though I can hear the thundering criticism already.
This is not a good idea. Music, like drama, is “in the moment”– and the part of your brain you use to process and express your reactions– your “critic”– simply cannot be used at the same time as the part that creates or absorbs the experience. During those seconds or minutes you are writing about the piece you are not experiencing it: essentially,from the first moment you record a reaction, you are just sampling. Worse, if your first reaction is a judgement, your subsequent responses are biased toward samples that prove or illustrate your brilliant insight, not the totality of what is happening. Worst case, your whole concentration is on what you are saying about it.
Critics from the New York Times, etc., scribble notes throughout concerts they’re reviewing. Are they, then, not fully experiencing the performance? -AA
Regarding Tweeting…couldn’t a blogger wait until intermission to tweet? That seems as if it wouldn’t distract anyone too much and still achieve virtually the same end result.
I love the idea of a blogger’s night–thanks for bringing it to everyone’s attention. At Technology in the Arts, we recently did a two-part series on smartphone use outside of and during performances. I talked to mostly regional arts organizations, many of which had considered and tried to implement texting sections or even simple twitter/texting promotions before the show and were rebuffed by either house or artistic staff. Very interesting to see how heated the battle could get, not only within the organization, but from audience members.