I haven’t posted in awhile. Or been active online.
But now I’ve been posting on Facebook, and thought I’d put one of those posts here, one of a series I’ve done on the unwritten — and, most likely, never to be written — history of American orchestras.
I’m curious to see who reads it here. I’ll have to promote the blog again, of course. But I’ll just start with this post. You can comment, if you see it!
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Sometime in the 1990s, the Columbus (Ohio) Symphony launched a marketing campaign based on motorcycles.
They’d seen research, showing that Harley riders had the same demographic as their subscribers. So they launched their campaign, saying that the sound of their orchestra was as thrilling as a Harley’s roar.
Which didn’t make sense to me, because Harley riders and their subscribers surely had different psychographics (as marketers would say). Different states of mind, different lifestyles, even if their age and income were similar.
But there was a bigger problem. The orchestra’s main corporate funder was Honda, which makes cars, yes, but also motorcycles. They’re Harley’s competitor.
Honda was not happy.
I knew about this because I was writing about new things classical music institutions were doing. I talked to people at the orchestra when they launched the campaign, and then later, to see how it had gone.
And now I’m thinking that this bit of orchestra history might be lost forever, along with much else like it. Has anyone chronicled the history of US orchestras, from maybe the 1960s to the present? Will anyone publish a book?
The 1990s, along with the early 2000s, were an interesting time, because orchestras were trying to adapt to the culture around them (as they’d never done before), so they could find a new audience.
As they did this, they made strange mistakes. The New York Philharmonic — I wrote about this, too — reached out to teenagers. With a tagline something like, “Let us show you that classical music can be as much fun as classic rock.”
But in the ’90s, it was the teens’ parents who liked classic rock, not the teens. When I told this to top staff at the Phil, they (if I remember right) at first wouldn’t believe me,
Later, in the 2000s, one of the largest American orchestras put its first video online. I won’t name the orchestra, because what happened never was public.
The video publicized an upcoming concert performance of Tosca. Someone I knew high up on the staff emailed to ask what I thought of it.
I was amazed. On the video, a not quite professional pianist and singer performed Tosca’s big aria, Vissi d’arte. With the pianist playing wrong notes. And telling the opera’s story, with lots of mistakes.
My advice? Take that thing down yesterday!
As I remember, from what I was told, no one on the full-time staff knew how to make videos. So someone who worked there part-time volunteered.
I don’t blame the orchestra much for this. New times, new things. New procedures. It all has to be learned.
There’s much more history. Including (and this is big) one of the absolute top American orchestras in 2004 making scary financial projections — projections so scary that it predicted (in private, of course) that by 2010 it would go out of business.
And then, with a brilliant move, it saved itself.
I know about this because I was at two gatherings, first when the orchestra’s board chair showed the projections. And then when its executive director —with budgets showing red ink turning to black — showed how they saved themselves.
All part of the unknown history of American orchestras. A history I know a little about, because, at least sometimes, I was in the right places, at the right times.
But it’s a history that, I fear. will never be written.
I’ll post more on this.
Nice to see you back Greg! You need to write that book.
Good luck with this Greg and welcome back. I started managing orchestras in 1984.
A great title for this proposed history could be “Dumb and Dumber.” The best decade to concentrate on should be the 1970s. At the exact moment in time when audiences started to decline — it was the decade with the invention of the Sony Walkman, the VCR, the personal computer and the widespread availability of cable TV, to name a few — orchestras (and other arts organizations)) decided to grow bigger and bigger, a complete disconnect in the laws of supply and demand..
Remember what Sol Hurok (not a native speaker of English) said: “If the music business was really a business, it couldn’t stay in business.”
Dumb and Dumber! Made me laugh. And, sigh, so true. I remember something one of the graduate students I taught at Juilliard told me. As an undergraduate, he’d had a joint major, business and music. In his business classes, they took for granted that to sell any product, you had to assess what the market was. While in his (classical) music classes, they just assumed there was a market, because there had to be one.
And then big orchestras finding, mid-2000s, that over many years they had structural deficits. Losing more money in bad years than they made in good years. Why did it take them so long to notice?
Plus this. You might know Robert J. Flanagan’s indispensable book, The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras. Indispensable, because it’s a fine economist looking in detail at orchestra finances. Flanagan says that orchestras manage their endowments badly. Don’t get as much return as they should. Not that some don’t do well, but looking at the field as a whole, too many orchestras don’t do well enough.
Plus the orchestra PR I’m seeing lately, vacuous, full of meaningless superlatives. And full of mistakes, like the Utah Symphony, gushing about an upcoming concert La boheme, calling the opera’s two most famous arias duets.
And now the Philadelphia Orchestra, trying to sell their music director as “the Taylor Swift of classical music,” whatever that might mean.
Good call, dumb and dumber!
If you remember, when “arts administration” degree programs were first being created — back in the ’70s — virtually all of them where run by university business schools, not arts schools. I can also think of one major university program — no names, please — which was started by a woman who had never worked a day in her life as an arts administrator.
You’ve got to admit…it’s a hell of a way to make a living!
Some might call it a racket!
I’m thinking of someone with a national reputation as an arts innovator, who runs a big university program and a consulting firm. But who, in his most prominent job running a famous arts institution, had everyone in the city this was in wondering how he ever got so famous. Because he never did at home what he went around the country advocating.
Oh, the names we could name…
I’ll be first in line to read your book when it’s available, Greg!
Very interesting. Yes, please do write this!
As someone who still checks their RSS feed most days, delighted to see you back blogging. Keep it up!
As an Australian, I’d love to see the history of the Australian orchestras as well, but I’m not sure who would write that (or even have access to all the information to put it together).
Thanks, Matthew! Glad to see you here. I’ll blog when I can — finding myself with more family obligations, and more projects, and, well, more years in my age than I used to have. But there’s a lot I’d like to say.
Getting information would be the biggest challenge in writing these histories. If I were going to do it, I’d want to partner with an orchestra insider, someone who knew the field well, and knew where the bodies were buried. Though it could be hard, in the US, to find an insider who knew a lot about both large and small orchestras. And the kind of insider I’m thinking of would be going against all the norms of the field if they helped with this. Helping make public things orchestras have never (to my knowledge) wanted to be known.