Maybe my last post -- about the new-audience strategy I don't think the Met Opera has -- looked a little theoretical. Or impractical. Or way out in left field. The Met's strategy, I said, evidently is to create buzz, and then hope the audience shows up. Instead, I said, they should go out and actively find their new audience, and then work overtime to keep the people they reach excited about what the Met does. Left field? Not at all. Just look at a New York Times story on the marketing campaign for the Hunger Games film! It's jaw-dropping. … [Read more...]
My Shostakovich (continuing)
So I was listening to Jenny Lin's recording of Shostakovich piano preludes and fugues, and thinking back to my graduate school days, when Shostakovich was a nonperson among atonal composers. But, far more, I was hearing how vital the music is. Preludes and fugues seem like archaic forms, and you'd think anyone writing them in 1950, when Shostakovich started his, would have the weight of Bach bearing down on him. But of course the music doesn't sound archaic. It's the usual Shostakovich mix, which -- and I just love this about him -- … [Read more...]
Terrific pianist
In my last post, I mentioned Jenny Lin, the terrific pianist whose Shostakovich preludes and fugues I'd been listening to. I should mention that she's played two pieces of mine, a fiendish little Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano, and (maybe equally fiendish) Short Talks, a set of piano pieces based on Anne Carson's poetry, in which the pianist also plays a drum. The Sonatina is fiendish because the first two movements have independent parts for the clarinet and piano, which play independent pieces that happen to fit together. (In the first … [Read more...]
More signs of the times
Following up on a previous post, in which I talked about two concert series that used to be straight-down-the-middle classical, and how they're now going in new directions… Here's another example: the Opera Company of Philadelphia. Next season, they're presenting five operas: La bohème, The Magic Flute, Kevins Puts's Silent Night (which just won the Pulitzer Prize), Thomas Ades's Powder Her Face, and one of the least-performed Benjamin Britten operas, Owen Wingrave (in a student production by the Curtis Institute, which the opera company … [Read more...]
Let’s trust our supporters
I'm amazed, truly amazed, at some of the pushback my recent posts have gotten. And maybe what amazes me most is the idea that we're going to hurt orchestras -- and all of classical music -- by talking about things that might be bad news for the field. Such as financial trouble, or declining ticket sales. Why do people say that talking about bad news will hurt us? Because -- allegedly -- it will scare away our supporters, especially those who give us money. Amazing. If we believe that, then we believe: (a) that our supporters (ticket … [Read more...]
Signs of the times
While we debate orchestra finances -- or re-re-re-redebate them -- the classical music world is changing. Changing quite a lot, I'd say. For instance: a press release arrived this week, announcing this year's Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York. The first highlight cited is an exploration of birdsong, featuring three Messiaen concerts (Messiaen, of course, since he's the most prominent composer who loved and used bird songs). Plus preconcert birding tours in in Central Park, and a sound installation at the Park Avenue … [Read more...]
More good news
This from Britain, where there seems to be an explosion of younger people going to hear classical music, and many of them especially like contemporary -- even avant-garde -- classical music I've been aware of this for some time -- note my blog posts after my visit to London last year, about the Roundhouse, a pop venue, where classical concerts draw a big pop-oriented audience, and about the large crowds for a festival of music by Steve Reich and younger composers identified as his successors. Produced, I might add, by the London … [Read more...]
Philharmonic clarification
Turns out that the empty branding of Alan Gilbert -- as a New Yorker, when nothing much about him or the New York Philharmonic says "New York" -- wasn't the Philharmonic's doing. It comes from their chief corporate sponsor, Credit Suisse. I'm reminded of what can happen when, let's say, a pop or classical star has her own publicist, but also works with record labels or performing institutions that have publicists of their own. The publicists don't always agree on what should be done. (And don't get me started on the conductor whose parents … [Read more...]
How do we know it’s you?
A brief lesson in branding, as I taught it in my Juilliard class this week. I brought in a Plugbug, and some chocolate. I'd bought the Plugbug in an Apple store, though it's not made by Apple. It's a power adapter for Apple products, and -- unlike anything Apple sells -- can charge two things at once, my MacBook and my iPhone or iPad. Apple's power adapters -- the ones that come with their laptops and i-devices -- are white. And while the Plugbug looks much like an Apple charger, it's red, so we'll know it's different. Now for the … [Read more...]
Promoting with gusto
Yesterday I posted an email from conductor Rebecca Smithorn, about the chamber orchestra she calls Ad Hoc (because Ad Hoc is how it functions -- informally, taking things as they come, and telling the audience exactly what accidents led to each performance being what it is). An entrepreneurial enterprise, if ever I've seen one. Especially if you think -- as I do -- that an entrepreneur needs to create something distinctive. Today I'll offer a much longer email from Chris Dulgan, a South African pianist, who -- as he explains -- conjured an … [Read more...]
More better photos
More suggestions for good photos of orchestras, and orchestra musicians: Katie Kellert wrote, in the comments to my first post, in which I complained about how boring orchestra photos are: I got a big kick out of the alternate shots the Baltimore Symphony did for their members' bio pages a while back (For instance, Rene Hernandez and Chris Wolfe, showing them with items that seem to reflect their interests outside of music. I also found it telling that a lot of them chose to just have another photo with their instrument... it sort of reads … [Read more...]
Orchestral challenge — second post
In my last post, I urged orchestras not to worry so much about what their audience likes, and to program music they themselves like. Presenting to the world something more vivid, more individual, more compelling than (to paraphrase the kind of language so often found in orchestra publicity) "Tchaikovsky's beloved violin concerto." The concerto, please note, isn't the problem. It's the language used to talk about it. Better to say (if you dared), "The concerto our soloist loves the most, but also the one that drives her crazy because it's … [Read more...]
Good time in Kentucky
What a good time I had in Kentucky! Yes, I hated to leave my new baby, but before he blessed my life I'd been invited to the University of Kentucky, and because the baby's not-schedulable arrival meant I kept hassling the date of my visit, I couldn't see canceling. Besides, life goes on. So there I was, Friday and Saturday at the University of Kentucky, giving a talk on the Rey M. Longyear Lecture Series, about the future of classical music. And visiting for quite a while with students from a seminar on music criticism taught by Lance … [Read more...]
As I come back to earth…
…my music criticism course at Juilliard continues. I had to miss a week, for reasons my last post explains. And I'll be gone from the NY area a second week, so I'm continuing the class by email. Something, by the way, that interests me a lot, because I've been talking about teaching a course partly online at a university. Aand because I'm planning to do a lot of distance teaching in the business I plan to start, in which I help people write and speak about music. There are three things we do in each class meeting, in my Juilliard course. We … [Read more...]
Walking the walk
Here's a comment from pianist Jeffrey Biegel, a long-time reader, on my "Who's Your Audience?" post. I'm putting it out front on the blog, for all to see. And there's not a word i'd want to add. Thanks, Jeffrey! I am so happy to see this topic–I have waited more than 20 years for someone to address this. Since the late 1980s, I have been actively doing what you share. While maintaining an active list of standard repertoire, always exploring neglected works and finally, commissioning new works for piano and orchestra since 1998. With the … [Read more...]