Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

This is the second news item I promised yesterday. Might have commented on it a while ago, but...life happened. The Cleveland Orchestra wants a younger audience. Though the headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer story about that was pretty mild. "Free tickets for children one of many new initiatives planned by Cleveland Orchestra." And yes, anyone under 18 will in the future get free admission to the lawn, for the orchestra's summer concerts at the Blossom Music Center. And, at some point, they'll also get free tickets to at … [Read more...]

Here's a news item with -- as I'll hardly have to stress -- great importance for the future of classical music. Work for New York freelance classical musicians is drying up. This was a major story in the New York Times, early this month. And, believe me, it was dire. I remember the New York freelance classical music scene in past decades, and knew many musicians who made a living from it. Not always the easiest living, but you could get by, and maybe even do well. And now, to quote the Times story:[N]ight after night highly trained … [Read more...]

Some of the best -- most thorough, most well-documented, most perceptive -- writing I've seen on the future of classical music is in a three-part series from Kyle MacMillan, the fine arts critic of the Denver Post. Full disclosure -- Kyle and I agree on many things, and he interviewed me for the series. I'm quoted in the first part, which came out a week ago Sunday. The second part appeared yesterday, with the third one scheduled for next Sunday. But leave my involvement out of it. Kyle's writing speaks for itself. If you want one … [Read more...]

"Support is building like a tidal wave," says the Daily Telegraph in Britain, about a wonderful, unlikely, but conceivably successful project -- to push a recording of John Cage's 4'33" (his famous silent piece) to the top of the British pop chart. This is a protest action, a way of resisting what many in the UK feel is manipulation of the pop charts by Simon Cowell. Read all about it here, in a BBC News story. Last year, to keep Cowell from getting his hand-picked song to No. 1, a group of pop music people started a movement -- which … [Read more...]

In one spasm of my recurrent Anglophilia, I read most of a long, two-volume history of Britain in the '60s, by Dominic Sandbrook. In the first volume, Never Had it So Good (which runs from the Suez crisis in 1956 to the rise of the Beatles) there's an episode that's worth recounting here. It's about the growth of British suburbs. In the '50s, suburbs became a phenomenon in Britain, just as they did in the US. They'd grown tremendously, and seemed not just to be a new place to live, but to create a new way … [Read more...]

My "Orchestra scoreboards" post -- or rather my reprinting of Michael Oneil Lam's blog post -- evoked a lot of comments. Some very supportive. Some people loved the idea of putting data/info about a piece being played on a screen in the concert hall. And some people didn't. More on them in a moment. But it was good that one commenters noted that similar things have already been done:The Houston Symphony and Pacific Symphony (and maybe others?) have offered something I think is akin to the scoreboard concept....both orchestras have held … [Read more...]

From Michael Oneil Lam (who's married to one of the students I work with at the University of Maryland) -- an idea for making orchestra concerts more comprehensible to outsiders. And, believe me, he's got reasons for thinking about this. He's not a classical music person, but he goes to hear his wife play the bass in the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra. And wishes he could have a little help in following the music.He wrote this for his blog, The Free Arrow. I'm reposting it here with his permission. Thanks, Mike! What you wrote is … [Read more...]

Each fall, I teach a graduate course about music criticism, at Juilliard. As I've said here before, it ends up being a class in how to talk about music, more than a class about criticism itself. Though we do read my favorite classical critics (George Bernard Shaw and Virgil Thomson), as well as current reviews from the New York Times, which the students pick, and bring into class.They also have to do a bit of writing. I tell them (and I mean it) that they'll be judged not by their writing skills, but by what they say. They're musicians, after … [Read more...]

Here's a thought that's been on my mind for a while. Lincoln Center, in New York, has heightened its branding. Now (on 65th Street, next to its main campus, where all the big halls are) it's got a row of very tall video displays, which often show moving images. Across the street from them, in front of the remodeled Alice Tully Hall, is another video display, looking spiffily contemporary. Well, fine. A move into current culture. Contemporary branding. Two problems, though. The images vary. Some are low-res. Painfully low-res -- … [Read more...]

Warm and happy Thanksgiving wishes to everyone. One of the things I'm thankful for, all year long, is you -- all of you who read my blog. Maybe you comment, maybe you don't, maybe you email me, maybe you don't. Doesn't matter! I'm so glad you're here.And lately I've been grateful for the warm comments I've gotten on my last series of posts, about ways to get people caring about classical music (and about your own classical music performances). With two examples from the University of Maryland. If you haven't read these, you might want … [Read more...]

Not long ago I got an email from someone trying to promote some musical events. As part of the promotion, she'd posted things that seemed interesting -- questions to answer, videos to watch -- on her group's Facebook page, hoping to get some discussion going. But there wasn't much response. Which, I thought, was more or less what I'd expect. A performing arts center I'm in contact with created an extensive blog to promote a fascinating concert, and the blog was full of tasty things, including videos (really lively ones) of musicians … [Read more...]

In my last post, I passed on an email from John Devlin, a graduate conducting student at the University of Maryland at College Park, and co-conductor of the school's Repertoire Orchestra. He'd had great success attracting a new audience to the orchestra's last concert, and his email explained some of how he did that.After the concert, he sent a thank-you email to the new people who'd come. You'd think this would be a no-brainer, but I don't know how often it's done in the classical music world. Elsewhere, of course, it's common. (My inbox is … [Read more...]

John Devlin is, along with Michael Jacko, co-conductor of UMRO -- the University of Maryland Repertoire Orchestra. (The school seems to specialize in baffling acronyms.) This is a group made up of students who aren't music majors, who play concerts of symphonic repertoire in casual dress, with great success. (Check out the performance of Beethoven's Seventh on John's website.) John supports my Maryland project with great enthusiasm, and in fact was the source of some of the ideas that helped UMSO (the Symphony Orchestra) and UMWO … [Read more...]

As maybe the start of a larger effort to publish my writing on the web, I've made a ;; of my posts about awakening the audience. It's rewritten to be a single essay, and you easily can send it to your friends and colleagues. If you'd like it, please email me with "audience series" in the subject line, and I'll send the PDF to you by return email. Also available:My Australia talk, which -- when I posted it here -- I said was the best summary I've ever made of my current ideas about where classical music is going, and what we need to do. An essay … [Read more...]

Here's the end of my series on awakening relationships -- relationships, of course, between classical music performing groups and their communities. Didn't know it would turn out to be so long. I call the post "finishing -- for now" because certainly there's more to say on all of this. ***Final installment (for now) -- excitement and surprise.There are few things, I think it's safe to say, less surprising than most classical performances. The music mostly is familiar. The musicians know it. The long-time audience knows it. Performances move … [Read more...]