It is interesting to see in this morning’s news that The Cleveland Orchestra is making a move that the St Paul Chamber Orchestra made seven years ago, namely to move some of their concerts to neighborhood locations around the Cleveland area and to lower ticket prices in those venues. What we’ve learned since expanding our neighborhood concerts over the past seven years is that there are many people who want to attend our concerts who will not come downtown to do so. In fact, neighborhood expansion has led to a 40 percent increase in subscribers. (Read about our results here and our white paper is posted here.) The results of our work have been widely circulated and are influencing decisions at other orchestras, like this one.
I didn’t call TCO so I’m basing my views on the news report and press release, but it looks like there are a couple of major differences between our approach and theirs. We expanded our regular concert series to the neighborhoods – the neighborhood venues have the same kinds of repertoire, soloists, and program length as our “downtown” concerts at Ordway. It looks like Cleveland is planning a different kind of concert in neighborhoods from what audiences get at Severance Hall.  Read TCO’s press release.