April 2008 Archives

by Jeffrey Kahane
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Since my first visit to Denver more than twenty-five years ago, this wonderful and unique city, like its equally wonderful and unique symphony orchestra, has seen its share of economic ups and downs, but if the last five years are any indication of the future, Denver's long-term prospects, and those of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, are bright indeed. The downtown area, where my wife and I have an apartment across the street from Boettcher Concert Hall with a breathtaking view of the ever-inspiring Rocky Mountains, has metamorphosed from what was not so long ago a classic example of American "urban desert" into a genuinely vibrant and immensely desirable place to live. For me, someone who grew up and and still spends a large amount of time working in Los Angeles (a city where life without an automobile is virtually unthinkable) it is a great joy to live in a central urban area where I can go for two weeks without ever getting into a car.

Within a few minutes' walk from our building are something on the order of 25 fine restaurants, several of them rivaling the best of New York or Los Angeles; one of the country's most magnificent and welcoming bookstores, the legendary "Tattered Cover"; Coors Field, the stunningly beautiful stadium that is home to the Colorado Rockies; and the second largest performing arts center in the country, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Just down the street is the  Convention Center, which will host not one but two important conventions this summer, one of which, the Democratic National Convention, will change the history of American political life forever, no matter what the outcome of the current contest between Senators Obama and Clinton.

The arts scene here, which grows richer and more vital each year, is only one of the things that make Denver so attractive. Life here, perhaps more than any other American city, is centered around the outdoors, and it probably goes without saying that some of the most beautiful and dramatic scenery in America is easily accessible from downtown Denver. This does, naturally (pun intended), present challenges for a symphony orchestra, which of necessity plays primarily on weekends, when a great many residents of the city and its suburbs head for the mountains.

Nonetheless, the line of cars on most weekends coming into the performing arts complex is impressively long: there are nearly always at least two if not three major productions  underway in the complex which houses a concert hall, an opera house and multiple theatres under one big roof and where the Colorado Symphony, Opera Colorado, the Colorado Ballet, and the Denver Center Theatre Company all reside and perform throughout the year.
Just a few minutes further away from my apartment is the Denver Art Museum, which recently proudly opened the spectacular new Frederic C. Hamilton Wing, designed by internationally renowned architect Daniel Libeskind. In the very near future, the international art world will witness the opening of the new Clyfford Still Museum, thanks to the extraordinary, historic bequest to Denver by Still's widow of the late painter's entire estate, which comprises virtually the entire body of work of one of the last century's greatest artists: a body of work that has for the last few decades been inaccessible to the public. This, along with the recently announced first "Biennial of the Americas" in 2010, will unquestionably make Denver one of the country's most important magnets for lovers of the fine arts.

The Colorado Symphony, while it does not yet have the international cachet of the current and future art museums, is, in the view of many, unquestionably one of the finest jewels in the city's cultural crown. I have on more than one occasion referred to it as the "sleeper" of America's orchestras: the greatest American orchestra that isn't yet known as one. This June, I believe that will change dramatically as thousands of arts professionals arrive in Denver for the National Performing Arts Convention.

Having worked with major orchestras around the world for more than a quarter of a century, I can say that it is one of the most versatile, committed and responsive orchestras in America. Not a single one of the many distinguished colleagues who have come to work with the orchestra and me during my first few seasons here has failed to comment in astonishment on the quality of the orchestra's playing, and their determination to make music at the highest level.  As new players arrive, which they do almost every year, we are blessed with a steadily influx of exceptionally high level of technical and artistic achievement, thanks to the substantial number of extraordinarily fine young players coming out of conservatories and training orchestras around the country and the world. Many of them are especially drawn to Denver, not only because the opportunity to work in this orchestra, but because the combination of the cultural richness of the city with the joy of living so close to the magic of the mountains. The Colorado Symphony, which in addition to its 21 week classical subscription season plays for the opera and does dizzying numbers of pops, children's, family and other special programs, is one of the hardest-working orchestras in America, but their professionalism and positive attitude are nearly as impressive as the sheer beauty, virtuosity  and musical integrity that comes off the stage on the best nights at Boettcher Concert Hall.

In just a few short years, Boettcher Concert Hall will undergo a major transformation as a result of a $90 million renovation project made possible by the citizens of Denver, who, in a display of civic-mindedness all to rare in this day and age, voted to pass a $60 million bond issue to help finance a new concert hall. This is an historic moment for the orchestra, and I think will serve not only to launch the orchestra into a new era of national and international recognition, but bring to Denver at long last what every great city deserves, that is, not merely a great orchestra, but a great symphony hall. We are all counting the days! And, needless to say, it is with the greatest pride that we will be the host orchestra at this year's NPAC!


To hear more from Jeffrey Kahane, go to a Colorado Symphony Orchestra concert! 
To learn more about NPAC sessions such as "The Denver Model: Building Local Support for the Arts", visit the website.

by Jason Grote
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NPAC session description, "Stop Taking Attendance and Start Measuring the Intrinsic Impact of Your Programs": What really happens when the lights go down and the curtain rises? Most arts groups do a great job of tracking attendance and revenues, but these are poor indicators of impact. Aside from the buzz in the lobby, is it possible to define - and even measure - how audiences are transformed? If you had this information, what would you do with it? Results of a groundbreaking new study commissioned by the Major University Presenters consortium in the U.S. suggests that intrinsic impacts can, in fact, be assessed using a simple questionnaire. Alan Brown, who directed the study, will discuss the results of the research, which involved pre- and post-performance surveys at 19 performances by a wide range of music, theater and dance artists...

While I can't speak to the specifics of the study in question, I generally think that surveys measuring audience response are a bad idea.  I care very deeply about what my audience thinks or feels, but I don't feel that surveys are the best way to assess this, and so don't use them.  If the theater wants them, I consent, but I don't read them.  This is not because I am a snob who is disinterested in what my audience thinks - on the contrary, I care very much - but because I think our contemporary culture has a weird fetish for quantifying everything, and something so delicate and ineffable as the relationship between artist and viewer can't even really be expressed verbally, let alone numerically.  I am, in many cases, a believer in
the wisdom of crowds and a fan of most open-source projects, but theater isn't computer programming or the collective hive-mind of Wikipedia.  I find it much more instructive, actually, to watch an audience watch my work (as was easy to do at the Denver Center's in-the-round Space Theater in 2007), a technique recommended by the filmmaker Francois Truffaut, among others.  Collectively, an audience is very intelligent, but not necessarily in a way that individual members can articulate - often I can better tell whether or not a play is working by observing body language.  When are people laughing, crying, shifting, on the edge of their seats, dozing off, walking out?
 
And who are they specifically, and when do I want or not want them to be doing each of these?  This tells me much more than most of the feedback I get at "talk-backs," which is usually more about giving the audience a greater sense of involvement (a perfectly laudable goal in itself) than about soliciting "notes."  Indeed, I am often very eager to interact with my audience, and make myself very easy to contact via email, Blogger, MySpace, and Facebook.  But this is not because I intend to use feedback to make changes to my work, but because increasingly, people see their relationships with artists as interactive (I have often corresponded with my favorite novelists and rock musicians myself), and because I deliberately set out to write plays that foster arguments and conversations.  I am very happy when these discussions take place, but I see them as parallel to the artistic experience, not part of it.

With all due respect to Mr. Yoshitomi and Mr. Brown, with whose methods I am not at all familiar, I feel that  "Measuring the Intrinsic Impact" of any work of art is an idea with potentially disastrous results for the creative process generally. To be fair, I am not in a position to judge their study - only the underlying impulse, which I have encountered in many resource-strapped arts institutions who seek to use private-sector methods to improve their lots.  This approach disregards the many flaws in corporate culture. For some time, the film industry has used audience surveys in preliminary screenings in an attempt to predict audience response, and to take the uncertainty out of what is a famously volatile marketplace.  While I can't cite any precise data on the failure or success of these methods, and of course can't speak to their similarity to the study in question, I have heard anecdote after anecdote about its failure as both an aesthetic and a profit-making strategy.  Frequently, test audiences will have an initial negative response to a fine movie, and producers will demand changes that water it down and make it even less appealing to audiences.  Alternately, many recent screenwriters and filmmakers (The Wedding Crashers' Steve Faber and John Fisher and Hostel's Eli Roth, to cite two examples) have stated publicly in interviews that they received negative audience evaluations, fought to preserve their respective artistic visions, and went on to have great success at the box office in spite of the initial test audience reaction. 

Of course producers and presenters would like to be able to predict and manage audience and critical response to what they put on out, as arts presenting is a notoriously stressful and erratic business, but I don't think this can be done without severely compromising the integrity of the art.  Risk is, in most cases, the entire point.  Of course, arts presenters could probably predict, with some degree of accuracy, the acts or exhibits that would be most popular, but this would, in all likelihood, lead to a steep decline in "difficult" but ultimately rewarding works of art, and the rise of gimmick-driven art, and ultimately of arts institutions as weak imitators of the multiplex, the mall, the computer, and the television set - a competition which they would, most likely, lose.  Why would I go to the trouble of going to a theater or museum if I won't be offered an experience that is fundamentally different from what I can get at home, on TV or on the internet, often for significantly less money?  Even assuming that the questions being asked related to being "moved" or "affected" by the work (as opposed to the simple thumbs-ups or thumbs-downs of Hollywood test surveys), this is still a flattening and oversimplification of something that is, when it works, impossible to articulate in any coherent way.

The best art polarizes as much as it unites.  Most art that seeks to please everyone is doomed to failure, mediocrity or, at best, a sort of temporary popularity. This is not to say that genre art can never be good - I'm a fan of The Wire, Philip K. Dick, sketch comedy, comic books and pop music as much as I am of, say, Lawrence Shainberg's novel Crust, the poetry of John Ashbery, opera, or performance art, and often the two categories are not mutually exclusive (note the references to Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman on the TV show Lost, an incident that caused the postmodern novel to sell more in the last year or so than it did in the entire 20th Century).  What I object to is the attempt to domesticate and commodify a process that tends to sour at its very contact with such concepts.

It is also worth mentioning that even the most educated among us are rarely able to articulate why we like or don't like a work or art. Highly specialized languages have developed around criticism and dramaturgy, not because these are pursuits exclusively practiced by elites (though they sometimes are), but because it's so difficult to put these thoughts and feelings into words.  I would also point out that the objectives of a work of art are often counter to what most of us have come to expect in a consumer society.  That is, our society is built around the imperative to enjoy, and the merits of a thing, any thing, are often judged on how well it fulfills that imperative.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with enjoyment per se - I like having a good time as much as anyone.  However, in order for a work of art to be successful, it needs to pull as well as push - often, the goal is to anger, disturb, or even to deliberately bore or tax the audience, viewer, or listener in pursuit of some larger goal.  The obvious response to this is the one we have heard throughout the history of modern art - "it's pretentious bullshit," "my kid could paint that," etc.  And yes, that is often the case.  However, even work that enlightens or entertains often needs to mystify, or to defer pleasure, in order to be successful.  Of course what we say we want is the thrill, the laugh, the cheer, the beautiful sound or object, but most often those moments need to be surrounded by something else, or the experience is meaningless - art as a series of positive stimuli that zaps our animal brains in a pleasing way, but offers little else.

As an audience member (or viewer, or listener, or whatever) I like to work at it, and I want to make my audiences work too.  I was often told that my play 1001, which opened in Denver to critical and commercial success and positive audience response, should never have made it past the barrage of arts administrators who should have tried to get me to tame it, simplify it, dumb it down and make it more like a typical American play - that is, a mildly comic love story with some digestible, moderately liberal political themes.  Indeed, some people did try to get me to do this (to his great credit, the Denver Center's artistic director Kent Thompson was not one of them), but I simply refused, and I have never once regretted my decision.

The monologist Mike Daisey has a recent show titled How Theater Failed America.  One of the factors he blames is the increased institutionalization and bureaucratization of not-for-profit theater. He's got a point.  Imitating Hollywood has done little to make theater more relevant or central to the culture at large.  Perhaps theater's centrality, like that of literature, is a product of a bygone era, when people still believed in the concept of the commons, and it can never be regained.  I choose to believe that this is not the case, but even if it was, theater would do better to adjust to its new place in the scheme of things and try to make great work for the people who love it (and use smart marketing to make it easier for others to discover it).  Imitating Hollywood even more than we do now (without, I should note, paying the talent anywhere near Hollywood levels) would surely be disastrous.  I can't speak for other playwrights, but the ability to control my own work is one of the very few things that keeps me writing plays.  Having to tailor my work in order to score more highly on an abstracted, numerical expression of audience response would probably drive me out of the theater for good.

To hear more from Jason Grote, visit his blog.
To learn more about NPAC sessions such as "Stop Taking Attendance and Start Measuring the Intrinsic Impact of Your Programs", visit the website.

by Kristin Sloan
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Growing up outside of Boston, going to cultural events was a special treat that my parents would arrange as often as they could. Whether it was going to the Wang Center to see Boston Ballet, or going to Greatwoods to see Huey Lewis and Tower of Power (my first "rock" concert), they always made a big deal out of it - because it was. It was expensive, it was a major time commitment, it meant getting our family together and traveling to a location relatively far from our house; but the important end result was that we were experiencing something creative and engaging together, and that excitement and desire for culture and live performance has continued with me.

Now I live in New York City with my boyfriend, who shares with me two somewhat competing qualities - the drive to get as much accomplished in a day as possible as well as an earnest desire to share experiences that will enrich our lives beyond the work we do during the day. I don't know if it's because we live in a place where there are an overwhelming number of options (and you wind up spending money the second you walk out of your apartment), or if we're just uncomfortably busy, but it can be a challenge for us to plan ahead and commit to get out to a live performance and make a night (or day) out of it.

The mere fact that there are so many things today vying for our attention means that it can become a big and often debilitating decision figuring out what to do when we actually have the opportunity. Many of us have limited time to give to leisure activities, and we usually have plenty of options for spending that time - from surfing the internet or watching tv in our pajamas, to getting dressed up and traveling to a performance (and everything in between). In our case, the desire to see a live performance is there but we need an extra little push.

For us, that push often comes in digital form, whether it's an email from an arts organization, a mention in a blog, an online review, a notification from a social networking site like Facebook, a recommendation from a peer or an event filtering site... Pair those things with a presence in our physical environment - like a wild posting on the street - and there's a good chance that if we like what you are offering (of course things like programming, venue and timing come into play too), we'll try to find a way to take you up on it. The performing arts have a challenging model to begin with. So much time, effort, and expense go into the preparations and final product of any performance (whether you're just talking about the performance itself, or what it takes to train all the people eventually involved in putting on that particular performance). The only direct opportunity you have to recoup these expenses is through a live, one-time only, show to which only so many people can buy a ticket. Each of these select individuals only wants to pay so much for that ticket and once it's over it's gone forever.

The percentage of time throughout the year that even your most zealous patrons spend with your organization (i.e. sitting in your theater) is low, so how and where could they be interacting with your organization and developing a deeper connection to what you do when they aren't seeing it live in front of them? Go to your audiences (current and potential) - wherever they may be, and establish an ongoing connection with them in that space.

New technology can provide relatively simple and low cost ways to stay connected to your current audiences while also reaching out to new audiences. Even if we can't come to your performance this time around, if your digital presence peeks our interest, technology can make it easier for you to continue a connection with us, making your next message stronger. If you've got our attention, you can also do simple things like asking for our email address, or offering a feed so that we can subscribe to updates on your organization. Communication can become smarter and more targeted by being automated and customized based on how the patron wants to be contacted and what they are interested in. There are so many possibilities!

The Winger was partially born out of the realization that my friends and peers seemed to have very little knowledge of what I did all day as a dancer - which is completely understandable. How could they know without being there? The idea was to try to give an illustrative and personal look into my everyday experiences using the web. In my opinion, the creation of a work of art is often as interesting as the finished product, and I wanted to find a way to share that. In turn, the site has also become a place for people who already enjoy dance to further connect with the companies and the artists they love, outside of the theater. Something to note... no one can talk about what your organization is all about better than the artists who are a part of it!
 
Perhaps it might be helpful to break things down and discuss the topic (Best Practices for Developing a Diverse and Committed Audience) while realizing that we are all audience members too. I've explained what works in getting me to a live performance - what about you?
  
 
-  What is helpful in convincing you, personally, to buy tickets to see a live performance? Forget about "best practices" for a minute, what gets YOU in a seat? Why?

  
- What strategies have you seen organizations take to build more diverse and/or committed audiences? Did those initiatives work in getting you more involved or getting you to purchase a ticket? Do you think they were successful in engaging other audiences and even convincing them to buy tickets?
 
 
- Why do you think the initiatives you have seen were successful  - or not? What might you do differently?


To hear more from Kristin Sloan, visit The Winger. 
To learn more about NPAC sessions such as "Best Practices for Developing a Diverse and Committed Audience", visit the website.

(Otherwise it's just Girls Gone Wild)

by Nico Muhly
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Talking about programming new music is one of these paradoxical things; I feel like I, as a composer, shouldn't have to say anything about it because it goes without saying that I am in favor. Similarly, for presenting organizations - bot h ensembles and venues - if you need to be told about it, it may already be too late. With the exception of Jordi Savall, Masaaki Suzuki, and, like, four other people, it is the responsibility of every musician and group of musicians to program - and champion (an important emphasis) new music. (In fact, Jordi, call me, I have an idea: it's like Sephardic Judaism meets gamelan, you know you love it.)

A few weeks ago, I went to hear a dress rehearsal of Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra playing Mason Bates's (who is roughly my age, slightly older, though, slightly older) Liquid Interface, which is an ambitious commission for Slatkin; it features a very difficult interaction between the orchestra's tricky passages and the live electronics (which Bates controls). So: that's what I would consider, in a rough sense, to be somebody championing new music and really owning the fact of a new piece: put it on a truck and bring it to Carnegie Hall, don't hide it in that weird room between La Mer and the Emperor concerto.

Now, I would take a bullet for Mason, and I adore his music and particularly Liquid Interface, but I want to ask the slightly provocative question which is: would the National Symphony accept something from him that they had to play every year, or every two years? I can't imagine that they are going to be happy to schlep out the hi-fi and cart Mason in from Berkeley if, for instance, Leonard Slatkin isn't there to make it happen. So, is that commission an adventure for the orchestra, orjust for the conductor and the composer? As far as I'm concerned, an adventure is a journey that is in some way transformative for the acting party or parties; a piece of music that enters into the repertoire, into the cycle, is more likely to be transformative than one that happens for just one night.

I am always suspicious when an orchestra commissions one new piece a season and it's some facacta Michael Torke + Tap Dancing situation like how Detroit did that one time. Michael Torke: knows how to write a piece for orchestra. The Detroit Symphony: needs some new orchestra music that it can claim for its own. More people are going to be embarrassed than excited about the tap dancing thing. Not to put words up in MT's mouth, but if Michael Torke srsly wanted to do a piece with tap dancer, I'm sure he'd figure it out without a major symphony's help. (Did that piece ever even end up happening?) This is not to say, however, that we (here, meaning composers in general) don't love a funny commission; I've been the happy recipient of many strange collaborative commissions. I guess my point is that I wouldn't call those things "adventurous" as much as "random" in the literal sense of the world: a blip, a way to spend (or make) some money and have a nice evening.

The times I have been the most honored by a commission have been when an ensemble - established or not - asks me to add something to the pile of music written for that collection of forces. When a string quartet says, "we'd like a new string quartet, written by you," to me, that is itself more adventurous and touching than when people want a string quartet + electronics, or a string quartet + Inuit throat-singing, or a string quartet + liturgical acrobatics. If I wanted to do that, I'd do it my own self, in the D.I.Y. fashion to which I am accustomed (as I write this, I am applying Neosporin™ to a wound I received while lifting a three hundred-pound fiberglass stallion covered in hair, on whose back I stuck a folk singer, all in collaboration with an Icelandic sculptress in West Chelsea last weekend; I have that kind of adventure under control).

Adventurous commissioning is simple, ungimmicky programming of new works: a new violin concerto to join the pantheon, a new symphony, a new clarinet quintet. I feel like people in my generation deserve to be able to have it both ways: we should be able to be composer-performers, scrappily organizing concerts with our friends, and also, larger organizations should be actively involved in commissioning larger - and lasting - works. The stodginess and/or petulance of the 60's happily behind us, pursuing alternate means of getting our work heard is just that: an alternate route, a way to drive every other day to avoid the monotony of our daily commute. My concern, though, is that there is a lot of "adventurous" institutional programming that is actually just a mess, in a sort of "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" type way. One night of synthesized bass and a thumping beat does not an adventurous season make. Just as an exciting life is one that happens every day, not just on vacation, an adventurous season is one that contains a commitment to always buying that unknown vegetable, and learning how to cook it as a technique, not just as a way to spice up supper. One-offs are fun, but the adventure soon comes to an end.


To hear more from Nico Muhly, visit his blog.
To learn more about NPAC sessions such as "Adventurous Programming: Making New Music the Main Course", visit the website.