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Here’s something I feel passionate about. When I think about the future of classical music — about how it can, should, and will be restored to the place of honor it used to have in our culture — there’s only one measure of success that, in the end, seems to matter.
And that’s full houses. If big and small orchestras, opera companies of all sizes, chamber music groups, soloists, early music groups, choruses, everyone who performs classical music were overrun with people buying tickets, and if these people were a new, younger audience…well, then we’d know that classical music was back. That it had been reborn.
Wouldn’t that be worth a thousand educational programs, a thousand outreach events in the community, a thousand hours of earnest advocacy?
But I don’t hear people saying this. Or (with a few exceptions) working on anything that adds up to it. Instead, the orthodox position in the field is to prioritize precisely the education, outreach, and advocacy that wouldn’t seem nearly so urgent if people thronged to our performances.
Please understand me: I’m not saying that education, outreach, and advocacy are in themselves bad. Of course we should be in schools. Anything that’s good for kids is good for our whole society (and warms my own heart, speaking as a parent). And of course we should spread musical knowledge and the ability to play music to anyone interested. And even if we had a large, new, shouting, cheering, stomping audience, there’s no reason that we shouldn’t reach beyond it, talking to people who weren’t buying tickets, and doing good in the community. That’s just good PR and marketing, good community relations, things that caring profit-making businesses so often do.
So I’m not saying we should scrap education, outreach, and advocacy.But what I am saying is that ticket sales are more important. Far more! If you succeed with ticket sales, you have a head start on everything. On fundraising, for instance, since donors come from the audience). Or on community buzz. And certainly on advocacy. because if people are lined up to buy your tickets, who could doubt your place in your community, or your value to it?
Please let us in the door
But — again — not many of us say this. Instead, we’re likely to hear ideas like some I was intrigued to read in my wife’s Washington Post interview with Deborah Rutter , the former CEO of the Chicago Symphony, who now runs the Kennedy Center in Washington. I want to make it clear that I’m not singling Deborah out for comment. I have warm feelings about her personally, based on contact we had some years ago, and by all accounts she did amazing work in Chicago. She’s been warmly welcomed in Washington (where, I might add, the leaders of four top institutions central to classical music, the National Symphony, the Washington Opera, Washington Performing Arts, and now the Kennedy Center, are women).
And what I’ve quoted isn’t any lapse on her part. It’s one piece of the currently accepted solution to classical music’s problems, which is that we need to educate, reach out, and advocate for our art. So in saying what she said, she’s being entirely honorable, and entirely up to date. It’s just that I dissent from these widely-held views.
Here’s what she said. Anne was summarizing the success Rutter had in Chicago, and cited one project, done in partnership with Yo-Yo Ma, something called Citizen Musician, an initiative that, in Anne’s words, is meant to “extend music as a civic as well as an artistic entity.”
Speaking of that, Rutter said:
I believe that [orchestras] have to be part of the solutions in our city, country, region, not seen as superfluous extras.…If we are seen as helping with some of these challenging issues, and it’s understood that we play a really important role, then we will have a seat at the table.
There’s a lot packed into those two sentences. Firs is the apparent assumption that orchestras don’t yet have a seat at the civic table. And, worse, that maybe they’re seen (or soon will be seen) as “superfluous extras,” community entities that most people just don’t care about.
Which would mean we’re in trouble. That’s where Rutter seems to start.
So what can we do about that? The answer that she gives — and I’m not saying it’s her only one, but certainly it’s something I’ve heard a lot — is that orchestras have to get involved in civic affairs. We have to show we care about problems in our communities, and that we can help to solve them. To quote again:
If we are seen as helping with some of these challenging issues, and it’s understood that we play a really important role, then we will have a seat at the table.
So if we play an expanded civic role — if we help with issues crucial to the community, if we make ourselves valuable, in ways (or so it seems) other than musically, then we’ll get that table seat. We won’t be irrelevant.
Such a small step
But isn’t that a modest goal? To persuade people that we matter? Can we imagine a forceful profit-making company setting a goal like that? Wouldn’t they first (or alongside community initiatives) go all-out to sell their product?
Which, as you know, is what I think we ought to do. Create performances so powerful — and so much in tune with current culture — that people just about break down our doors to go to them. Do we really want instead to go out into the world with what’s essentially a timid plea? “Please don’t reject us.” I’m sorry to use strong language, but I think that’s a loser’s game.
Next: Why we’re so timid. And how we build that eager new audience.
Back in the good old days, when concert halls were full, new orchestras were being formed, people beat each other up over Stravinsky, all that good stuff, what was different? Were there were more outreach programs? Were orchestras better? Was classical music better? Were people different? Was there more institutional support? Was there more education for classical music? Were ticket prices lower? Did orchestras have more of a civic role? Some of these things might have been factors, but I doubt that any of them principally account for the 20th century decline in classical music audiences. I think it’s that the competition has gotten better. If audiences didn’t have access to audio in their homes, to telephones, movies, television, and computers with video games and a host of other enticing activities, a classical music concert might well be the best game in town. But for most people, it no longer is.
The education/outreach/advocacy approach seems to be come from asking the question “What’s the difference between people who attend classical music concerts now and people who don’t?” and trying to address those differences. I can’t imagine that approach being successful. For example, I’m pretty well educated in classical music, I love listening to classical music, I’m retired and so have plenty of free time, and I can easily afford the occasional $100 ticket to a classical music concert. But I rarely attend concerts: they’re simply not that much better than listening to a recording on my home audio system (let alone watching a well-produced classical music DVD), and they’re a lot less comfortable, a lot more trouble, and a lot more expensive. If orchestras can’t get me into their halls, they can’t expect to get less educated, less classical-loving, busier, poorer audiences to attend. Not without changing the product.
Greg makes the point that ticket sales is what is needed to fill the classical performance venues/rooms, and I would agree with that at face value; and, the result of the robust sales would naturally increase the activity of education, advocacy, and outreach and their effectiveness.
But I would also include Malinowski’s point; summarily, that if the classical performance programming, proximity location, ticket price, lack of conducive environment (level of comfort and relaxation) and time intensive commitment all serve as reasons to not attend a classical performance, notwithstanding many who have no point of reference at all to the musical culture, which I would agree with, then those are also many of the important road blocks you’re up against to get listeners to attend. Malinowski suggests changing the product; that, in my view, translates to changing programming and presentation, and I would also highly suggest how it is packaged.
It’s all changed, and it’s time to take the ride to something else.
(This is a comment not on Ms. Rutter’s remarks, but on Greg’s.) I think that the field keeps talking about outreach and education because of some pernicious assumptions: (1)Ignorance is the only factor preventing a stampede on the box office. (2)The only broken part of the business is the non-attenders, so they need to be fixed. (3)Educate them, and they will come. (4)Classical music is just fine as it is. (5)Non-fans will be happier when they change their taste and become fans.
Nicely put, John! Thanks.
I’m strongly in favor of fantastic, emotionally-engaged and engaging, imaginatively-presented concerts, and for aggressive and innovative audience development. What you say about presenting performances so powerful that people break down doors is absolutely essential. This must be at the heart of what great orchestras do–and it is at the heart of what truly successful classical music ensembles of any kind do.
But civic engagement is not just for losers.
The game we’re playing has changed. Deborah Rutter–coming from a Chicago Symphony that is doing exceptional well and in its 2103 Annual Report notes “record breaking ticket sales and fund raising results,” may very well see something about the new rules that many of us don’t.
I’ll make a strong statement, too. The idea that a major orchestra’s sole or main purpose is performing concerts to (ideally) packed houses is an anachronism. It’s no longer accurate. As long as it shapes our thinking, it limits our imagination and creativity. (I say “a major orchestra’s” because that’s the kind of institution that in its present form is in many places in crisis. As you note and often highlight, there are many smaller orchestras and ensembles and individual performers doing innovative things very successfully.)
The Chicago Symphony is an excellent example. While it has yet to rewrite its actual mission statement, it is clear that its de facto mission has greatly expanded. Obviously that mission includes great music making in a concert hall. But look closely at what it is doing with the Citizen Musician initiative and The Insitute, the mission of which is “transforming lives through music,” and you see an organization that has reimagined its purpose and its role in the community. Ricardo Muti, Yo-Yo Ma, and scores of CSO and Chicago Civic Orchestra musicians are not going out to do this extraordinary community work as an apologetic exercise in self justification. They are doing it to make a difference–not just for the people for whom they play and with whom they work, but also in their own lives.
Most musicians and music lovers of my age (56) and older work from the seemingly self-evident assumption that classical music exists solely to be listened to. I know it sounds simplistic and perhaps a little dumb to put it that way. But isn’t that the art-music paradigm?: We go to concerts to hear great works performed in (ideally) great performances. What actually happens, of course, is much more complex–we go to concerts to hear particular performers, to have a particular kind of social experience, etc. But boil things down, and I think most of us agree that the purpose of a major symphony orchestra, for example, is to present symphony concerts.
From that point of view, outreach and citizenship and education program are indeed a less-than-fully-effective strategy for audience development and a rather anemic rationale for self justification. How many tickets or subscriptions do nursing home residents, prisoners, middle-school students, and low-income people ever going to buy, after all? It doesn’t really build an audience and you are counterproductively trying to justify your existence on the basis of secondary activities that are only tangential to your primary purpose.
But what if the game itself has changed but most of us didn’t notice?
What if it’s no longer about presenting concerts but it’s actually about “transforming lives through music”? What if being connected to current culture means being socially relevant and engaged? What if concerts–while still essential and central–are one of many ways of fulfilling that larger mission?
What if you can’t be connected to current culture if all you do is give concerts?
If that’s the case, then education and civic engagement activities are not secondary functions meant to support a primary concert-presenting function. They are coequal with concert performance and have become intrinsic to the mission.
Particularly for younger players, these less formal concerts and activities, which have have a social impact, are deeply energizing. They are already living in the new, socially-connected, music-as-transformation paradigm, whether they have articulated it for themselves or not. The energy of those socially-engaged, intimate performances and other music activities can be a major factor in the kind of engaged and engaging, powerful concerts that create enthusiastic, break-down-the-doors audiences.
It’s a new time. It’s a new culture. And I don’t think it is possible to do great, fully alive performances without being engaged in making a difference with music outside the concert hall. We have to embrace our full humanity, and to do that, most of us need to get out and connect with people.
The idea of civic connection is even more true in the younger generations. Here’s a nice article talking about how important social responsibility is to younger generations:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-innovations/millennials-to-business-social-responsibility-isnt-optional/2011/12/16/gIQA178D7O_story.html
If we take this stand-point, that to people 35 and younger, social responsibility is a mandatory part of good business practice, then the idea of keeping, and even extending in education, outreach, and advocacy. Some of the biggest faux pas recently have come from, for instance, the MET not taking political stances–talk about a way to irritate the younger generation.
And I whole-heartedly (and have repeated here and in my own now defunct blog) believe that education is one part of building a young audience. Ignorance isn’t the right word, however. Exposure is much more fitting. It’s not about teaching future generations how to play these instruments: there will always be some level of interest in performance, and we should continue to provide outlets for this in the professional and amateur level (accepting that some people just play for fun is a different issue in the musical world, especially in education). What it is about is exposing people to the wide array that is our art form, providing tools so that they can easily find and navigate them (someone should do a study on “YouTube searches for classical music” and see how many people click the first recording, how many search around and after finding a hundred videos of the same piece by different people give up, how many research and find “the best” recordings, and how many suffer a form of paralysis through “not knowing what to choose.”).
It’s fixing things like how Pandora handles classical music (i had to train that station for YEARS to play Haydn but not Mozart, Meredith Monk but not Thomas Tallis, and Toru Takemitsu but not Brahms), showing audiences the widest possible array of music (by dead, but most importantly by living composers), and by overhauling the curriculum to focus on more meaningful interactions with music based on how most people interact with music–personally listening.
Just because someone says education and outreach is of utmost importance doesn’t meant they think the status quo is anywhere near correct.
Greg, Nice post! I’m fully in agreement with you. To move the arts forward, especially music, we have to do so from a position of strength, not an apologetic one. Recently Cincinnati did a second year of LUMINOCITY in our Washington Park. Two performances played to 45,000 people. Those two concerts of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra accompanied by a spectacular light show, with people sitting on blankets, having picnics, with their kids and dogs playing nearby, did more for concert music in our community than a hundred “outreach efforts.” People sat through Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Ravel and Copland works, some in their entirety, in rapt attention. When months later I attended and reviewed the first of two sold-out concerts of the CSO’s 2014-2015 season in Music Hall I could swear that there were dozens of newbies who had never attended a symphony concert filling the upper balconies. It’s all about one-step-at-a-time, but the steps must be decisive.
Good to hear, Rafael. And how are you? It’s been a while since we were in touch. Glad to know Cincinnati’s program, which I’ve read about, seems to be succeeding so well.