I’ve had this Baltimore Symphony story simmering on the back burner for a few weeks, and continue to come back to it. The symphony hosted a special concert/performance event to allow amateur musicians to sit in with their professional counterparts. Called ”Rusty Musicians With the BSO,” the event was a pet project of conductor Marin Alsop. Said the article:
The Rusty Musicians event is conceived as an exercise in
community-building. “Our vision for the orchestra is that it’s a
destination point for the community,” Alsop said. She also observed that
“our society is changing dramatically to become more participatory.”
People are no longer content to sit by and watch.
Through the program, the orchestra discovered a rather large audience of rather well-skilled musicians. And it unlocked a sense of excitement and opportunity among the most passionate among that group.
As a follow-on — both for fun and profit — the BSO is hosting an orchestral academy for adult amateurs, offering a week of master classes, lectures and public performances with
BSO members (and Alsop), for $1650.
The wall we’ve constructed in the professional arts between ”professional” and ”non” has become increasingly inconsistent with the larger ethos of the universe — in which almost anyone has access to the means of production. The fear in bridging that wall is that we cheapen professional standards, or invade the ”pure” aesthetic space of the arts initiative. It’s good to see the BSO challenging those assumptions, at least a little bit.
Andrew, thanks so much for posting this. I hope that John De Main and Rick Mackie like the idea so much that they will consider doing this in Madison, where there are SO many amateur musicians in the city. Have a great time in Austria and be sure to tell us all about it – we’re listening! Stephanie
Next up: theatres?
Thanks for sharing this with us Andrew. I applaud the Baltimore Symphony for opening their doors. Why other organizations don’t jump into this with both feet is beyond me. In so many cases, the more people experience the arts themselves, the more they’re going to want to participate as audiences. (Think about all the audience development studies that point to the one factor that many audience members share – arts eduation as a child). I keep returning to Lynn Conner’s sports analogy – those Little Leaguers and their families don’t stay away from proefssional baseball games, in fact, I would venture to guess they are some of the biggest fans in the stadium. If others in the non-profit arts field are inviting amateurs into their world, please let us all know…the more the better!
A YouTube video–“Rusty Musicians with the BSO”–shows how wonderful the experience was for participants, some of whom likely will attend the follow-up academy and even go to BSO concerts more frequently. Kudos to the BSO.
But the “Rusty Musicians” program designers seemed to assume that amateur musicians exist in lonely isolation from each other and need a “destination point.” In reality, amateur musicians have built extensive participation networks on their own–they play in community orchestras, host chamber music evenings, post on YouTube, go to adult music camps, etc. The same is true for amateur singers (to wit, the many community choirs in the U.S.).
Arts organizations seeking new divide-bridging, participatory activities need to understand more deeply how the amateur/uninccorporated/informal arts operate and to acknowledge their existing networks. Think organizational partnerships and mutual value, not just one-and-done programs and instrumental value (such as good will, new audiences, and community visibility for the professional orchestra).
Mutually-beneficial, organizational partnerships can take many forms. For example, a 2nd violinist of a symphony performs a concerto with a community orchestra, giving the violinist experience playing a solo while giving the amateurs a chance to work with a highly-accomplished professional musician (through multiple rehearsals and performances). As another example, symphony musicians can serve as sectional rehearsal leaders (or even conductors) for community orchestras.
By building such partnerships with multiple organizations (and by making them visible), a professional arts organization can become the budding host of a community network of new professional/amateur relationships as well as amateur/amateur relationships, all with multiple kinds of ripple effects, both intrinsic and instrumental.
I’m with Visit Baltimore, and we just filmed a video of Marin Alsop from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. In the video she tells us about her love for Baltimore and her hopes for the BSO. Check it out at
http://bit.ly/dBwSkP