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I went to hear the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra again last Thursday. I admit up front that I arrived completely ready to recant my earlier statement that I was loving orchestra concerts these days. I had half the blog post written in my head before I’d even found my seat in the hall. I mean, the idea just seemed soooo ridiculous.

Exhibit A:

Right down to the cotton candy in the lobby, a treat that you would have to pry from your child’s sticky grasp before entering the hall (No Food Please!), this operation seemed tragically misguided. I saw a clown and thought about that Lincoln Center poster.

However, I freely admit that I had it all wrong. It was AWESOME. I apologize for the pre-judgment.

Exhibit B:

The program was Poulenc (Les Biches Suite), Bartók (Miraculous Mandarin Suite), Satie (Parade), and Copland (Billy the Kid Suite) featuring the BSO and performances by Cirque de la Symphonie, a troupe of very strong people with exceptional balance and flexibility. Think Cirque du Soleil but adjust the soundtrack and kill the production budget. No acrobats were used (or needed) to color the Mandarin story line, and honestly I could have done without them in the Copland as well. But wow, did they transform the experience of hearing the Poulenc and the Satie. I couldn’t tell if the musicians were into it or if it was the most degrading night of their lives ever, but I did catch the concertmaster playing while staring up at an aerialist that was dangling from a rope high above Marin Alsop’s head. I mean, yes, it was sometimes cheesy. And yes, it’s a rentable performance that lots of orchestras are using (though based on some highly scientific YouTube research, it seems each ensemble picks its own music, and the BSO didn’t skew lightweight). For once, an orchestra concert was as much gasp-inducing fun as was advertised. More, actually. There. I’ve said it. Thank god I wasn’t hip to begin with.

But now that it’s a couple days later, I wonder if the experience has changed my thinking about one-off shows that are friendly to new audiences, i.e. the video game music programs or the guest artist that goes over big with the Boomer set. The party line I always hear on that is that the shows are little more than bait-and-switch events that do not increase the local audience for normal concerts in the long term. Would that apply here as well? For a little while, at least, I’m going to be associating the Meyerhoff with a great night out, but now that I’ve had a few laughs and “did you see that!” moments, I’m actually looking for my next experience to be quite different. Just as compelling, but in a different way. Bring on the dark and twisty.

Oh, but before we go that direction, one more thing: Even more remarkable, considering Alex’s recent talk and the blog-o-sphere chatter attending it, in one performance we solved the clapping issue! At the end of the first movement, no one knew what to do, but the idea of not acknowledging the grace and skill of the couple who had just three seconds earlier been flying through the air was just too ridiculous to manage. After that, we were home free, clapping like hoodlums whenever the emotion struck. Sure, we missed hearing a few notes. It was a live performance. We’ll live. In fact, now we have a reason to go back so we can hear it again.

Same friend (I know! She should start a blog, right?) passed me this link. Talk about dangling the cultural carrot. I think the boat ride to the island is my favorite part, though I wonder if this kind of “bragging rights” gimmick carries more cons than pros when it comes to the profile of the performing arts in society. Snob fest creator or innovative attention getter? Perplexingly, I like the audacity, even if it means I won’t get to go.

Transposing the idea across art forms: Maybe classical music is actually too accessible. Do we need concerts every week? Maybe the musicians look bored for a reason. How do you maintain the idea that it’s special when it’s ubiquitous? In most communities, the music just exists in a building downtown. You can go there if you want, but there’s really no fire burning under it to make you think you have to do it now. Premieres don’t even generate that, though sometimes they garner a nice article in the local newspaper. But what if it was a much more unique and finely crafted affair? Fewer shows, but more considered presentations tailored to the music. Concerts would be events, not like when James Blunt fills your astrodome (no one have a heart attack) but similar to when an art museum gets some special limited run exhibit, all the walls get painted a new color, and suddenly you’re immersed in Ancient Egypt or Rothko’s color fields. Would the supply/demand axis shift? If nothing else, I feel like it would help me plug into the music with more focus and intensity.

Then, if we want to get really crazy, we could seriously jack the price. It may sound dumb, but so does the idea of a $10,000 handbag if you ask me, and those sell. Forget boats and islands. How about an evening of Mozart with food and clothes and location straight out of Amadeus (or Marie Antoinette, if that’s your fancy)? The outreach conundrum would be solved; “under-served communities” would be ignored–intentionally! Yeah, we’re probably pretty far away from that attitude adjustment. But if it comes, I’ll take recitals performed as if we were shooting a scene for a Merchant Ivory film. Oh, and a complimentary ticket, please. Maybe Helena Bonham Carter will lend me a hat.

Some things, apparently, never change.

That image at right is from a 1960s ad campaign that was launched to both raise funds and gather public support for the construction of Lincoln Center.

A friend passed it my way, and I post it here because a lot of ideas floating by me of late re: “How do you solve a problem like the state of the [insert institutional performing art form] industry?” are summarized with just a glance at that slogan. Talk about “something doesn’t smell quite right about this” advertising. It’s like It but with mimes. Fun is kind of the last emotion it raises. But fun is also not generally what I’m looking for when I go to a performance, at least not in the candy colored amusement park sense that seems to be implied here. Maybe I’m just too insider-y and jaded. Did this campaign work back then? Would it work with any demographic out there today?

Bait and switch, water down, make friendly: why go this route? A night at the symphony is not a night at the circus (well, except when it is). I can’t believe it’s that there aren’t enough creative ideas out there when it comes to slick, sophisticated, evolutionary ways of presenting “classical” or “concert” or whatever you want to call the field of music that gets all those government and foundation dollars and so needs to be sure to maintain a certain level of public interest. If nothing else, I read about them on blogs all the time. But getting to the part where we enact change is as frustrating as watching C-SPAN (though here again I fully acknowledge that my own nose might be pushed just a bit too hard against the glass). Truly, it feels like the industry has turned into a kind of political party paralyzed by tradition and bureaucracy. I mean, it’s 2010 and in his lecture to the Royal Philharmonic Society, Alex Ross had to spend many (many!) words on the clapping issue. The clapping issue! We often know perfectly well what’s broken, but will we ever be able to drag significant solutions through in a bold and timely fashion?

Later, Ross did get to speak a bit about the experience of taking friends to classical music concerts and registering that otherwise culturally engaged people leave disappointed and that “the evening in some way falls short.” In my experience, this is exactly the case. We dedicated concert goers arrive at the hall not expecting a “show” or the kind of spectacle most ticketed experiences deliver as a matter of course. Remember how much fun you had at that Bare Naked Ladies show in 1996? This is not that. No, instead we understand going in that at best we’ll get something on par with a good lecture at the public library or a not terribly well-designed black box theater production. We attend as if it’s a religious service because we can take enough joy from hearing this type of music played live to adequately recoup our investment. However, that’s not how increasingly larger groups of people want to spend $40 and a Saturday night. So we can either downsize with a smile, or tweak till we catch up in the numbers game, but even the Smithsonian museum didn’t rely on displaying those dusty dioramas forever.

Sure, there are groups at the fringe doing crazy things right now that blow up (success!) or blow up (clearly no one thought that through!). They take their passion and place their bets. Still, if all those conferences are in any way a reliable reflection of the arts institutions out there, they’ve largely been blinkered and sucked down into a tide pool of exhaustion and fear so forcefully that current economics may be the final straw for some. So unless a hero with super human strength comes by with some pretty strong rope, would the music be better served outside these monolithic institutional structures? I suspect groups that are much more flexible and capable of steady experimentation and rapid change are vital today more than ever, because money is tight, audiences are distracted, and I doubt the answer is one singular sensation in a time gone global.

Now, now, I know what you’re thinking. And I can’t show you the money. The monoliths with the track records have what’s left of it. So what to do?

(Now, completely unrelated funny video as reward for reading that entire post.)

In response to the jewelry heist, Vijay put out a new music remixing/response challenge and I was inspired. So this weekend I thought hard and gathered some video and sound materials and…failed completely to rise to the occasion. Despite what the naysayers suggest, in my limited experience this kind of work requires amazing skill and creativity, and I’m just not there yet. (Though the exercise wasn’t a complete wash. I now have a file folder filled with CSI Miami quotes, Law and Order sound effects, and the theme song from COPS, which I hope will come in handy one day.)

While I was procrastinating, however, the Pantless Knights posted this brilliant spoof/tribute to the “new dorks” spun off from the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys track “Empire State of Mind,” and I am once again inspired. It’s addictive; you have been warned.

It’s almost time again for sparkly dresses, borrowed jewelry, and the disbursement of those little gold men! I’m not usually knowledgeable enough to play the office Oscar pool, but somehow this year I got to watching quite a few of the entries shortlisted in the “best animated short” category. Lots of inventive stuff in this parade, but I ended up falling for one that didn’t make the final nominee cut. It has music and cats, however, (also Nick Cave) so I thought I might give it a little love here on the internet. Plus! 8 minutes, no speeches.

Learn more about the animators behind the film here.

I was working on a video editing project this past week, and after pulling a couple of samples from a Vijay Iyer solo show at The Stone in New York City, I kept replaying the last few seconds of the tape. Something looked…amiss. Still, come on, there was no way a fan would actually come for the set and then stay to steal Vijay’s timepiece right off the piano (even though that certainly looked like what the guy was up to). Apparently, sad but true! What is up with the music consumer these days? First they demand free MP3s, then they come back for your jewelry?

Thankfully, Vijay says it was not a valuable item and he is not seeking vengeance, but he posted the clip on YouTube and tweeted out an invite to remix the footage if that’s your thing. I think I can hear Keith Morrison’s voiceover already…

I had not already heard of the Toronto-based Art of Time Ensemble when I read about them today over on The Collaborative Piano blog, but–this being Mind the Gap–when Chris Foley pointed out that the ensemble “seeks to bring classical and non-classical genres closer together in new and untried ways” I certainly couldn’t pass it by. And I got pretty hooked on the video (well, not as hooked as I am on this video. But close!).

I like it. Melodramatically poetic, beautiful camera work, includes Angelina Jolie look-alike with a gun. Engaging! Is this how straight-up art song once fired the imagination of the audience (particularly if you spoke German) back in the day? Now I kind of want to see them take up some lieder just to see what happens, and yet I also grasp why that is a terrible idea.

Awww, damn. One of my favorite composers breaks into major motion pictures, and it’s a movie I am quite frankly too terrified to go and see. Ingram Marshall and Shutter Island were not things I expected to see linked when I first saw the trailer for this little tale of horrors–though there is clearly fog–but it doesn’t even stop there. The soundtrack also includes music by John Cage, John Adams, Max Richter, Brian Eno, Giacinto Scelsi, Krzysztof Penderecki, György Ligeti, and…it just keeps going. I’m completely intrigued, and now musically freaked in a completely different capacity. Maybe I can take hold of my fear, dig my nails into my husband’s forearm, and hit the cineplex to endure this terrifying tour de cliché just to catch how the soundtrack works!?!

Um, no, wait, you go ahead. Think I’ll wait for the DVD so I can cling to a blanket in the privacy of my own home.

Two strategies for meeting butts-in-seats goals:

1) Hold it out of reach: NC-17

“could shock an unprepared spectator”

This reeks a bit of the bait and switch, so I can’t quite get behind the idea of trying to titillate patrons into purchasing tickets when the final product offers anything but. That said, some of this stuff is pretty raunchy.

[via Proper Discord]

2) Put it in easy reach: Thank You for Being a Friend

On the other side of the coin–or cookie, as the case may be–there’s something to be said for melding your social networking strategies with good, old-fashioned, real-life friend making. In my experience, people like to feel that they genuinely belong to a scene and to believe that their presence at an event is important (at the very least) or actually makes the event itself better (at the very best). Your fans don’t have to become best friends, but the chance to exchange a few words or contribute personal time/talent to a project can turn a casual attender into an invested fan. All you need is a comfortable opportunity.

Not doomed! Or perhaps only just more doomed than we could ever have thought possible?

Wait, wait: nope, seriously doomed.

Okay, clearly I overplay my hand. But I wanted to point these pieces out. I got a lot out of considering the myriad perspectives proffered, including some of the comments.