A couple of weeks ago, I posted some testimony, to the power of concerts that blend classical music and indie rock, and draw an excited new audience. Here’s more, sent to me in an email from a friend who works in the mainstream part of the classical music business. He and I had been at Le Poisson Rouge together, seeing a show from the Nonclassical record label (and club night) that’s based in London. A show also cosponsored by New Amsterdam Records, a New York label, which, like Nonclassical, features music by classical composers who’re as much influenced by pop music as they are by classical.
All of which reads, to me, like a boring list of things that many readers might not know about. So let me back up. For decades now, we’ve had an alternative classical scene in New York, starting with the minimalists, moving forward through time with Bang on a Can, and now bursting out with amazing force with, for instance, the big orchestral concerts that Wordless Music did, and the big, free Bang on a Can marathons, which last all night and attract 1000 people or more.
I’ve blogged about a lot of this before. (As you can see from the last two links.) All these events involve composers who write classical music — structured, preplanned, notated — but do it in an environment informed by pop, something that for these composers is as unremarkable as Milton Babbitt being influenced by Schoenberg.
And an audience has grown — an audience of nonspecialists, an audience that surely for the most part never goes to Lincoln Center, an audience that might be attracted by the presence of indie rock on some of these programs, or by a big indie rock star who’s written a classical piece. But above all, this is an audience that doesn’t care about labels, isn’t put off by complexity or austerity, reacts with shouts and whoops, and finds the new classical pieces on all these programs completely comfortable.
On Saturday, a piece I’m writing about all this — and about the challenge it poses to the classical mainstream — should be published in the Wall Street Journal. But now I just want to offer testimony. Two people I know, with a thoroughly mainstream classical background, went to concerts like the ones I’ve described.
One said, in an e-mail she was happy for me to quote:
The melodies and rhythms washed over me throughout the evening, and I was truly moved. OK, I admit…I even shed a few cathartic tears. It just felt so RIGHT to be in a concert hall with an audience of younger people who don’t typically attend symphonic concerts. And they were loving what they were hearing. [For more, see my testimony post.]
And now this, from another friend, after another concert (also quoted by permission):
I can’t tell you how grateful I am you invited me. It was a terrific night, both personally and professionally. I would love to go back.
One of the things that made it work for the audience was that the whole gestalt was that of an indie rock event, not classical. The age of the performers played into that — they were the same demo and dressed the same as the audience.
Note that the music at this concert — the Nonclassical event at LPR — was wholly classical, and often without any obvious pop music reference. And note also that the audience was largely silent, even though both the guy who runs Nonclassical (Gabriel Prokofiev, the composer’s grandson) and one of the chamber groups that played both told the crowd to make some noise. But still it felt like a rock show. And was tremendously exciting to a mainstream classical person who was there.
(I’m not finished with the arts and popular culture. Just needed to do some time management, a big refrain with me lately, and thought this would be a little quicker to write.)
I think shows like these are becoming a lot more common, and I can see it picking up some speed here in the L.A. area as well. Incidentally, I happen to play in one of those types of groups, the A-Tribute Ensemble. Our violinist plays in classical and folk styles, our cellist has a background in playing electric bass and Indian music, and I do a lot of things done in a minimalist-y rhythmically oriented style, sometimes I like to phase also. Our shows are all improvised.
The problem? Little to no institutional (academic or otherwise) support, despite very positive feedback we’ve been getting from a variety of people at our shows. (A lot of them think we’re playing off of a score, at least until we start doing more wacky stuff.) There’s also the problem of finding places to play — jazz clubs won’t have us, we’re a little bit too classical for rock venues, while the classical world is still stuck alternating between 19th century and New Music repertoire, neither of which attracts younger audiences. There is, of course, no money involved in any of this at this point — you can make at least a few bucks playing old repertoire, but usually not if the music is improvised. It’s unfortunate, improvisation is largely what allows for cross-genre connections to occur.
If something isn’t done, the shows like the one you’ve described above will start to lose its luster as musicians become disillusioned with how things work on the outside. Understandably, the general public has become very skeptical of what the classical world has been producing over the last 50 years or so, so change will have to start with the way we work things on our end.
It seems to be a generalization to write that it’s “an audience that surely for the most part never goes to Lincoln Center”. (Although, you did put a lot of qualifiers on the word “never” to be certain.)
If this had been just another one of the growing number of deserved accolades for LPR, it would have been fine. But here’s the thing: I’ve seen this young audience intersect with the classical audience at Lincoln Center, mostly at Lincoln Center Festival, but also at Mostly Mozart, with its late-night concerts.
Classical institutions have been offering concerts for an indie rock audience for years, and the concerts I’ve been to have been full (I’m thinking particularly of Alarm Will Sound doing Aphex Twin or David Byrne’s series at Carnegie a few years back). Recently, we’ve heard a lot of euphoria about the advent of LPR, which indeed has taken it to a new level and which I agree is pretty great. You’re welcome to join the chorus. I just think you too often set up these false analogies: LPR is the future / Lincoln Center is only for the olds. I don’t think it’s as black and white as you make out.
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