So for a change of pace…
Last night I was at a birthday party for a kid in Rafa’s class, one of his best friends. “I like him a killion!”
While the kids played, I sat with some other parents from Rafa’s school. Three women were on their phones, looking at the summer concert schedule at Wolf Trap. Big performing arts center in the DC area, for anyone who doesn’t know it.
These were educated, professional women, age around 40, I’d guess. And they were going wild over this show:
I LOVE THE 90’S
THE PARTY CONTINUES TOUR
FEATURING
TLC, KID N PLAY, MONTELL JORDAN, ROB BASE, C&C MUSIC FACTORY, SNAP
Made them so happy! They were singing songs that would be on the show. “Everybody dance now!”
And then Googling to find set lists for this and (I think) other similar shows, to see just what songs would be done.
Said Wolf Trap’s blurb:
“Everybody Dance Now!” The ‘90s are back and “No Scrubs” allowed. Don’t miss this throwback party featuring faves like “Waterfalls,” “This Is How We Do It,” and “Rhythm Is A Dancer!”
And for these women, this was just the literal truth. Said the show would be a party, and that’s what they thought it would be.
My takeaway
Let’s tuck away all the usual flurries about the quality of this music, or whether singing the tunes is how we should react to profound classical pieces.
(Though I do think “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” by C&C Music Factory is about as irresistible as anything in music.)
Just for this moment, at least, we should let all that go. Because last night what got to me was how happy these women were, just beaming with delight.
And so I have to ask: Does advance word of anything in classical music get our smiling and singing?
I haven’t seen it. Here’s how Wolf Trap hypes the two classical music events on their main stage summer schedule, a National Symphony program and a concert performance of Tosca:
Wolf Trap welcomes the National Symphony Orchestra’s new music director, Gianandrea Noseda, in his first weekend at the helm of the Orchestra. Maestro Noseda leads the NSO, a massive community chorus, and Wolf Trap Opera alumni in Orff’s epic Carmina Burana. Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, winner of the 2015 Chopin Competition, opens the program with Beethoven’s magnificent “Emperor” concerto.
Caught up in a world of political intrigue and corruption, Puccini’s fiery diva is trapped between her allegiance to her rebel lover and a treacherous police chief who will stop at nothing to possess her. The explosive conflict between these three unforgettable characters comes to a hair-raising conclusion in one of opera’s most popular, suspenseful, and unforgettable dramas.
Who’s going to get excited at that? So many indigestible words about Tosca, meaningless epithets like “epic” and “magnificent” in the Symphony blurb. Not exactly red meat that gets you up on your feet singing “Recondita armonia” or “O fortuna.”
Trying now to imagine classical concertgoers singing and miming the opening piano sweeps of the Emperor…(because all these pieces are singable, however deep the Emperor might go)…
It’s just not happening. We’ve leached that out of our classical music world. Even if we had a light classical program, Strauss waltzes and Rossini overtures — we just don’t read the concert announcement and start to sing.
And the Wolf Trap blurbs feel, as you read them…unfelt (to avoid any harsher word). As opposed to the 90s party blurb, which, again, struck the women at the party as simply the truth.
Related footnotes
Some years ago I was at a large gathering, involving musicians, board, and staff from more than a dozen orchestras. Held in Cleveland, jointly hosted by the Cleveland Orchestra and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Part of the program (optional) was free admission to the Rock Hall. (As it’s locally called.)
Some longtime orchestra musicians went, saw some live performance videos, and came back wistful. “I wish our audience cared that much!”
Another time, I went to a Neil Young show with two people from classical music. One was a Neil Young fan, the other hadn’t been to many rock shows. And after a couple of songs was saying, “Everyone from classical music should go to a show like this! To see what it’s like when an audience cares.”
Once the audiences for what we now call classical music really did care that much…clapping during concerts when they heard something they liked…shouting at singers on the opera stage.
Here’s a recording of an Italian audience in 1957, rippling with audible excitement while Maris Callas sings a high C.
And I treasure the story of a party after the premiere of one of Shostakovich’s string quartets, the third or fourth, can’t remember. The quartet played the piece again, and the audience sang along with one of the themes.
I have to wonder: If people in the audience got word of another performance of the piece, would they have started humming that tune?
Well I would think just the simple fact of Noseda coming to the National would be a pretty big deal and I’ll bet plenty of people are excited. Different people show their excitement in different ways.
I love this post! I was just at a tribute concert on the west coast for a pioneering elder Canadian musician (bassoonist, impresario George Zukerman)and it was so dull and dirge-like… The only bright moment was when the 90 year old artist got to briefly speak at the podium, only to be cut short by earnest and mortally boring young directors who wanted to continue plodding through their insufferably dull “classical tribute” concert that had nothing at all to do with the featured artist. In classical music, we are so busy trying to prove our worth to each other thst we mistrust vitality and popularity. Rant over. For now.
This item doesn’t really fit here, but the comments section for the post which it would fit is apparently closed, and I thought this would interest you, so here you are:
The conductor Marin Alsop invited the audience to scream along with the music on Saturday night. Call it a gimmick, yet Arvo Part’s 1968 “Credo” is music that screams.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/an-orchestra-screams-its-way-through-the-20th-century/2017/05/01/1a7977b8-2dbc-11e7-8dab-4424a8f2bdfb_story.html?utm_term=.96ea472a1391
The dreadful Callas bit speaks volumes ……….
One thing I’m wondering: a good clip of “O Fortuna” might rev up audiences much like a clip of “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” might. But how would one promote C&C Music Factory if limited to a print medium, especially to audiences who might not have heard it before?
(And though a previous commentator suggests that the mention of Noseda might be a pretty big thing, as a somewhat-informed listener from elsewhere in the country, I don’t recall having heard the name before.)
Greg, I could not agree more. I represent artists in both the classical and jazz arenas but I come from a background in rock and pop. There was an emotional connection to the music in those genres that I feel is missing in the presentation of classical and jazz – I’m not saying that an amazing piece of classical music of jazz doesn’t evoke an emotional response, but the approach to marketing it and making it not only accessible but desirable relies much more on an academic appreciation, whether it be musical or scholarly. You have no idea how many times all the info I get from artists when I’m setting out to work with them and write a press release or bio contains information on where they studied, or with whom they studied and very little about what inspired them to record the music itself. I have never personally been inspired to listen to, buy or attend a performance of music based on details of that nature. Of course the visceral, fun reaction to a pop song has so much more to do with nostalgia than the quality of the music, but if I learned that XX composer spent his youth listening to hard rock, I’d be interested to learn more about the music. Classical artists, for the most part, are never going to be pop stars. They’d hardly want to. But if the music that we work in is to survive and thrive, there just has to be more focus on getting listeners to connect in the first place in order to have them get excited about seeing their favorite orchestra the next time the orchestra performs. There you have it, from a marketing perspective.
Mr. Goldberg like many writers on the arts mixes apples with oranges to arrive at a seemingly
intelligent answer to a question . One can believe that Mr. Sandow is having fun in game playing if only
to draw out the likes of Mr. Goldberg.
Ah, ariel…such a conspiracy theorist you are. All I do is say what I think. No hidden motives. Ms. Goldberg and I have exchanged some delightful email, since she made her comment. And we find we agree on many things.
And, just to remind you…one sign that someone is reasonable is that a reasonable person would say what, in her opinion, the apples and oranges in Cary’s comment are. Rather than issue a broad swipe, and leave us to guess.
I wonder what makes you seethe like this. Or play pranks. Or whatever you do.
Whatever the answer, I won’t respond to you further, unless you give some particulars about exactly what your comments mean.