Getting Real with Classical Music, Part 2

So I left off here writing about the need for our major institutions to go beyond dumbing down to reach the casual community. In support of that statement, I was at a dinner with a young black artist last month who has gone to some DSO concerts but felt she couldn’t appreciate much of what was going on. She liked my suggestion that orchestras need a series of Symphony 101 for casual new listeners at the same time as the typical pre-concert lectures for veterans.
The Time Is Now

My thoughts of what would best be included in this are proprietary, but you should use your imagination about what it could be to make the symphony real (vs. strange, foreign, surreal) for the curious and casual. If your program is specifically for the young adults who would attend over the course of the first season, your clients will be only the new listeners showing up for it. We will have to discount the many veterans who don’t want to be left out either. Newbies, we assume, are curious too to hear A Story of Classical Music and Why That Should Matter, told in brief by a lively musician-host and using effective analogies.

But what about the millions of otherwise curious and casual young adults in our cities who don’t give a thought to attend a symphony concert? We care about them. We believe these millennials would grow into future audiences when classical institutions began to meet them halfway. Or if not paying customers, then at least influencing the future openness (or not) of the following generations. Discounted or free tickets to the symphony still have a limited appeal to the largest and most influential generation of Americans. I believe they want and deserve introductory services that make the classical tradition practical again.

This is where the young talent playing in our orchestras comes in, to connect their generation, and their non-classical friends, with their understanding of their work. Yes, many are already doing this… but there are three problems. These musicians are not given enough resources, they are expected to keep it high-class and they are not telling A Story of the Symphony.

Those resources include money (service fees, tech assistance, advertising, staff hours), but also strategically risking the reputation of the orchestra. Orchestra musicians and boards could be seen as smartening up their brands. Donors and corporations also want to see the orchestra build future audiences. They just can’t bring themselves to fund any radical departures from normal, esp. post-Recession. This dilemma has played out before and again in private meetings and conversations.

My second point may never have been uttered in these same conversations. But I can hear it now, “What Story of the Symphony? How could anyone possibly explain the development of the symphonic form in an hour-long format? It would inherently be inaccurate, oversimplified and utterly too controversial. We would be the laughing stock of the industry for even trying! Only an established historian with a European accent is qualified to tell the story.”

CutTime’s work is to enlist and empower brave musicians to develop their opinions of the development of symphonic music… starting with answering the burning question, Why is it called classical music. It’s true that we will talk to a concert hall full of elders very differently than we would a smaller room of millennials. And that’s exactly what we need to make happen… and neither as an academic course nor as Jimmy Fallon on late night TV… but as leaders in a room of new friends who are genuinely curious about when classical instrumental music ROCKS and why we are so addicted to it.

Snoopy Dance2

As long as we share honest opinion, making it obvious, then we can’t be so wrong. We could demonstrate with phrases or snippets from different periods on our instruments. We could talk about the innovations over time, speaking from what we believe to be true as masters of this music. What we say needn’t be factually verifiable by a panel of Oxford historians… we can have fun with history.

But understand why cultural institutions haven’t allowed its employees to play loosely with its credibility. Not only was there too much funding at stake, but it also seems offensive especially if delivered in a flip manner. No, anyone who was curious about classical music just had to settle for a book, a website, a traditional lecture or asking playing friends privately. There was NO having fun with anything here. With the orchestra’s name behind it, concerts could only be a serious business.

I understand that the classical music industry sees itself as a pillar of civilized Western society. These demands in the name of high standards and preservation led me to wonder if the industry as a whole will realize how to escape the corner it painted itself into, in time to stave off further disasters. Classical music will never be all things to all people, but it can certainly be balanced by joining the flip side of the music coin. The pursuit of perfection is not the only goal, but rather a means to connect with and inspire more people.

The venerable late managing director of the LA Philharmonic Ernest Fleischmann famously said that orchestras are in the communication business. I agree but prefer to imagine we are in the INSPIRATION business. For me that means inspiring as broadly as possible. And yet, counter to the refinement classical represents, raw truth and raw energy also inspire a great deal. This is why some great stories are told without dates, citations or qualifications. They are connectors that inspire an audience of listeners less sophisticated  than traditional concert-goers.

This is why building an artistic enterprise from scratch, with a mission to experiment in bold and replicable ways, may be the most effective way to build new audiences for classical. The Knights orchestra for example, or ETHEL, a string quartet are a good start, at home and touring to plant the seeds of renewal. CutTime is another, as it ramps up with touring, partnerships and its unique series currently under the name Classical Revolution Detroit.

What do you think about this?