Future Symphony

CutTime is a pioneer in a newly recognized frontier, preparing young classical musicians to work boldly in and around popular culture, preparing future fans with a background soundtrack of New Classical. In partnership with institutions nationwide, we use new opportunities to start feeding the masses hungry for meaning and alternatives. We create vacuum and feed music and ideas into it with fitting experiences. What IF we could take 3% of concerts far off the pedestal to .01% of all Americans? Today we can.

Almost by definition, classical arts cannot also be popular. It is defined by restraint, formality, structure; an economy of effort. And yet if pop culture loves hard-edged, beat-driven, socially-conscious music sung by archetypal characters, common sense also tells us that a third of this group are also cultural omnivores; curious about what they’re missing.

How then to create a context that is immediately accessible for them? How do we reward curiosity for the symphony and create more? Is it possible to compare sonata and song, so that both new listeners and performers discover each other? Are we willing to sacrifice for  love; to give in order to receive? Is music not a form of love? What key ideas, analogies, images or activities immediately clue newcomers into the spirit of instrumental music?

Bigger Picture

CutTime’s expertise and library grew over 22 years within a major symphony orchestra, maintaining its reputation, rewarding discerning veterans with performances, tours and recordings at the world-class standard. As the national appetite for “high” culture continued to shift and fragment, CutTime followed major efforts to address audience decline for classical and began to ask many provocative questions:

  • What good are we musicians, if we can’t convince more friends and family to attend our concerts?  
  • Can people see signs of our excitement and passion despite our self-discipline?
  • How compelling can our concerts be if newcomers only come once?
  • Is the concert experience too demanding, church-like or judgmental?
  • Are the doors of our sanctuary too heavy for newcomers to open?
  • Is the tradeoff that we musicians are in effect too spoiled by loyalty and patronage?
  • Are we congratulating ourselves just for preaching to the choir?  
  • Doesn’t everyone deserve this music, not just the knowledgeable few?
  • Why are we afraid to perform in street communities or in uncontrolled conditions?
  • Are symphonies only effective in the concert hall?
  • Can’t symphonic music be animated, casual, adapted, amplified, personal and more emotional?
  • Isn’t classical music entertaining beyond sound? What else can we exaggerate to build indelible connections with new audiences to serve our art?

CutTime means the future of classical music is inclusive.

The classical tradition in the concert hall has come to be defined as restrained, formal, academic and refined. The current presentation style developed itself over decades (in our minds) to maximize the internal experience and impact of the music. We listen silently, in a room with 2300 people, internalizing the experience of music in a spirit of meditation, as if to watch a movie, but of sound. And yet for unprepared newcomers, first impressions of this foreign ritual can be confusing, cold and lasting. And if they are shushed by anyone or given dirty looks for whispering, clapping in the wrong place or wearing jeans, they may never try again.

It might feel similar to going to a new church where we don’t know anyone or even the customs. The word classical itself automatically turns off so many. Isn’t this largely because musicians can’t explain what makes it so? (Answer: European art was inspired by classical Greek writings on beauty and music (aesthetics). The term classical applied to music first appeared around 1840s. The Olympics is also a revived classical idea.) While concerts didn’t start out this way, we came to prefer maximizing our enjoyment— discouraging any talk or distractions. We are left however without a complementary cultural service on the other side of the tracks. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner.

Yin-Yang Cats
Yin-Yang Cats

 

New Classical

CutTime is calling for a balanced future, when orchestras will frequently loosen hard-won standards to step off the pedestal to join a wider public with real warmth; such as musicians speaking casually with their audience. CutTime inspires progressive work with the communities that we have, honoring many facets of the social diamond to connect with all music lovers, embracing the whole world with a mission of love (agape), and validating symphonies through repeated, small exposures, and music that immediately mirrors our humanity.

CutTime is committed to pioneering New Classical: relaxed, informative, interactive and tech-enhanced presentation styles. We find opportunities everywhere to create the inclusiveness, acceptance and spontaneity that balance the exclusivity, judgments and caution inherent to the demanding standards of our profession. Traditional concerts might remain much the same, as long as we develop such effective introductory experiences that welcome, validate and inform casual customers. We believe it is possible to flip over the coin of understanding, in part because the music of Romanticism itself is about shifting perspective (epiphany).

New Standards

Let us build a new high standard for what it means to be a classical musician in the 21st-Century and beyond. CutTime envisions a program, recruiting, inspiring, training and hiring musicians to recognize and pursue opportunities that build community-classical connections. CutTime® is the world’s only organization dedicated to presenting symphonic music as chamber music, letting us create necessary first steps into this powerful and mysterious, yet adaptable worldview for curious music lovers.

We understand it may be difficult for veterans to suspend judgments while they read these pages. We have benefited from being intelligent, discerning and demanding professionals, of ourselves and others. We ask everyone to imagine the potential benefits of truly broadening our community. Only classical music lovers can seed their various communities with lasting experiences of exactly how this music can be accessed at personal levels. Become part of the village that it takes to raise new listeners.

Great musicianship goes beyond playing the notes when we can follow the slender thread of a musical idea without breaking it to its conclusion. Let us likewise go beyond dumbing down to create first level access to classical— turning outsiders into marginal insiders— out of love for the whole world (agape). Let us switch often to audience-centric mode to also serve art.