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Why do we listen to music?
What are the benefits of music to us? What do we get out of music? These questions are important to answer if we are serious about audience development or about sharing classical music with wider audiences.
A New Classical Music Experience Debuts
Just over two years ago, Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed wrote that Gustavo Dudamel’s debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic meant “an embrace of a new generation and cultural point of view.” Today, in a debut of a different kind, Dudamel helped nudge audiences across North America a bit further along his generational trajectory.
The very first presentation of LA Phil LIVE – a live, high-definition broadcast of Dudamel and his orchestra from Walt Disney Concert Hall to movie theaters across the U.S. and Canada – shared several common elements with Dudamel’s October 9, 2009 Disney Hall debut.
Dreams for the arts world…
While still recovering after the Christmas holiday, I wanted to share this article from last week. In it Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, shares his Christmas wish list for the performing arts world. It’s well worth reading in full, but I thought I’d pull out some key points for you to get you back in the mood of pumping up classical music and doing something great before 2010 comes to an end.
Question of the Week: Why do orchestras have trouble attracting young audiences?
Why do orchestras have trouble attracting young audiences?
There are certainly many theories about why orchestra audiences are getting older and older. Is it ticket prices? Something about the music itself? Is the atmosphere too stuffy? I don’t really want to seed the conversation too much, so I’ll end it there. What do you think? Why do orchestras have such trouble attracting young people to their concerts?
Please share your thoughts in the comments below. I’ll be collecting them all and doing a post highlighting the best points before next week’s question. Hopefully by putting our heads together we can come up with some real innovative thought.
You can see the Question of the Week archives here.
QOTW: Recap from 12.7.10 - Programming for the Public
Last week’s question about how far arts organizations should go in matching their programming to public tastes received a few in depth responses that are worth noting.
Scoreboards in the Concert Hall - Another solution to classical music’s problem., Ctd.
As an extension of the discussion on using something like scoreboard that one would find at a sporting even as a way to help guide uninitiated listeners through a concert, Caitlin Rowley hones in a bit more precisely on what she sees as the problem: the program(me) notes.
Scoreboards in the Concert Hall - Another solution to classical music’s problem., Ctd.
Greg Sandow has some follow up to his initial post on this subject. He addresses some of the detractors of this idea with statements like this:
Scoreboards in the Concert Hall - Another solution to classical music’s problem.
Thanks to Greg Sandow, my attention was drawn to this excellent blog post that discusses an interesting idea for how to help uninitiated audiences better follow and connect to classical concerts. I’ve written before about the difficulty many people have with relating to classical music, but it’s not often that our classical music world is offered real insights into the thinking of those we most desire to reach. As a result, I want to cross post it as well, to ensure as many people as possible have a chance to read it.
