Discussion Topic: Creativity

  1. A more structured approach to creativity: prototyping

    So often it seems arts organizations take a “build it and they will come” attitude towards innovation. If you get lucky, you’ll build exactly the type of experience that a new audience (or an existing one) will want… but too many times a new programming idea falls flat after a lot of investment of both time and money.

    That’s why I found this case study on prototyping featured on the ArtsFWD website so interesting. They argue that prototyping is important both to test out new ideas and to make sure you can show an early “win” to stakeholders so others at the organization get behind what you’re doing:

    Implementing an innovation doesn’t happen all at once. We suggest you take a measured approach to introducing your new strategy, rather than betting the house on it. For all sorts of reasons, you want to establish an early “win” that will help others see that this could be important, and that encourages their support. So design an event or activity incorporating the innovation, and make it one where the stakes are low. Read the full article.

    They also show prototyping in action at the Denver Center Theatre Company in a video case study. It was fun to see the three very different events they tested out on a Denver audience and the learnings from each. Is this more structured approach to creativity something the orchestra world should adopt?

    Topic: Creativity | Tags:
    January 13, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  2. Creativity in action, for all to see

    Creativity in the orchestral world can be kind of a black box. As an audience member, the only preparation you often get for a new piece is the notation “World Premiere” next to a piece’s title in the program. Very people know an actual composer, and indeed this type of creative life seems very far afield for most of us. Some of us may sing or play an instrument, but very few of us have ever taken pen to paper (or mouse to mousepad?) to actually write music. (more…)

    Topic: Creativity | Tags:
    January 10, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  3. Speaker Spotlight: Mason Bates on changes at the Detroit Symphony

    We’re looking forward to welcoming composer Mason Bates (a.k.a. DJ Masonic) to our free live event in March. He just recently completed a series of concerts at the Detroit Symphony and has an interesting write-up on his blog.

    Attention, American orchestras: look to Detroit for a way forward.

    Wait a minute — the Detroit Symphony? The storied orchestra that collapsed in an acrimonious labor dispute last year, forcing the cancellation of its season? Yes. Because it’s possible to rise from the ashes with a much stronger foundation. …

    (more…)

    Topic: Creativity | Tags: , ,
    December 13, 2011 by Beth Hondl | Comments (2)

  4. Live Blog: A chat with the Boston Symphony Orchestra

    What follows is a live blog from our chat with leaders from the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Wednesday, December 7, 2011. Participants included:

    Mark Volpe, Managing Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
    Anthony Fogg, Artistic Administrator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
    James Sommerville, Principal Horn of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in Canada
    Ludovic Morlot, Music Director of the Seattle Symphony and former Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
    John Harbison, composer and chair of the composition program at the Tanglewood Music Center
    (more…)

    Topic: Audience, Community, Creativity | Tags: , , , , , , ,
    December 7, 2011 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  5. Speaker spotlight: Ludovic Morlot

    Next week, we’ll be sitting down with Ludovic Morlot and leaders of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) to discuss Community, Creativity and Audience—the three big topics we’re exploring here at the American Orchestra Forum. Morlot is leading the BSO this month in concerts on the West coast and is also Music Director of the Seattle Symphony.

    This recent Boston Globe piece by David Weininger serves as a good introduction to his approach:

    The idea of civic engagement is popular these days, and many conductors give it lip service without much real substance. Morlot, though, has done more than talk; he has put energy and ideas behind his words. He has conducted not only gala and subscription programs but also family concerts. The Seattle Symphony has instituted a program offering two free tickets for children between the ages of 8 and 18 to any adult who buys a ticket to a subscription concert. There is a post-prison education program as well. Morlot even threw out the first pitch at a Seattle Mariners game in August. (“I did pretty good, actually. I had a 20-minute training session the day before, on the hill.’’)

    He is especially proud of a project called “Sonic Evolution,’’ for which the orchestra commissioned three composers to write new pieces, each inspired by a legendary Seattle musician: Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones, and Kurt Cobain. The undertaking “is destined to be addressing an audience that might be intimidated by the classical music genre and repertoire,’’ Morlot explains. “But still, I think everybody deserves to have that first contact with live symphony music. So I’m trying to be creative with my team – to be as versatile, as flexible as possible – as diverse in what the offering is, so that the audience can be versatile and diverse as well.’’ Read the full article.

    While the event next week isn’t open to the public, we hope you’ll join us here at symphonyforum.org to follow our live blog. We’ll also be posting podcasts developed from the discussion later this month. If you have a question for the BSO, we’d love to hear it! You can leave a comment below or email us.

    Learn more about the Dec 7 roundtable discussion with the BSO.

    Topic: Audience, Community, Creativity | Tags: , ,
    November 30, 2011 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  6. Taking the street out of street performances

    The Asphalt Orchestra (really a twelve-piece marching band) has made a name for itself with edgy, in-your-face, street performances. Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times describes them as “part parade spectacle, part halftime show and part cutting-edge contemporary music concert.” (Watch video.)

    So what happens when the Asphalt Orchestra decides to take their music off the streets and into the concert hall?

    It’s interesting to watch their solution to questions that orchestras also struggle with… how do you make a connection to the people on the other side of the music stands? How do you bridge the stage/audience divide? How do you engage people in the music? Their answer is a physical, choreographed performance—with musicians out of their chairs, virtuosic soloist spins taking center stage, and movement, movement, movement.

    Topic: Audience, Creativity | Tags: , ,
    November 21, 2011 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  7. Is the traditional concert experience actually a radical one?

    In the classical music world, we talk so much about ways to enhance the tradition-bound concert experience—down with tuxes and gowns! up with video projections!—that I found this an interesting read for an alternative point-of-view. (more…)

    Topic: Audience, Creativity | Tags:
    November 14, 2011 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  8. You had me at the album art, “Greatest Video Game Music Ever”

    Video game music. Full disclosure—I don’t know much about it. I don’t play video games. I can’t hum the tune from Angry Birds.

    That said, I find the coverage of the new London Philharmonic Orchestra recording “The Greatest Video Game Music Ever” quite fascinating. When was the last time TechCrunch—a top technology blog—had an article about orchestras? Much less one with this enthusiasm for the form?

    The comments include a spirited discussion of composers/music that should/should not have made it on to the disc. (“Spy Hunter? Hello?”)

    Video game concerts have been making the orchestral rounds over the last few years, usually relegated to summer or Pops fare. What would happen if this passion was channeled into some of our “regularly scheduled programming”?

    Topic: Audience, Creativity
    November 9, 2011 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  9. What it Takes to Keep Moving Forward

    What does it take for an orchestra to keep moving forward in the 21st-century? In a recent article, Boston Globe critic Jeremy Eichler emphasizes the need to look outward.

    Performing arts organizations don’t tend to idle in neutral — they either move forward or backward…. many forward-thinking orchestras have begun reexamining their broader missions. More groups are recognizing that the ceaseless pursuit of ensemble virtuosity alone simply does not constitute a governing artistic agenda. They have been angling outward in thoughtful ways to engage a public far beyond specialists and subscribers.

    …The orchestra must [strive] to carve an essential place for this art form in a fractured 21st-century landscape, to link a bunkered concert hall with the cultural and intellectual life of the society at large, and to entice the audience of the future not through pandering or gimmicks but through concerts that demand to be heard. Read the full article.

    Topic: Community, Creativity
    October 6, 2011 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  10. Creativity in the iPod Age

    What’s on your iPod? We know it’s not just the classical warhorses. Here Steven Winn — arts journalist, critic and co-moderator of our live events in San Francisco — poses some of the questions we’ll be asking about creativity as part of the American Orchestra Forum.

    For most orchestra patrons, “tradition” means music they know (or that sounds familiar) and “innovation” is music they don’t. Is the 20th century still the great dividing line? If so why?

    Has the iPod Age, where Rachmaninoff and rap can live side by side inside anyone’s ear buds, made the boundaries between “popular” and “classical” obsolete? Has music become so completely portable, pervasive, fragmented and fungible that we actually hear differently now? If Google is making us stupid, or at least changing the way we think (or don’t), as some cultural critics claim, have we become different kinds of listeners as well? Is Mahler just too long for our short attention spans? Or is that exactly what we need because of it?

    Might the punchier popular forms begin to influence the kind of music that composers write? Are they thinking more about venues like nightclubs and alternative spaces where the music might be performed (and received in a different way, by people who might be drinking and talking)? Do composers think about (and “use”) popular forms the way Gershwin or Milhaud did? How has irony and culture of coolness changed the temperature for contemporary composers?

    Topic: Creativity | Tags:
    September 27, 2011 by Beth Hondl | Comments (1)

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