Discussion Topic: Audience

  1. “The expectation is that we sit.” Is concert behavior at odds with human experience?

    You know the drill. Take your seat, don’t move, sit quietly, then applaud enthusiastically only at the appropriate times. Is this prescribed concert behavior the best way to engage audiences? Susan Key—special projects director for the San Francisco Symphony—examines this question.

    Empty SeatsThere has been a lot of discussion lately in arts circles about the importance of listening to our audiences. For me, the point was underscored by an audience question during our March 17 Forum in San Francisco:

    Sitting in the audience can be a very passive experience. I mean, my head is spinning. I have lots of thoughts going through it. But I’m not supposed to move… the expectation is that we sit. We’re well behaved. …but we’re not supposed to do anything. And I wonder whether on occasion there could be a little bit more—like in rock concerts [when] people get up and dance.

    Her question brings up an issue that I think orchestras ignore at their peril: the distance between the multi-textured human experience embedded in the works on our concerts and the human behavior we prescribe for their consumption. (more…)

    Topic: Audience | Tags: ,
    May 2, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (3)

  2. To Tweet or Not To Tweet – A Changing Relationship with the Audience

    Twitter Logo“Tweet Seats.”

    That’s the usual term for one of the most controversial ideas in the orchestral world these days. Mention the idea of tweeting during a concert and you’ll likely get a strong response. Love it or hate it, people have an opinion.

    In some ways, that’s good. The controversy around tweet seats often focuses on the physical disruption of the phone (the light! the tapping!), but it can also serve as a proxy to discuss the changing relationship of the audience to symphonic music. Rather than setting the music on a pedestal, with a silent, reverent audience listening in the dark… are we moving to a more interactive relationship? One where the audience is taking part in the performance in a way? Commenting, sharing, promoting, criticizing and responding. If so, how does that change the nature of our organizations? And our concerts?

    A recent Conducting Business podcast from radio station WQXR explores these issues with three guests: Brent Assink, executive director of the San Francisco Symphony; John Schaefer, host of WNYC’s Soundcheck and New Sounds; and Christopher Pinelo, vice president of communications for the Cincinnati Symphony, who oversees the organization’s social media activities. Naomi Lewin leads the discussion.

    It’s a fascinating conversation. Take a listen.

    Topic: Audience | Tags: ,
    April 18, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  3. Live Blog: A behind-the-scenes conversation with The Cleveland Orchestra

    What follows is a live blog from our behind-the-scenes conversation with leaders of The Cleveland Orchestra.

    Participants include:

    • Gary Hanson, Executive Director of The Cleveland Orchestra
    • Gary Ginstling, General Manager
    • Joshua Smith, Principal Flute
    • Dennis LaBarre, President of the Musical Arts Association, governing body of The Cleveland Orchestra

    5:24pm Hanson: Word-of-mouth has always been the best way to get people in the hall. The dearth of formal music criticism in newspapers has not created a huge void.

    5:21pm LaBarre: The long-term commitment from conductor Franz Welser-Möst is the bedrock of the whole situation. He has been remarkably receptive to community programs. He wants to be involved.

    5:13pm Smith: Culture is changing to a more open-minded, pragmatic way of thinking about things.

    5:12pm LaBarre: As president the past three years, he’s focused on three things: 1) maintaining top artistic quality, 2) ensuring the long-term financial stability of the orchestra, and 3) strengthening “the fabric of the institution” – the three groups musicians, board, management becoming much more unified. A sense of… We are in it together, we know each other. (more…)

    Topic: Audience, Community, Creativity | Tags: , , , , ,
    April 14, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  4. The Cleveland Orchestra: No Longer Business as Usual

    Like many organizations, The Cleveland Orchestra has faced challenges the last few years, but challenges aren’t always a bad thing. The flip-side of challenge is opportunity and as a recent article by Zachary Lewis in the San Francisco Classical Voice puts it:

    For better or worse, it’s not business as usual at the Cleveland Orchestra. The atmosphere today is one of determination, of long-overdue gameness to collaborate, experiment, open up. Read the full article.

    The orchestra offers free tickets to summer concerts at the Blossom Music Center for all children 18 and under. They’ve also launched a popular Fridays@7 concert series, featuring an earlier start time, no intermission, and an after party. The orchestra’s Center for Future Audiences–started in 2010 and funded by a $20 million grant–ensures that such initiatives will have long-term financial and organizational backing.

    The orchestra is also expanding the definition of community by performing regularly in Miami, recently announcing a four week residency (more…)

    Topic: Audience, Community, Creativity | Tags: ,
    April 10, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  5. Video: Michael Tilson Thomas – Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony – on Audiences


    In addition to being Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas leads the New World Symphony in Florida — a group whose mission it is to prepare highly-gifted young musicians for leadership roles in orchestras and ensembles around the world. At our live event in March, he discussed how his work there also involves exploring new ways to interact with the audience.

    Topic: Audience | Tags: , , ,
    April 3, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  6. American Orchestra Summit at the University of Michigan

    In Ann Arbor this week, arts administrators, educators, and musicians are meeting at the American Orchestra Summit, organized by our very own Mark Clague, co-moderator of the live events in San Francisco and a frequent contributor to this blog.

    The goal of the summit is “to inspire new ideas and new conversations” around such issues as productive collaboration, how to best serve audiences and communities, and the training of the professional musician in the 21st-century. (more…)

    Topic: Audience, Community | Tags: ,
    March 22, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (1)

  7. Live Blog: Behind-the-scenes conversation with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

    What follows is a live blog from our chat with leaders from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Tuesday, February 14, 2012.

    Participants included:

    • Deborah Rutter, President of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
    • Martha Gilmer, Vice President for Artistic Planning and Audience Development
    • Anna Clyne, Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
    • Stephen Lester, Bass, Chair of the Orchestra Committee
    • Lawrie Bloom, Clarinet

    (more…)

    Topic: Audience, Community, Creativity | Tags: , , , , , ,
    February 14, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (1)

  8. A “Resurrection” in Kansas City

    Steven Winn examines the resurgence of orchestral music in Kansas City.

    “You hear the trembling of the world,” Kansas City Symphony music director Michael Stern promised the packed-house crowd at Helzberg Hall. He was telling the audience what to expect in the premonitory opening moments of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” which the orchestra was about to perform.

    When it came, the trembling was a fearsome thing, shimmering and glowering in the strings. Over the next 100 minutes, Stern led his mighty forces (a huge orchestra, choir, two soloists) deeper into the darkness, through patches of pearly bright light and on to a resplendent finish. The hard-working horns shone especially brilliantly, onstage and off, throughout.

    For a first-time visitor to this splendid 1600-seat hall, one of two performance spaces in the eye-popping new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, it was impossible not to reflect on what a resurrection, what a rising from the dead, this Super Bowl Sunday afternoon concert represented.

    Thirty years ago, in 1982, the city saw its troubled orchestra, the Kansas City Philharmonic, throw in the towel and disband. A group of civic leaders moved quickly to create a successor, the Kansas City Symphony, which performed at the old Lyric Theatre and also played regular concerts at three suburban venues. It was a challenging arrangement. Attracting audiences to the acoustically compromised 3000-seat Lyric in a moribund downtown posed one problem; traveling around to the far-flung suburbs was another. Something had to change.

    And so, in a carefully plotted strategy, it did. (more…)

    Topic: Audience, Community | Tags:
    February 10, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (4)

  9. Speaker spotlight: Deborah Rutter, President of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

    In this Chicago Tribune profile of Deborah Rutter, President of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, her job is summed up this way:

    …foremost, she must keep her audiences happy. This encompasses everyone from the students who sit in the gallery to the folks who pass their names on the donor walls as they approach their box seats. It also encompasses countless people in Chicago and beyond who may rarely, if ever, set foot in the Symphony Center.

    So when Rutter is huddling with artistic planning/audience development vice president Martha Gilmer to determine programs, jetting to Europe to hear [Riccardo] Muti conduct, speaking to civic groups or simply being a presence at hundreds of Symphony Center performances each year, she has the same purpose: to connect the orchestra to the outside world that gives it its reason and means to exist.

    “I grew up believing that an orchestra was mine,” she says. “It’s like going to the library. We’re here to really have this relationship with our community.” Read the full article by Mark Caro.

    At the helm of the orchestra since 2003, Deborah Rutter has navigated the choppy economic waters of the late 2000s and led a successful effort to woo Riccardo Muti into joining the CSO as Music Director. All this while also setting the stage for fruitful artistic collaborations with young composers like Mason Bates and Anna Clyne (two upcoming American Orchestra Forum panelists and Composers-in-Residence at the CSO) and launching the Citizen Musician initiative which invites community members to make music, even getting Yo-Yo Ma into the act.

    It will be interesting to hear her take on some of the issues around Audience, Creativity, and Community that we will be exploring in our behind-the-scenes conversation on Tuesday, February 14. We’ll be live blogging the proceedings here and tweeting at @AmOrchForum. Content from the discussion will be used in future American Orchestra Forum podcasts.

    Do you have a question for Deborah Rutter? Email us and we’ll include them in our discussion on Tuesday.

    Topic: Audience, Creativity | Tags: , ,
    February 8, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

  10. Collaboration and experimentation: Ludovic Morlot at the Seattle Symphony

    Steven Winn examines Ludovic Morlot’s new vision for the Seattle Symphony.

    Ludovic Morlot, the ebullient new 38-year-old music director of the Seattle Symphony, is making waves in his city, creating fresh pathways of connection between the orchestra and its community.  According to a recent admiring piece in the New York Times, Morlot hopes to make the Symphony “central to Seattle’s cultural scene, open-minded and with a taste for collaboration and experimentation.”   Plans for the 2012-13 season include a series of 10 p.m. Friday new-music concerts (open-endedly dubbed [untitled]) in the lobby of the orchestra’s Benaroya Hall home, with drinking and mingling encouraged; the premiere of John Luther Adams’ ambitious “Become Ocean,” an especially apt fit for this water-oriented place; and a collaboration with the Intiman Theater, one of the leading lights of a theater-rich town.  The season announcement came at City Hall, after a free concert attended by Mayor Mike McGinn and lots of children.

    In another news story, Morlot expressed his enthusiasm for the orchestra’s Symphony Untuxed concerts.  As he told the Seattle Times, “We want to be very casual and invite everyone to come as they are.”   That may be especially important in this city, where Northface jackets and REI hiking boots are for many a standard dress code.  Morlot is taking care to take a full measure of his new city.  He threw out the first pitch at a Seattle Mariners baseball game. (more…)

    Topic: Audience, Community | Tags: ,
    February 1, 2012 by Beth Hondl | Comments (0)

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