Speaker Spotlight: Ben Cameron on Audiences Beyond the Concert Hall

For isn’t that really why we listen? To experience delight? Absorption? Rapture? Awe? Surrender? Waves of emotion that defy verbal description? In fact, isn’t one of the great benefits of the orchestral experience that it teaches us to listen more deeply, more sensitively, more attuned to nuance, shading, and more—capacities that surely have value in other areas of our lives. Indeed, I would argue that—especially in a time of disintegrating civic discourse, of demonization of others, of over simplification and sound bites– we need those very capacities more than ever if we wish to survive and prosper as a society in the future.

The concert format will survive, I think, but may well occupy a less dominant place in the way we think about sharing symphonic music. How might we move forward in fantastic new ways if, instead of asking how to preserve a format, we asked instead how we might promote deep listening—a quest in which the concert will play a part, but only a part, of the answer?

—Ben Cameron

Register today for our free Talking About Audiences event with Ben Cameron in San Francisco on Sunday, May 13.

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