LIVE Blog – Talking About Audiences – Event and Webcast

1:54pm Things like the the NY Times feature showing the physical side of conducting and the interactive feature online – add dimension and scope for the public

1:52pm Must be careful about blanket statements about “the audience”. People can be led in a good way, can be shown thing, can learn things. And that’s an important function of the orch and the music director.

1:49pm Gilbert on “special” projects (like Ligeti Le Grand Macabre) – eventually they should be central to what the orchestra provides. They should not be held at a distance as something unique, out of the ordinary. Orchestras should produce symphonic concerts, but more and more should be catalysts for intellectual inquiry and cultural leadership.

1:45pm Gilbert likes preserving the tradition and feel of the concert experience – to make it special – but that doesn’t mean every concert has to be that way.

1:43pm For Gilbert, the takeaway from the famous NY Phil cell phone incident is that on an intuitive level people responded so strongly because they understand the inviolable content of what happens in the music hall. People were truly disturbed that the live concert experience was stopped/interrupted.

1:42pm In a world of immediate gratification, it can be hard to let go and let someone else choose what you hear and what is told to you. It perhaps makes what we do in the concert hall even more impoatant.

1:35pmMatthew VanBesien and Alan Gilbert take the stage. Gilbert is in his 3rd season as Music Director of the NY Phil. The relationship with the audience is on his mind “all the time.” Gilbert first experience the NY Phil as an audience member and that informs his work as Music Director. Interested in building a relationship over a long period of time – and what’s possible over the long period is connection and trust. That can be the basis for exploration and risk-taking.

1:25pm Audiences is coming in, Alan Gilbert takes the stage in a few minutes.

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