Blog archives

When The Philadelphia Orchestra emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2012, the ensemble became a canary fluttering back out of a deep dark mine. Philadelphia’s path forward will be closely watched, and not only because music lovers at home and around the world have such a stake in this...
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Franz Welser-Möst, Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra, discusses the relationship between an orchestra and the audience.

For years “cartoons put art music in ordinary people’s lives in everyday ways.” The hijinks of Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and Porky Pig set to classical music’s greatest hits certainly served as an entry point for one generation of music lovers. But what are the entry points of...
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Confronted with fundamental and ongoing changes in their audiences, orchestras are thinking about what they do and how they do it as never before. In this chapter we explore some of the ideas, innovations, optimism and uneasiness of the American orchestra, as it finds it way toward the audiences of...
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For decades nobody thought very much about them. The audience was who showed up to fill the concert hall, in a largely predictable and reliable way. An orchestra scheduled and performed its subscription concerts, and the patrons came to hear them–a straightforward cause-and-effect relationship....
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