Just caught this article by Grant Park Music Festival Artistic and General Director Jim Palermo at the excellent Chicago Classical Music blog (maybe Portland should have one of these…hint, hint) concerning finding and nurturing audiences for classical music.
These paragraphs are what I see as the crux of the matter (emphases mine):
The good news as reported by Stager is that overall, repertory is more important than guest artists. That’s good news because guest artist fees, especially for the big names, have skyrocketed past our ability to recoup them at the box office. Stager says the best selling concerts are those that match a big name with a mega popular piece. Yes, Perlman playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto will pack ‘em in.
I always wonder at badly attended concerts why the marketing didn’t work. Then, I realize at all Mozart concerts or when people cram the aisles to hear Boleró that audiences are shrewd, selective consumers. People know what they like and act accordingly. Never underestimate the intelligence of your audience.
Here’s also what I find hopeful: Stager says that “an institution’s unwavering will to present interesting programs – not simply popular ones†builds audiences over time. Great, so we can have our cake and eat it, too, that is, if we do everything else right.
2 replies on “jim palermo on growing audiences”
I have always liked classical music; I played flute in HS and a year in college. But I really date my active enthusiasm from the point I got season tickets to an orchestra. I was in grad school in St Louis, in the mid 1960s, at a time when the St Louis Symphony was struggling to sell tickets; they made season tickets available to college students at a ridiculously low price, less than a dollar a seat per concert for good seats. That was when I learned the benefits of going because you have a ticket, NOT because you picked out that program to hear. I learned SO much about music those two years. Saw Rostropovitch, and Perlman, heard Mahler for the first time, heard music of Henze, and Elliot Carter, Ligyeti (sp?) too as I recall.
Since then I have felt the regularity and habit from those years made a life-long difference.
Bill in Dallas
There’s definitely something to be said about the “cafeteria” approach that having a cheap season ticket brings, especially when you’re new to the symphony or classical music in general. You can listen to just about anything while you’re still forming opinions about what you like and dislike. I really don’t understand the unwillingness of people to listen to something that they don’t know – I find it exhilarating at best, and a bit tedious at worst – at least it isn’t the same old same old.