The Utah Symphony is trying a new tactic to eliminate huge swaths of empty seats in their hall: they’re blacking out seats in the back and upper tiers to pack concertgoers closer together to give the impression of a larger audience. Read the complete story from the Salt Lake Tribune here. Here’s the opening:
 A recent letter to Utah Symphony season subscribers announcing “new and improved” seating options didn’t mention one fact: Some popular seats are being blacked out.
“I think it’s an extremely stupid decision. They’re antagonizing the very people that they want,” said Lynne Finney or Park City, a symphony regular for 10 years who prefers seats on Abravanel Hall’s fourth-floor third tier.
But those seats and others in the downtown Salt Lake City hall – 1,100 in all, or 40 percent of the hall’s 2,800-seat capacity – are not being offered because orchestra officials say unfilled seats aren’t good for business. The idea, says Utah Symphony & Opera marketing director Sean Toomey, is to concentrate patrons at concerts so empty seats are less visible. A partially filled hall, Toomey says, contributes to a “psychological phenomenon” that the organization is faltering.
“All of the reviewers seem to care, all of the donors seem to care and all of the patrons seem to care,” he said.
“On the day folllowing the [‘Elijah’] concert, there was a headline in The Salt Lake Tribune, ‘Sparse crowd for grand Elijah,’ which is fair . . . but you know how people are,” Toomey says. “They want to go to something that is successful. Someone reading that on a Saturday is saying ‘Well, that’s not where I want to be.’ “
This is something that I’ve thought about for Portland from time to time. I haven’t spent much time as an audience member, but I think I’d feel a bit strange if I were up in the back of the balcony (which is very large here in Portland) and had rows and rows of empty seats between me and the next audience member. I can relate to how it feels to see the new hot summer blockbuster in a packed theater: the audience really becomes part of the viewing experience, rather than if you wait until a week or so and go during the day when you’ve go the theater to yourself.
What do you think? Is this a practice that you’d like to see here? How do you feel when you go to a performance with lots of empty seats? The critics don’t seem to make an issue of attendance unless it’s a packed house (yet), but would it dissuade you from coming if you knew the concert didn’t sell well?
Let me know what you think – you can now use the contact tab at the top of the page to send me an email.
2 replies on “not just butts in seats”
I sit in the upper balcony at the OSO so I have a pretty good view of the seating arrangements. Generally speaking when the concert is not well attended the seats that remain empty are the ones on the sides,so the audience looks pretty concentrated. It seems that when season subscriptions are sold they do start at the front of the section at a given price. The empty seats are generally in the rows that separate one price level from the next one, and it would be rather difficult to handle that problem Over the years the people that sit next to you become
“symphony friends” and one would not like to be arbitrarily separated from them.
Last but not least the ticketing staff would go slightly crazy answering all the complaints from irritated subscribers.
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You’ve got a point there – I notice down in the front there are lots of people who have been coming for years together. I had a slightly uncomfortable experience a few years ago when I was in Philadelphia doing a profile of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s then principal violist Roberto Dìaz for Strad magazine. I was given some really choice seats in their equivalent of the Dress Circle, and when I sat down I was given a thorough look up and down by this society matron who said “you’re not the people that usually sit here!” It all ended well, but I thought she might toss be out on my rear end after that!