Just caught the first salvos of blogosphere responses to the Oregonian interview with Elaine Calder, the consultant hired by the Oregon Symphony. The responses so far are not good, and how could they be, given the headline presented in the Playbill Arts story on the interview:
Consultant Suggests Oregon Symphony May
Play Too Much Classical Music
I hope beyond hope that the impressions given (and taken) by the dissemination of the interview from The Oregonian are the result of attempting to cram too much information into too few column inches. I don’t want to comment on any of the information in the article at this time, but I do wish that we in the orchestra had heard some of these thoughts from Ms. Calder before we awoke to the Sunday Oregonian‘s coverage in the arts section. Candor is one thing that we sorely need, but clearly it can also cut both ways.
Without further ado, here are the excerpts from the postings that convey the basic takes of the various blogs on this story (click the links for full text at the individual blogs). I’ll keep looking for more comments, if there are any positive ones, I’ll update this post.
- Soho the Dog says:
Oh, dear God. I’m all for pops concerts that boost the bottom line, but not pops concerts that are straight-up religious pandering. (How about some klezmer concerts and visits to the temple? An oud soloist and a trip to the mosque? Nah—it’s not like those people will ever assimilate. Besides, there aren’t enough of them to make pandering financially worthwhile!) If I were a patron of the Oregon Symphony, I’d be downsizing my donations by the exact amount they’re paying this blowhard.
- OboeInsight says:
So from what I’ve read so far, we should probably be doing “Christian soft-rock”. OH PLEASE SPARE ME! That music … I’ve heard a lot of it, trust me … is frequently low quality, wanna-be-pop-but-not-quite, lame stuff. (I’m a Christian, so please understand I’m not mocking the faith. Only the music.) And some is even right up there with the pop stuff. But since when does a symphony orhcestra want to play pop music? AND, when we actually do play that music, we get mocked and laughed at. And we are embarrassed. To be quite frank, when we play that sort of stuff I feel like we’ve turned the symphony hall into an extremely large elevator. Or dentist office. Muzak? Yep.
The Oregon Symphony is in the hands of a fool named Elaine Calder, whom the Portland Oregonian describes as “a straight-talking Canadian arts consultant who spent the past five years turning around the continent’s northernmost professional orchestra, the Edmonton Symphony.†Not only is she stupid; she’s dangerous, because she’s giving bad advice to a troubled orchestra.
- Sounds & Fury says:
But that utter contempt notwithstanding, no marketing type could, in actual, real life, possibly be as imbecile and clueless as the marketing type who is the subject of Mr. Reel’s piece; ergo, my conviction that Mr. Reel is in fact engaging in a clever bit of satire.
- Collaborative Piano Blog says:
1. Why did Ms. Calder present her ideas to The Oregonian before presenting them to the board? Wasn’t she hired by the board in the first place?
2. Why does she list a problem of the orchestra as being too “Portland-centric” when she is also recommending the orchestra get into the community more?
3. Ms. Calder’s comment that “the balance of power has shifted to the consumer.” Really? Didn’t the balance of power always lie with the consumer in arts organizations? Maybe she should be saying that the Oregon Symphony needs to find their market.
4. Notably missing from the list of fixes is the desire to find more possible donors. It worked for the COC and it worked for Tapestry (as seen with their hearty surplus this year).
5. Why change the musicians’ contracts? Putting their livelihood on the chopping block might sound good on paper but they’re the ones that do the playing and really bring the audiences in. Rather, why not focus on excellence in performance?
- David Duff says: [thanks to David Stabler for finding this one]
I think there is some wisdom in what Calder advocates. While it’s important for the classical tradition to continue, in order for that to happen, the institutions that are responsible for that must survive financially. And who knows–perhaps those people who come to hear Michael W. Smith might come back some time to hear Hilary Hahn?