Send Him Your Comments Yearning to Be Free!

Drew McManus has been hinting about good things in the wind for awhile now and finally let the cat out of the bag.

Drew is going to be doing a research project for Eastman School of Music’s Orchestra Musician Forum and Senior Editor of Special Projects for Polyphonic.org (coming April 2006).

His research project is going to address the issues which American orchestra musicians see as impacting their professional lives. The study will be used not only to improve conditions in orchestras, but also allow training programs to give their students the training and tools to cope with the realities of life as an orchestra musician.

What is really interesting is that the study is even being done at all, though there is clearly a need. I was thinking it was extraordinary that such a project be funded when I read Drew’s observation that:

Most sponsors prefer to direct their funds toward ‘solutions’ regardless if the issues are well defined or not. Directing resources toward identifying issues and developing questions isn’t a very sexy endeavor and this organization deserves a great deal of credit for understanding that without a strong foundation on which to build, any structure you put up may not be very sound.

To make this happen, Drew estimates he needs to interview 1,400 people from 90 orchestras so watch for a survey in the mail! This will probably be the biggest opportunity orchestra musicians have had a chance to speak out en mass since, well, I don’t know when. Unless they are on strike, you don’t see too many queries posed of multiple musicians on most any topic.

Congrats Drew. We will be watching and expecting great insights to emerge!

Faithful Enthusiasm

Back when the earth was cooling, the occasion of myfirst entry was having a letter I wrote to The Artful Manager appear on the Artsjournal website.

The letter essentially talked about tapping into community leaders, among them church leaders, to help increase attendance at performances. I am doing well with leaders in other communities giving me a hand in getting the word out, but the church situation has me a little puzzled in some ways.

We have a church rent the theatre every Sunday and see very little cross over to our performances. We have posters with upcoming events plastered all over the building so it is hardly a mystery about what is coming up. Yet we get very few comments made to us or on our surveys saying they heard about the show because they come every Sunday.

Our programming is far from being offensive and is quite appropriate for the family. We just aren’t seeing the results one might expect and I don’t quite know why.

What gets me to thinking about this is that for the next three nights, we have an entirely different church having a worship conference in our space. Most of it will be a lot of praise and worship gospel singing and preaching. Tomorrow they kick the whole thing off with a half hour performances from one of the biggest gospel singers around.

In preparation for this half hour performance, the church has come in and painted our dressing rooms (we have a lot of classes during the year so the facility gets quite a bit of wear and tear) and when I left work tonight, they were carrying in leather sofas for her use.

That’s a heck of a lot of enthusiasm they are investing into making things right for a real short show.

It is also the type of energy I wish I could tap in to.

Next year we are looking at some gospel singers and that will certainly connect with the church audience. However, we are looking at these musicians because they are great musicians first and not to attract the churches.

I book with an eye to taking advantage of the opportunity to bring in great musicians that I think people will enjoy. If there are interested Latino groups available on an annual basis, I will happily grab them because I know people will buy tickets. But I am not looking to fill a Latino slot on my roster every year. Nor am I interested in discarding great opportunities because they don’t fit into gospel slots.

Smart thing to do though might be to co-produce similar events in the future. Promote the event in my brochure, run ticket sales through my box office, let the enthusiatic church members handle hospitality, security and technical equipment since that is where their strengths lay and then split the box office proceeds.

A partnership that plays to our individual strengths might be beneficial to both of us. I don’t know that we will ever generate a crossover interest from the audience, but what we are doing now isn’t meeting with much success. A partnership of this type might also not make economic sense since we experience little financial risk in renting to the group. But we would also realize less of a loss than if we had engaged an artist on that date ourselves since we aren’t bearing all the costs.

The question will be, if we do co-produce with them, is it replacing a show we would have done alone or are we doing it in addition to the shows we would have done and therefore are losing on the potential gains of a rental opportunity?

I will let you know how things shake out next season!

Partnerships-Hang On A Minute There

Well, if I hadn’t actually gone looking at the Cultural Commons website yesterday on my own initiative, I would think maybe I was set up. After talking about how many partnerships failed yesterday, I come across a success on Artsjournal.com today.

Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC) and the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte (NC) have embarked on a joint venture with both occupying same building. The result, called ImaginOn, is an organization that isn’t quite a library or a theatre, but a little of both with museum qualities thrown in.

There are separate areas for children, tweens and teens. The whole project is quite innovative and exciting and might provide a possible template for libraries (and theatres) in the future. Especially given that big performing arts centers don’t seem to be doing very well these days. Witness this story on Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and Andrew Taylor’s coverage of the Weidner Center for the Performing Arts’ decision to get out of the presenting business.

I have talked about how arts organziations desperate for their own survival have pooled resources to allow them to occupy the same building. But those organizations didn’t integrate themselves as well as these folks in Charlotte.

Also, according to the article, the groups started to explore a partnership back in 1997 before the opportunity to have a joint facility ever emerged.

The article also doesn’t hide the fact that the collaboration didn’t come easy. “But for all the shared, there were still plenty of differences, such as funding sources, governance, management, and organizational culture.”

My hat is off to these folks for overcoming these difficulties and recognizing what assets the other guys brought to the table.

Too Many Actors

They are singing my song over at the NY Times today. If you didn’t catch it via Artsjournal.com, check it out here before it disappears into the paper’s archives and you have to pay for access-So Many Acting B.A.’s, So Few Paying Gigs.

While I am not rabid about it, I have considered it my mission over the last twenty years or so to attempt to dissuade people from going into acting as a career. In my mind, people romanticize their ability to go to New York City and get an acting gig after a short period of suffering in a chic spacious warehouse loft. That’s how television and the movies portray it after all.

The NYT article however echos some of my sentiments.

“It’s just tragic how many people want to go into this business,” said Alan Eisenberg, the executive director of Actors Equity. “These schools are just turning out so many grads for whom there is no work.”

“We’re producing too many people,” Mr. Steele [executive director of the University/Resident Theater Association] said, “many of them poorly trained or moved into the field without the connections or relationships necessary to make their transition to a career possible. It’s as if medical school were graduating people without giving them internships at a hospital.”

“Twenty years ago, you didn’t sense the kind of urgency these kids have now,” said Mr. Schlegel, who represents many successful New York theater actors…”Now they think if they don’t get signed by an agent right away, they’ve failed. They never think they’ve got to learn the ropes a bit, get seasoned. They want to know, ‘Where’s my TV series? Where’s my film audition?’ It’s wrong, of course, but that’s what they think, and in a business where we fall all over the young ones, you can’t blame them.”

As you might imagine since these acting programs need people taking instruction from them in order to justify their existence in the university, none of them are reducing the number of students they are graduating. Rather they are including classes in how to get jobs upon graduation as part of their training regimen. Students learn about auditioning effectively, networking, etc.

Just for the record, I don’t know if I have ever dissuaded anyone from going to NY or LA to pursue their dream. Honestly, I never expect my dire pronouncements about how tough the market is, how there will be 10 other people with their level of talent who look just like them at every audition, some of them will have more experience and are a surer bet. Then there are the minimum 10 other people who are better looking, more talented and more experienced who are showing up too. I also go into the cost of living in New York City, the crime, the cold, the dingy apartments, etc.

Its hard to picture that your mind for the glow of stars in your eyes. My sole hope is that knowing what I have told them, they make semi-realistic contingency plans to deal with all potential problems I have mentioned.

One last quote from the article I want to feature in an admittedly snarky attempt to further comment on the American Idol entry I made yesterday.

Ms. Hoffman’s auditioning seminar is one effort to iincrease the responses. Too much vibrato, Ms. Hoffman told a young man who sang the U2 song “With or Without You” and finished each line with a lovely tremulous quiver. Vibrato is more expressive than communicative, she said; in an audition, you want to communicate.

He still had trouble. “It’s really hard, I know, to stay on pitch when you’re straight-toning,” Ms. Hoffman said, this time adding, “So you can add the vibrato if you feel yourself sliding off.”

That is one lesson I took away from observing auditions at a training program with which I was once associated. Vibrato might sound impressive and appeal to the crowds, but it can indicate a lack of mastery of ones vocal instrument.