Some seriously good naval gazing into the future of Classical music is going on over on Greg Sandow’s blog. Really detailed posts (there will be 5 in the series) covering a lot of ground and summarizing in his view where things appear to be headed and what to do about it. I do think though that the issue of the average age of the audience is not as alarming as it appears, and quite possibly is something to celebrate…..
Ron Spigelman
More ASS in clASSical – Off their “Rockers”
The bar keeps lowering, but in this case it’s the whammy bar! It seems the lack of marketing creativity is so prevalent that it in itself is becoming creative! It’s time to be in awe of the latest believe it or not marketing connection being made between Pop and Classical, so strap on a plastic Guitar with 5 buttons to get those $70 Symphony seats sold!……..
Putting the Dis in Discharge!
So for a holy mackerel story from October that seemed to slip by, a Champaign County Municipal Court Judge Susan Fornof-Lippencott sentenced a man to listen to Beethoven, Bach and Chopin for 20 hours or pay $150. The crime can’t have been too heinous, otherwise the sentence might have been to listen to Berg, Schoenberg and Ligeti!……..
2009 – The Year of the Audience….let’s hope!
Could this be the year with seemingly inevitable economic woes painting a bleak picture for individual, corporate and foundation support and most importantly ticket sales, that while strategizing we collectively all ask the question……well what does the audience want? It’s not so much that we need to hit the reset button, but we do need to realize that it’s the audience that has the power to unlock our growth in these times…..
Audience Connection Final – part 2
The final two dream big Arts organizations from the Audience Connection final (here is part 1). Also, as part of their final I wanted them to take a genre of music and redefine it into more clearly understood sub-genres i.e funk, techno funk. I have included clips from two that were very well thought out and presented. For the Holidays, at the end of the post I have included audio from a rehearsal of Franz Biebl’s extraordinary Ave Maria with yours truly conducting Choirs from Evangel University and the College of the Ozarks….
The Audience Connection Final – Part 1
The Audience Connections Class you have been hearing clips from since August had their final on December 10, so here they are this week for the last time. Below is the main part of their final, which was a challenge…….
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
What is it all coming to? The recession is forcing even major arts organizations to …..gulp……actually program what the audiences want to hear and see! Now what’s that I hear, the big 3 automakers need to build cars that people want to drive! I guess newspapers need to start writing what people want to read! In the immortal words of R.E.M:
It’s the end of the world as we know it…..
Let’s hope so, at least for the arts world!….
Challenge = Opportunity: Becoming Well Endowed!
Charleston, Virginia, Winston Salem, St Louis, Orlando Ballet, San Francisco Opera, plus many more organizations we don’t know about have financial issues! Millions of dollars have been wiped off endowment balance sheets. These are not rainy day funds, we all tap our endowment interest every year to help defray operating costs and shortfalls. So now what? I want to throw something out there…..