The question of the day – how do you satisfy an audience that ranges from 12 to 80? That is what I pondered last Thursday, 15 November, and it’s taken me this long to write about it. I’m going to tell you what happened, but I’m not going to let on how we did it until the end of the post. So there………….
Actually, that aforementioned question wasn’t what I was pondering on that fateful day. It was the answer to the question that I was pondering, since we at the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra had managed to satisfy the musical curiosity of two very disparate groups of people with only one program. I have to admit that we cheated a little in that we performed the same program twice. First, on the morning of Thursday, 15 November we achieved the nigh-unto-impossible. In short, there was a hall full of completely rapt and attentive Junior High and High school students who were thoroughly enjoying their classical music experience.
Now, a couple of advantages we have – first, we are in CANADA!!! For those of you who think it’s actually the 51st state well, boy do I have news for you. Let’s take the educational system, for example. A couple of years ago the Governor of my beautiful state of Minnesota, one Tim Pawlenty, went chasing up to Edmonton to see what the secondary system was like, as the Edmonton secondary educational system just might be the best public schools in this hemisphere. Of course, here in Minnesota we used to have some of the best school in this hemisphere, but that was before Pawlenty and the rest of his Republican cronies decided to slash the education budget for the last decade. Just fund education fergodsakes, and stop with the “tax cuts for the rich” nonsense. But the point is – the Edmonton kids are much more attentive than their U.S. counterparts. Plus, a good bunch of them have a rather thorough musical training in one way, shape, or form. Still with all these advantages High School concerts can be a real shot in the dark. Why did this one work? Read on ………..
Now keep in mind, we did this program for our Junior/High School kids in the morning, and then later that night we did the exact same program for a sold out audience whose average age I would put as near or above retirement age. And I just might be giving folks the benefit of the doubt. I happen to know from the number of ticket requests that were surreptitiously slipped into conversations that I had with people over the past month that this was one of the most highly anticipated concerts of the season. The folks that night came ready to enjoy themselves. They were dressed to the nines, expecting a wonderful experience, with popcorn in hand…..
Popcorn? Popcorn!!! HAH!! There’s your best clue, and dear reader I must reference the title to this post. For on that wonderful Thursday we brought in a very special guest, one of the greatest artists of any genre, Mr. Charles Chaplin. Yes, we accompanied his last silent classic Modern Times, and it was a roaring success. Keep in mind please that this is the movie that got Chaplin branded a communist by HUAC. I went out front after the High School show in the morning and you should have seen them – there were smiles all around at the experience. None of them had even so much as seen a silent movie, and here we had blended the visual and musical together for them in a way they would have never suspected they would enjoy. As for our evening folk, they were there to try and recapture their (hopefully) misspent youth. This audience knew what to expect and they were not disappointed by their experience.
We thought long and hard before we decided to program Modern Times on our Junior/High school series. We thought it important that the kids have this experience, which is something only an orchestra can provide. In (generally) left-leaning Canada the more outrageously radical scenes didn’t scandalize our audience the way the most probably would have in some parts of the U.S., although one comment I received from a friend of mine went along the lines of “I can’t believe Chaplin got away with that in 1936!” None-the-less, in retrospect this was an inspired choice. We live in an extremely visualized world where music is very often an accompaniment to what we see. Those who decry this trend tend to gloss over the 400+ years tradition of Ballet, Opera, Incidental Music, etc. Gee, Handel’s Water Music was not, I repeat NOT, meant to be listened to. By using the film medium we were able to reach our target audience using an environment that they were inherently used to. Now please, before the irate comments show up below this post, I am not claiming that with one performance of a soundtrack to a Chaplin flick we changed the whole decline of Western Art. But I would wager that none of the kids who attended the show are liable to forget it anytime soon, and there’s something to be said about having giving them a positive orchestral experience.
My 15-year-old son told us about ‘Modern Times’, which his 10th grade Social Studies Honors class watched. He loved it–and his teacher admired how most kids were smiling in abundance when watching it.
I once attended an organist conference (does this make me a geek?) where the most popular concert, even more popular than a full performance of the “Art of the Fugue” which was read from the full score from the organist, was a live theatre organ improvisation of a Buster Keaton silent movie. It was FANTASTIC (and the organ was ELECTRIC even). Too often we take the “incidental” music out of its home and into the concert hall. As you say – there was a reason for much of this music, and sometimes tearing the “art” away from its purpose does us no favours, it’s like hanging plates on your wall – excuse me – people used to EAT off those plates. You’ve given me a great idea, I’m going to build a barge and hire an orchestra to play the water music whilst traveling down the North Saskatchewan. I wonder if it will work on skates though?