Joe over on Butts in Seats challenged our blogging community regarding programming and Bill as usual hit a slam dunk. My take is that we place too much faith in programming as being the answer to our woes when the real problems lie in the attitudes and motivations behind the programming. This notion we have to be ahead of the curve, ahead of our time, ahead of the audience might make some in the biz feel good, but it actually can make us less relevant and appear desperate which could end up alienating us from our audiences….
Many would scoff at the illegitimacy of those in the Pop/Rock/Folk if they started playing Classical. When we try to impersonate these genres for the sake of innovation is that not also illegitimate or inauthentic? Innovation is a process of planning and building, not random ideas that seem cool enough to attach a Guitar Hero contest too! Programming for me is as much about geographical location as it is anything else. It’s also about the history of a community, the time of year, or in other words it’s an organic process that is not just about trying to move music forward, but also about moving people forward with music. To be clear, once in a while it is good to pay tribute to a genre which is different from presenting our version of Rock/Pop/Jazz etc… as a real alternative.
Trying to be ahead of the curve or ahead of our time could make us very lonely! There has to be rhythm, an in step in sync approach, because music doesn’t move forward if no one is there to bear witness, or we will then become the proverbial tree that falls in the woods that nobody hears. What I mean by stating that programming can be about geography is that a program that might work in one place, might not work anywhere else. If we don’t know what the public is in to, then we will actually be a step behind. Gaining trust, listening, and learning a community will guide us more towards successful programming over throwing random cool stuff together (unless they tell you that’s what they want!) and hoping it sticks. True innovation is the ability to introduce the new and the different in an understandable context and gaining acceptance and relevance.
Context can mean anything from national, state or local events, anniversaries or even current events and much more. There has to be respect for certain dates i.e on Valentines don’t start a Schoenberg festival …..actually never start one of those! If we appear to be oblivious to what interests a community, that is when they become blind to us. Now although this may seem like pandering, it’s actually just a way to build trust. When trust is built up, that is when we can take an audience on a journey because we will be trusted by them to be their guide. Now context is already employed in a very basic way such as with July 4 and holiday concerts, but going deeper can actually yield some golden opportunities to explore adventurous repertoire.
For example, old Route 66 used to run right through Springfield MO. Knowing this we created a Pops concert recreating a journey along the Mother Road. Even though much of the music included popular works such as Chicago, My Merry Oldsmobile, Oklahoma, Shenandoah and an appearance by an Elvis to celebrate the big landmarks, we also put in Buckaroo Holiday by Copland for a retrospective on Will Rogers, Grofe’s Sunrise when we hit the Grand Canyon and Our Town by Copland to accompany a short film of old 66 footage. With the help of projected images and in this context, our audience was exposed to some fairly hefty works that fit into a frame of reference that they could relate to. Those who only come to the Pops because as they tell me “I don’t like Classical” actually heard a good 20 minutes of it, and loved it! So the idea that we need to somehow impersonate Zeppelin to try and attract their fans as an answer seems strange to me i.e it wont work and we wont fool them. I would rather find a creative and contextual way of performing what we do best because it will then be authentic, sincere and the audience we build will more likely return. This is actually what has happened here and is our continued practice.
Now I could end it here but there is this thing with new music. In my career thus far I have performed many contemporary works, but in my community who through surveys make it clear to us that they like the chestnuts, do I just ignore that and forge ahead with a Morton Feldman retrospective….to no audience? My theory and also practice is that to make an audience at least be objective to something new, we shouldn’t just throw them in the deep end! We have to ease people into it, and build it slowly. One idea I employ: Many of the most famous composers have written works that are great, but are rarely performed. So instead of Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture, how about the overtures to Lucio Silla or Il re pastore. By giving them Mozart, the name recognition alone makes someone at least curious and even excited to hear something that they have never heard or even knew existed. Another angle is to pair a newer work that has a thematic relationship to a beloved work. Scheherezade is a journey, and so is Coriglianio’s Voyage. These are techniques to essentially make an audience more comfortable with something different or new, to get them used to the unknown as something to try, rather than something to avoid. We receive many thanks for performing these works, with the hopes that we will continue to do this. Next season we are opening with a world premiere to celebrate our 75th season.
It’s not only what we program but how we program that will determine a succesful and/or appreciated outcome, and as I have learned programming is only one component of what needs to be an organization’s holistic approach to be relevant to a community. It would be a mistake to become obsessed with trying to attract new audiences with music we either impersonate or don’t perform well, and it might possibly turn off those who are there because of what we do perform well! People can smell insincereity a mile away. There are a huge amount of people who we are not reaching that actually would like what we are doing now, so more effort needs to be put into getting them first. My belief is that the concert experience and the perceptions of required knowledge and behaviour is preventing many from attending over what we program, yet if we are careless with what we program the ones we do have may, join their ranks!
I’m on my road with my family this month for 8 concerts with the Syracuse Symphony. We also travel up to Lake Placid where I am a candidate for Music Director of the Lake Placid Sinfonietta, a summer festival orchestra in it’s 92nd year! I will post about the process adding to the MD Search Process category. You can also follow me on twitter!