Engaging Your Audience in the 21st Century: An Interview with Composer-Educator Bruce Adolphe

Bruce Adolphe

Q: Could you please briefly describe some of the outreach and educational programs you have been involved with over the years, highlighting those that you feel have been most noteworthy, rewarding, or influential?

I was Education Director of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from 1992 to1998, and then I became Education Advisor to Chamber Music Society. Now I’m a lecturer and I run the Family Concerts, which is not exactly outreach but is related to it. So I’ve been doing education for Lincoln Center going on 18 years now.

In 1984 and 1985 I was Composer-in-Residence for the 92^nd Street Y school music programs. My job was to compose music and create curricula to go with it that would somehow engage schools on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I composed works for the New York Chamber Symphony, which was the resident ensemble at the 92^nd Street Y. I wrote “kids’ parts” so that the compositions would be scored for orchestra and audience. Audiences were made up of school children from the Upper East Side – sometimes as many as 900 students in the audience. These pieces gave the kids performance roles – singing, shouting, and clapping, for example – roles that had to be worked out carefully at school so that practicing became part of their classroom curriculum. I also created corresponding learning materials for the schools.

In 1992, I wrote an interactive piece for string quartet and kids called “Urban Scenes” for Turtle Bay Music School. This piece has been used in schools and festivals all over the country. In “Urban Scenes,” the rehearsal process is part of the performance, such that kids come up on stage to learn and perform their parts, so families can watch their kids learning on stage.

I consider Piano Puzzlers to be outreach as well, to the general public, because it’s like a game show to which people call in and try to solve a puzzle, discussing what they think a piece is and why. It’s an educational experience and is framed as an education program, to hook people into good listening habits in a fun way.

Q: How did you first become involved in education and outreach? Who were some of your inspirations or influences along the way?

Like many people of my generation, I watched Leonard Bernstein’s program on TV and was turned on both by the music and his way of interacting with kids. My first experience with outreach was actually at the age of 10, when I toured around schools on Long Island playing piano and narrating Peter and the Wolf.

After that, what brought me back to education was the 92^nd Street Y residency. A conductor named Amy Kaiser at 92^nd Street Y had a very strong feeling that I should write some interactive pieces, so I did, and when I saw 900 kids performing that stuff with the orchestra, I got hooked. I saw how important and touching it was. One piece I wrote for the Y, called Ta-Whoop, had the kids singing “Taaaaa-WHOOP!” (“whoop” was a glissando), and it was so popular that kids at several schools began using “ta-whoop” as a greeting in hallways! I was so excited by how important this was to them that I looked for every opportunity to continue doing this. I found it very inspiring how certain teachers and principals were so devoted to the kids that I really wanted to work with them. Both of my parents were public school teachers, so education had always been important to me.

I have also been an educator all of my adult life. When I was 19, while I was getting a Masters at Juilliard, I began subbing for my solfege teacher quite a lot and was asked to finish teaching the course for him; by the next year I was hired to teach in the Pre-College Division. I taught all kinds of things at Juilliard until I was 36. At NYU, I taught accents in the undergraduate theater department of Tisch School of the Arts from 1982-1993, and also taught at Yale as a lecturer in the residential colleges from 1984 to 85.

Q: When you are preparing a family concert for the Chamber Music Society, what is your process in formulating a presentation?

If it’s a family concert, the underlying idea of all of them – no matter how different the topic – is to engage the audience with the idea of musical creativity, so that the creative process is always a part of the concert, whether we’re focusing on a piece of mine, or one by Beethoven, or on music by a variety of composers. So, the idea to get across is that writing music expresses thoughts and feelings — that it communicates. For example, I have a family concert about Beethoven in which I play the role of Beethoven, and the whole time I explain to the musicians on stage why and how I composed the piece. The presentation is funny at the same time – for example, “Beethoven” might go to the piano and play Old McDonald in a Beethovenian style (as in the Piano Puzzlers). It’s about what the music means, what the composer is trying to say, so that the kids connect to deeper aspects of music rather than just learning how to move their fingers.

Another important aspect of education, for me, is the concept of The Learning Maestros (http://www.thelearningmaestros.com/) – to integrate music into a broader picture of the world and make music relevant to everybody’s lives, rather than simply a frill or exclusive pursuit for the talented. Like all really good education, the idea is to inspire kids to go out on their own and do more of it, to become independently motivated.

Q: What are some challenges you face when approaching an audience full of children and families, and what are some strategies you’ve identified to overcome these challenges?

It’s different in different places. Audiences for family concerts in New York City are pretty sophisticated – one minor problem is that parents often bring children much younger than they’re supposed to, (so 2- and 3-year-olds are brought to concerts targeted for ages 6 and up). In these cases, the institute presenting the concert should be responsible for handling this – some organizations provide babysitting or alternative activities for youngsters.

There is a difference between a school concert and a family concert. More and more we find that even the parents have never been to a concert before, and they don’t know concert etiquette, so they may bring food into the hall in plastic bags, for example. If possible, I try to say something right away when it happens, in a funny way. One time I had a kid come on stage and demonstrate what you shouldn’t do, which was humorous for the audience and got the point across.

Q: How do you cope with audiences that are less responsive?

I haven’t had a problem so much with audience response; over the years getting an audience to pay attention is something I’ve come to enjoy and know a lot about.

There are a couple of tenets that I always stick to, which I think are crucial in keeping an audience involved:

1) It should not be a classroom – it’s a theater. Leonard Bernstein did a classroom. When Lenny was on television he had a very classy high-paying audience that knew they were going to be on TV – these were parents who felt it was important to bring their kids to hear the New York Philharmonic. Many parents now don’t know what it means to go to a concert – they lack experience with live performance. So I think of it as a theater, not just a concert – there’s a sense of characterization, a story, humor, drama that is not just in the music but also in how you address it and how you speak to the audience. The element of theater does away with most of the problems. 2) Engage the audience. They know there will be a time to ask questions and talk at the end. I’ve never done a family or school concert without a lot interaction with the audience at the end.

Q: Any other “guiding principles” that help in your approach to educational concert programs?

Well, the two tenets I just gave are part of it, but not all of it. I don’t believe it is ever necessary to dumb things down – it’s counterproductive. If something is too difficult, we don’t do it. I have experimented with more challenging music, however, and if you set it up well and the music is performed well, it can really work. I’ve had great success doing a program on quiet, strange, “night time” music that the audience loved and remained attentive to. The music I compose for family audiences is challenging in a variety of ways — emotionally, in length, topic, virtuosity — but it is also engaging, with humor, energy, focus, and musical honesty. There is never a reason to dumb down. It is better to lift up!

Also, you won’t have any success if you have less quality or less preparation than for a “real” concert. Audiences can feel when a group hasn’t rehearsed enough – it’s not appropriate. This is also true of what you say on stage. You can only “wing it” if you’ve done what you do many, many times and have profoundly prepared at some point in the past. Sometimes I will go out without an actual script in these cases.

One other tenet that has become more and more true: Don’t spend time telling people things they can look up. Only talk to them about things they can get specifically from you as live performers – for example, give them a detailed personal slant on the piece, your interpretation, or what it’s like to perform. Otherwise they can just sit in the audience and look up the same information you’re telling them on their handheld devices!

Q: For you, what is the purpose of your educational performances and initiatives? What do you hope to accomplish and why?

I believe that musicians should have a relationship with their community. Every musician should have a sense of community responsibility. This was more the case a long time ago, but now people seem to be on a fast track in all different directions. I think it’s healthy to think of oneself as a public servant. I’m interested in doing things that matter for people, reaching a variety of people, too. I wouldn’t be happy without that.

The other thing is this: Whose responsibility is it to have a caring, engaged and intelligent audience for live concerts in the future? It’s the musicians’ responsibility – there’s no way to do it without musicians going out and making it happen. There are so many things working against live performance these days. But without live music, we’re not engaged in the moment, we’re not getting how human it is. The sense of now, of being in a space together for a unique event – that is why it’s so important to do family concerts.

Q: How has your deep involvement in educational programs affected your creative process?

It has only helped my creative process. An audience of serious music lovers and music professional who typically go to new music concerts are not the same as an audience of families – they are already curious about new music, have their own careers to think of, and are completely engaged with the process whether they like the music or not. With a family concert, families are there for a number of reasons – a birthday party, because they liked the advertising, because it’s about dinosaurs – that does not necessarily mean they are going to be engaged. So you have to communicate to them successfully, and the challenge for me is to write serious, thoughtful, even complex music that has emotional clarity and can inspire an audience of families with other things on their minds.

Working with educational programs for so long has refined my communication skills, my ability to relate to an audience and to gauge what reactions might be. This has influenced my serious concert music as well. In the piece I wrote for Yo-Yo Ma, Self Comes to Mind, I know what every phrase is for, I don’t do anything indulgent or wander around – so essentially the learning has brought clarity to my work.

It’s like this: When a child – particularly your own child – asks you a question like, “Is this a good politician?” or “What is evil?” or “Why didn’t you give that homeless person money?”, your response cannot be glib or skirt the issues, and it can’t avoid seriousness of the question – it has to be profoundly honest and fairly concise. Having a kid, you learn how to be clear and concise. It’s exactly the same in the music. Most parents discover a new kind of clarity in themselves through their children. If you answer a question from a kid in the audience as seriously as you would answer your own child’s questions, you’ll learn a lot from it. Give your audience members the respect you show your family.

Q: What do you believe young professionals can (or should) do to reach our audiences and the society at large?

This has to do with your own relationship to music. You don’t want to be someone who just practices, but rather someone who explores the circumstances of music, asks where music comes from, and what it means to you, so you can relate to your audiences and truly be an educator. You don’t necessarily need to know more just to play better, but if you’re going to engage in outreach, it’s important to give a broader context to your audiences. It will be good for you, too.

Look around your area for organizations that operate within your community, and see if they have music programs. If they don’t have something that you think should be there, be an entrepreneur and go out and create it.

Like anything else, outreach is not something to do because you think you’re supposed to. You have to be committed to it, and if you don’t like an audience of kids and you don’t find it stimulating, then you shouldn’t do it – if you do it and you’re not good at it or don’t like it, then don’t do it. If you do feel you have a passion for it, then you have a responsibility to follow through and make it happen.

To learn more about Bruce Adolphe, please visit www.bruceadolphe.com.