Engaging the Community

In response to Yvonne Caruthers’ statement:

I love your comments about the World Cup games, and the comparison to orchestra concerts. There are, as you said, significant differences between these two events, but the degree to which people engage with the games is pretty incredible. It’s interesting to look at the analogy, try to put one’s finger on what it is that so thoroughly engages people in sporting events, and then invent something similar in the concert experience.

Is the key hook the competition aspect? Or the fact that so many have participated in sports themselves that they can really understand and appreciate the level at which the games are played professionally? Is it that they want to follow these people who have been made into heroes in the public eye?

I agree with you that education is a big part of it, and I would like to push the envelope beyond the educational moments that happen before or after concerts. (Those preconcerts, conductors or musicians speaking from the stage before a new work, and performances in schools and community are all important!)

I am interested in trying to provide some concerts that are more akin to the World Cup broadcasts, in that they are more visually engaging, and they provide audience members with a variety of “entry points” or hooks for better understanding what’s happening when they hear the performance.

We have an Access Concert series in Philadelphia, in which we first explore a piece of music, through video, slides that include all different kinds of images, dialogue through multiple voices, including musicians, conductor, host, and audience talking about the piece, live musical demonstrations, etc. Sometimes we create slides with visual cues that go up during the performance to remind audience members about a particular upcoming moment to listen for in the music. We also try to create some participatory or interactive moment in each concert.

After the exploration part, we play the work complete. We are entering into the second year of these concerts – we do four a year right now, and we’re seeing ticket sales pick up and a significantly younger audience purchasing tickets. I believe that some people want this different kind of concert experience, and that we should provide it – it doesn’t preclude doing performances the way we always have, but it provides people who are curious listeners an opportunity to learn more.

I would love to hear from others about successful concerts they’ve seen in this vein, or experiments that haven’t worked so well.