Forget everything you've ever learned
There's a lot of buzz about a newly released study called "The Magic of Music" done by the Knight Foundation about how to save orchestras, noted in the Wall Street Journal last week. The 10-year study cost $13 million (yes, it's true) and came to the revolutionary conclusion that things like outreach, free concerts, dressing the musicians in P&G business casual, designing educational programs, mounting video screens and offering free food are wrong, wrong, wrong.
Here's something I could have told you for free 20 years ago: The study found that 74 percent of ticket buyers had played a musical instrument or sung in a chorus.
And here's another finding that's no surprise: People don't want to pay big bucks to sit through long concerts in huge concert halls.
That's interesting, given the construction boom of glitzy new concert halls around the country, that will undoubtedly be partly paid for with higher ticket prices...
To read the full 59-page report, click here.
And here's another interesting tidbit: The study was done by Dr. Thomas Wolf, who turned out the famous Wolf Report on orchestras in the early 90s.
Photos: CSO musicians Steve Pride, Charles Bell, Peter Link, Pete Norton and Chris Kiradjieff meet with Mount Washington Elementary School kids; and the CSO performs a Classical Roots: Spiritual Heights concert at Quinn Chapel in Forest Park, with Daniel Greene, soloist, and John Morris Russell conducting.
posted by Janelle Gelfand at 10:08 AM
2 Comments:
at 11/15/2006 10:13:00 PM 
Janelle Gelfand said...
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at 11/16/2006 09:32:00 AM 
Anonymous said...
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Post a Comment*Dear Dave,
You bring up some critical points about the total picture. Regarding exposure to concerts as school children -- I can't tell you how many people have told me how they remember attending concerts as a child, led by Eugene Goossens or Max Rudolf, like it was yesterday! For some children, experiencing that could be a life-changing moment. And certainly, every child, rich or poor, should have that chance.
But then, you do need to continue the experience with hands-on learning of an instrument or singing in a choir for it to have an indelible impact, and for classical music to be relevant in their lives. Later in life, if it is not relevant to them, they will not buy symphony tickets -- it's as simple as that.
As for music education, I would hope that the symphony would be a strong and vocal advocate of music education, locally and at the state level. I know that Kunzel is.
You bring up another important point: creating a sense of OWNERSHIP with the orchestra and how to get it?
One more thought for now: If learning an instrument is critical to the orchestra's survival, should musicians contracts be revised to include regular teaching services in public schools and fewer concerts?
I also read the article in the WSJ and found myself highlighting large sections of it as well looking up the Knight Foundation Study. The reason they commissioned the study was that it could no longer respond to the individual requests to bail out floundering orchestras. (Sound familiar?)
While a very strong case can be made to capitalize on the interest generated by the participation of young people in school sponsored music programs (bands, chorus, etc.)and turn them into long term ticket buyers the fact of the matter is that this group represents a very small percentage of the overall potential audience. Efforts have to be geared to the people who don't participate in such activities in the general population. The large growth of ticket buyers will come from that population segment.
An astounding statistic that was also in the article was that "60% of adults said they had some interest in classical music, and nearly a third said it was part of their lives on a regular basis. Of that 60%, however, fewer than 5% actually patronized their local symphonies." The real challenge is turning the 5% into 60% who will attend concerts, which the article stated it will not be easy. The article went on to say that more than half listen at least several times a month on radio, they also own 16 clssical CD's on average ( a figure that pleasently surprised me). The most popular venue for listening to classical music is the car and then home-not the concert hall.
The article concluded that "There are, after all, plenty of people interested in classical music-just not the way music is being served up." So what is the answer? It is a complex one, but one thing I know for sure the business model that drives symphony orchestras today is a recipe for preordained failure. Until this model is torn down and rebuilt-ticket pricing, marketing, internal management strucuture, programming, venues, compensation levels for resident and visiting artists as well as administration and other factors it will continue to flounder and decline. A victim of its own myopic lack of vision which is more similar to driving a car looking at the rear view mirror than the wide expanse ahead seen through the wind shield.
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