Posted on February 8, 2010 at 5:09 pm by Robert Levine
in General

This might be related to why orchestras seem to have so much trouble in the Sun Belt:

“It was like an invitation to a date,” says Sarasota artist Pablo Rodriguez of his painting, “Modern Venus,” which he installed in early January in the Sarasota Orchestra’s Harmony Gallery as part of his exhibit, I’ll Be Seeing You. “This piece was supposed to be the centerpiece of the whole thing. It was a pretty big piece and in the Harmony Gallery that was the thing that was drawing your eye.” The piece hung uninterrupted for over two weeks after the exhibit opened on Jan. 12, but three mothers with children in the Sarasota youth orchestra deemed “Venus” too racy for their children’s innocent eyes and filed one formal and two informal complaints.

“They gave me two options,” Rodriguez says. “It was drape it or take it down. I chose to take it down.” Rodriguez removed the painting — a mild, not-nude ode to his wife — on Jan. 29. (more…)

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Posted on February 7, 2010 at 7:53 am by Ramon Ricker
in General
Tags: Audiences, marketing, orchestras

Here’s a Ciara Pressler blog from fracturedatlas.org.  Makes sense to me.  And so timely. . . (more…)

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Posted on February 5, 2010 at 9:17 am by Robert Levine
in General
Tags: Orchestra life

This past week has been one meeting after another devoted to various personnel issues (not, thankfully, any terminations, in case you were wondering). The cumulative effect on me has been that I feel as if I’d gone 5 rounds or so with the front line of the Green Bay Packers.

Orchestras are villages. We orchestra musicians live cheek-by-jowl with 100 or so other orchestra musicians for decades. We get to know each other really, really well – especially our faults. We track the alliances that form and break. We get mad at people we were close allies with, and end up working closely with people we were furious with in the very recent past. We know each other’s histories with the orchestra and each other. We have very long memories, especially when we’ve been screwed. And, of course, some of the stuff that we remember isn’t true. (more…)

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Posted on February 4, 2010 at 9:51 am by Robert Levine
in General
Tags: Electronic media

One of the problems with looking at historical trends in recording sales is that such sales are driven to a significant degree by technological change. Over the 100 or so years since the first recording of an orchestra was made, there have been constant improvement in the technologies for both producing recordings and playing them back. But only a handful of such improvements appeared to have caused a real upswing in the volume of recordings sold. Trying to analyze trends in recording sales over long periods of time without factoring in the impact of such dislocating technologies can lead to a distorted picture of the underlying demand for classical recording and what drives it. (more…)

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Posted on February 3, 2010 at 8:00 pm by Robert Levine
in General
Tags: Audiences

Alex Ross of the New Yorker wrote an absolutely brilliant summary of the recent studies by the League of American Orchestras and the National Endowment for the Arts on the state of classical music audiences. It’s in print in the magazine’s February 8th issue, which is unfortunately behind a paywall. But Ross blogs about it here. (Disclosure: as a member of the relevant board committee of the League, I was involved in internal review of the League’s report.)

In this week’s column, I mention an alarming graph that shows a comprehensive downward trend in generational participation in classical music. Here is the graph, in all its scary glory. (more…)

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Posted on February 3, 2010 at 11:02 am by Robert Levine
in General
Tags: Electronic media

Ann Midgette of the Washington Post writes about the current state of the classical CD business. It’s not good:

The dirty secret of the Billboard classical charts is that album sales figures are so low, the charts are almost meaningless. Sales of 200 or 300 units are enough to land an album in the top 10. Hahn’s No. 1 recording, after the sales spike resulting from her appearance on Conan, bolstered by blogs and press, sold 1,000 copies. (more…)

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Posted on February 2, 2010 at 9:17 am by Laura Brownell
in General
Tags: Negotiations

A shared vision

On February 2, 2005, Gary Hanson (ED/TCO) paid a visit to the storied offices of the AFM at 1501 Broadway in the heart of NY’s theater district. TCO was in town, set to play Carnegie Hall that evening. Hanson was clearly asking the AFM for forgiveness rather than permission – the meeting took place a mere three days before TCO went public with a vision that was designed to transcend the problems posed by the city of Cleveland’s rustbelt economy and shrinking population and allow TCO to retain its status as one of the world’s elite orchestral brands. (more…)

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Posted on February 1, 2010 at 5:10 am by Ramon Ricker
in General
Tags: audience, orchestras

Fantasy camps for adults have been popular for years—auto racing, cooking, all types of sports, you name it. For music there are camps for cabaret singers and jazz musicians, and now one for those who want to experience orchestral music-making. The article that follows below tells how the Baltimore Symphony and their Music Director, Marin Alsop will engage 120 amateur musicians for one week in June. And for $1650 for the week, it looks, to me, like this could be a money maker. But more than that, it has the potential of bonding 120 music lovers with their orchestra.

Marketers know that today’s public wants not only to attend an event, but to somehow participate. They want the “inside stuff,” that’s why they enjoy talking and interacting with the musicians. A fantasy camp.  What a great way to build an audience. (more…)

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Posted on January 28, 2010 at 6:24 am by Ramon Ricker
in General
Tags: marketing, opera

A good example of marketing.

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Posted on January 28, 2010 at 1:35 am by Robert Levine
in General
Tags: money, Negotiations, Seattle

Seattle Symphony management and musicians have reached a tentative agreement:

The 23-month, three-season contract — which could be extended for an additional eight months — would immediately cut musicians’ pay by 5 percent until the end of this season, with the current pay scale resuming in 2011. Musicians also would pay a greater share of their health coverage. (more…)

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