Future of Art Music
Music fans are assaulted with thousands of musical tidbits every day. And it’s become less of the listeners job to find music, and more of the artists job to reach fans.
Art musicians and ensembles are stuck in the past. You make a CD, you sell some. But mostly you perform. You tour around the country, playing gigs for universities and various civic music organizations. And the whole time you play to the same people: that same demographic that listens to art music and has forever.
It seems to me that most of the people who listen to art music are those who play an instrument involved in it now a days.
Then there’s everyone else. It’s hard to be offended by Beethoven or Mozart or Copland. It’s easy to misunderstand it, and not really “get it” at first. Almost everyone in the world would sit through a short piece of art music and go, “Yeah, that was okay.”
Those are the people I want to talk to. If art music is going to remain viable, musicians need to start reaching out and trying to connect with those people on the fringes — the people who would sit through a piece, but don’t love art music yet.
But Who?
The real question is who is going to lead. I have no idea. It would be incredibly easy for a chamber ensemble to reach out to fans. Start posting videos on youtube, find peope on twitter interested in what you do, connect, create someone who knows about the ensemble. A committed string quartet or some other similar chamber ensemble could easily divide up the duties and create some great fan interaction.
Bigger ensembles get more tricky. There’s still this cult-like following around conductors, so it seems that a conductor or music director would be the logical choice to lead for bigger ensembles. Of course, that would mean the director has to step down from his cultural aloofness.
I think the real potential is in the composer. Many people tend to identify with certain composers. If you like a work in one genre or instrumentation by a composer, chances are that composer’s musical language will appeal to you in different genres. That’s powerful. Composers need only to reach out. Just today I stumbled across a guitarist/composer named Gyan Riley (Terry Riley’s son) who writes great music. I’d never heard of him, and he’s released two albums of original music. Imagine if would have found me on twitter or youtube! Instead I stumbled upon a video of him posted by a random guitar society.
Smart programming combined with outreach can convert those people on the fringe. That’s what I’m interested in: turning those people on the fringe into active listeners who appreciate art music and go to concerts and recitals. Most importantly, I want to turn those people into the fans who bring their friends to recitals!
The first step of all this is for musicians to take a step back from the insane ego they seem to develop. I know professional guitarists who believe they are above interacting with their fans online. Yet they happily nod and smile and talk when a random audience member walks up to them after the concert. Some strange things going on there.
Now, who wants to hold casual Friday concerts at the symphony? Seriously. $2 beers and you can come in a t-shirt. The only catch is that you have to listen to some orchestral music. Now that’s a concert I’d attend.
