WTOC Announces its 2010 Season across the Blogosphere!

Tickets go on sale to the general public on March 13.
For advance sales and priority handling, become a Wolf Trap member.
For show dates, casts, and other performance info, start here.
In celebration of the announcement of WTOC’s 2010 season, I am doing guest posts and interviews in various locations across the blogosphere. Find out more about us that you ever wanted to know by clicking through!

Participating blogs are listed below – links will become active throughout the day on February 9.

Overview is at Technology in the Arts. 

Where and How We Do What We Do

Focus on Repertoire

Marketing and Fundraising

Our Young Artists and their Careers

Interview Fun

WTOC Colleagues

Posted in Blog at February 9th, 2010. 2 Comments.

“Special”

Special (Merriam-Webster): distinguished by some unusual quality.

Life’s a Pitch just finished a week hosting a virtual panel on when and how artists, managers, journalists, presenters and publicists single out musicians for being “special” in their promotion and career-building efforts.  Amanda’s summary of the posts by her 4 guest bloggers is here.

I hesitate to spend most of an entire blog post regurgitating other writers’ material, but this is worth it.  Great food for thought for musicians, presenters, and music lovers of all stripes.  If you need more motivation to click through, some highlights:

Jonathan Biss (our Wolf Trap Debut Artist from 1997!) writes that “Traditionalism is big in classical music, of course, meaning that there’s a lot of knee-jerk “this is the way to do it because this is the way it’s always been done.” (“It” could be any number of things – from questions of musical style, to programming, to concert attire, and on and on.)  But recently I’ve heard a lot of the marketing-driven opposite, which seems equally knee-jerk to me: “this has never been done before, and therefore it is relevant and interesting.”"

Michael Kondziolka at University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, Michigan says that “yes, hooks are fine and human interest angles (sometimes) riveting…but, never a substitute for convincing music making that reveals some truth or provocation embedded within, some kind of technical accomplishment, or, maybe, some hint at a shared humanity… Actually, the more I think about it, if one can be certain that the players will hit the accomplishment quotient, then human interest hooks are actually welcome in my book.  And we shouldn’t be afraid of them or feel that they somehow cheapen the artist’s integrity.  (Please.)  Any information sharing or story telling that aids, abets, or heightens a sense of empathy between performer and listener – whether artistic, human, spiritual – has to be a good thing.  Right?  Live concert performances must, after all, traffic in empathy.”

Matthew Guerrieri of Soho the Dog weighs in: “On the other hand, I personally find assertions of specialness within the concert presentation itself–spoken explanations, multimedia elements, &c.–to be often more annoying and distracting than anything. I’ve seen it done well, but only rarely; it’s harder than it looks, and it takes just as much (if not more) preparation as the music. If there’s absolute commitment on the part of the performer(s), if they really believe in whatever high concept they’ve come up with, I can happily go along for the ride, even if, in the end, I don’t quite buy it.”

It all rings so true.  But more than that, what makes me squirm is that it all seems born of desperation.  Is it existential fear that something we all value might be lost in an era that values data and speed above all else?  Is it actual panic because artists and those who promote them are slowing being pushed to the edge of extinction?  Of course, it’s both.

We can all tell the difference between an artist who makes connections to his audience (verbal and otherwise) because he is compelled to communicate with every fiber of his being and an artist who does so because a manager or a presenter dictates that it’s now part of the required dog-and-pony show. 

On the topic of “special” added-value elements, well, how about this comment at the bottom of Mr. Biss’s post? 

Comment:
Let’s make this really, brutally simple.
The only things we need today to have a “life-altering” musical experience is a good surround sound system, a CD/mp3 player and a Blue Ray DVD system.
Constant concerts by 100s of symphony orchestras or other groups, 90% of which are repeats of trite, old repertoire or newly composed self-indulgent idiocy are economically and artistically unnecessary in a digital recording era. The average US concert hall monstrosity doesn’t produce the sound quality in most seats that a car stereo would.
Innovation? Find an equivalent for classical music of what Cirque de soleil has been for the three-ring circus. Until that happens, good luck getting audiences into concert halls.

Chew on that a while. (And let’s assume that the comment is legit, rather than satirical. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear this from The Man on the Street, but I guess the fact that it appears as a comment on a blog that would appear to be primarily read by “believers” is a little stunning.)

Will we find the equivalent of which the writer speaks?  Should we try?  For if we succeed, the goal is going to shift significantly while we’re at it.

Back to the definition at the top of this post (special: distinguished by some unusual quality): as we compete for our part of the pie, we are struggling with what “unusual” means.  Clearly, we (opera, symphony, ballet, even jazz now…) are unusual.  Always have been.  Always will be.  We want to be special, but now we desire that our “unusual” qualities are more and more palatable to the mainstream.  I’m back to my take on Seth Godin’s passion-pop gulf, hoping that our ministrations don’t take us to the trough of the graph.

[P.S. The fact that I spent the weekend reading The Black Swan has set me up for a rocky Monday at the office.  Sorry to bring you along for the ride!]

Posted in Uncategorized at January 25th, 2010. 1 Comment.

January: When the Music Goes into Hiding

I wear my Marketing and Box Office hats a lot in January.  (Good thing, too, for it’s bloody freezing around here.  I need all the clothing I can find.)  All of the music that surrounded us during the audition and casting process has temporarily disappeared to make way for writing copy and selling tickets.

So, in thinking of ways to describe, promote and create enthusiasm about our upcoming season, I found this. And I’m of a million different minds about it.

And, as we address the thorny topic of ticket prices, it’s serendipitous to find one of my favorite podcasts discussing the Psychology of Pricing.  Unfortunately, our thinking has to go far beyond this discussion.  We have obligations not only to our bottom line, but to our donors, our current and potential patrons, and to our art form.  Raise prices to attempt to keep pace with expenses?  Hold the line in sympathy with the economic challenges of patrons?  Cut deep and low to eliminate obstacles in expanding the audience base?  Yes, yes, and yes?  Hmmm.

January is WTOC Alumni Month!

I was doing some surfing to see what our summer festival colleagues are offering for 2010, and I came across a performance of the suite from Candide with WTOC alums Anna Christy and Nick Phan.  Ravinia also features former Trappers Nathan Gunn and Lauren McNeese in Figaro, and Tanglewood’s roster includes Stephanie Blythe (Mahler #2), Dawn Upshaw, and Morris Robinson (Mozart’s Abduction).

Posted in Uncategorized at January 6th, 2010. No Comments.