Tell Me Something More Engaging Than This

Jumping on the bandwagon and joining groups like the Baltimore Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony, the Columbus Symphony is hosting a side-by-side concert with amateur players and professional musicians.

It’s a good idea. Playing tough repertoire in an amateur orchestra can have its rewards, but getting to do it alongside professional players makes it a dream come true. There are enough in the orchestra to make the piece sound good anyways.

Here’s video from Columbus. It looks like a happy event.

I find this clip from Baltimore, however, more heartwarming.

Put Them in the Orchestra!

There is a limit to what even the best student/audience engagement program can do. The fact that orchestras rely on their older patrons for income has not changed. Bringing students in to see concerts and playing recordings for them has a muted effect. As mentioned yesterday, classical music has actually been used to repel youths!

This could change. What if, instead of just expecting students to passively take in music that they have no prior interest in and that their friends think of as “old people” music (yes, that phrase actually appeared in the music-repellent article), orchestras brought them into the production side of music? Management should take a leap of faith, one that might not work, and set aside a seat in every section for a student to sit, listen, and watch. Classical music is much more interesting when the viewer takes note of how skilled each individual player  is and feels the vibrations of the stage.

Classical music isn’t tame, and it might grab more of a following if the general public awakened to that fact.