The increasing age of the average classical music audience is by this time no secret. As the typical classical concert-goer ages, symphonies, chamber music groups, event organizers, and individual musicians worry about the future of our livelihood. For those of us closest to the scene, it seems almost a little hard to believe that the art form should be facing a social extinction, since so many new musicians are well below twenty. The problem, it seems, is that most young members of the classical music scene are playing, not necessarily filling seats in the concert hall. The view from the audience tends to include a lot of young musicians, but the view from the stage typically finds few of their peers in the audience.
As any person who played in a youth symphony (or went to a band camp) can tell you, classical music is not cool. Traditional views on classical music typically include adjectives like “conservative,” “nerdy,” “elitist,” and a whole slew of other labels that tend not to fit the diverse population of the musical community. Classical musicians have never fit this staid and dowdy mold. Mozart was a pretty wacky guy, Beethoven wrote a set of variations built on a tune about drinking before beginning to work, and Bach…well, the size of his family speaks for itself. Despite the fact that we all tend to have a great time with each other and are typically just like everybody else, the prevailing view of the classical music community tends to cast a frumpier light on the art form. In an age that features some of the most mind-numbingly simplistic hits on the Top 40, classical music couldn’t be less related to popular music, and consequently tends to miss out on pop culture altogether. The perceived gap between pop culture and classical music is taking a toll on audience size and age, and that toll is making us nervous.
Recent studies by the National Endowment for the Arts and the League of American Orchestras have indicated that the percentage of Americans who attend orchestra performances, as well as other arts events, has been declining for more than 25 years, most sharply between 2002 and 2008. That’s Americans of any age, not just young people. When it comes to the question of age, the classical music audience has been getting older faster than the rest of the population. Its median age in 1982 was 40, just one year older than the general population, but by 2008 it was 49, four years older than the U.S. median. This trend is anything but reassuring, and the classical community is starting to take notice…and action.
Miami Beach’s New World Symphony, an orchestra of young professionals helmed by Michael Tilson Thomas, is the latest to cast its net toward a wider, younger audience. Pulse: Late Night at the New World Symphony is the title of their project, and it aims to draw in younger audiences by turning the traditional concert experience on its head and bringing the club to the concert hall. This approach builds on years of taking the concert to the club, but at New World Center, the concert hall plays host to electronica, colored lights, and a night-club like atmosphere. Listeners will be able to wander about, chat with fellow concert-goers, sip drinks, and get close to the action. These concerts start at 9:30 and have been a resounding success with the non-standard classical audience. The first Pulse event drew 900 people. Even more spectacularly, the second (in April of last year) sold out its 1,500 tickets a week in advance. Half the audience for those events was under 40. One Pulse attendee, Luis Amato, said of the experience, ““I am very tired of the regular concert format, where you just sit there,” Amato said. “This is a way to integrate yourself. This format is fantastic, revolutionary. It will attract a lot of young people to classical music, which has been a kind of taboo thing that nobody understands.” Amato was so excited by the event that he promptly became a VIP member of Friends of the New World Symphony, a support group for younger audiences.
The idea behind Pulse is to bring classical music closer to the sphere of pop music by highlighting the ways in which they are similar. A brainchild of cutting edge composer Mason Bates, Pulse is a sister of a Bay Area program called Mercury Soul, in which Bates spins electronic beats and also selects live music to be performed by the ensembles. “In electronica the harmonies, the beautiful textures, the rhythms have to bump up,” says Bates. “Putting that in a field like classical that is so focused on a hyper-listening vibe, I realized the possibilities were huge. If you imagine your orchestra as the world’s biggest synthesizer, it starts to click a little bit more. … It’s like welcome back to the future.”
New World’s strategy is not limited to Pulse. Other efforts include half-hour concerts for $2.50, hour-long concerts with narration and video called Symphony with a Splash and longer “Journey” concerts that explore a single composer. Other upcoming ideas include “gallery walk” concerts that curate a variety of small chamber groups across a series of spaces so that listeners can walk through and listen as one might walk through an art gallery. The Los Angeles Philharmonic has hosted late-night raves, the Memphis Symphony has performed in blues clubs and pulled in rappers and dancers, and the Indianapolis Symphony has a happy-hour program–just to name a few.
Bates notes that it is imperative that the musical experience, regardless of its packaging, be a genuine one: “For us to make this work, it has to be something that stands on its own legs musically….You want it to be the real thing.” For some purists, Pulse and its peer programs present a possibility that it will pull in a new audience that will not want to make the leap to “real” concerts. Advocates of these strategies, though, don’t see that as a problem. Of that, CEO of New World Symphony Howard Herring says, “It will not harm or diminish our commitment to traditional forms of presentation….The idea is to invite people to a new way of listening and experiencing the music, and what they do with that experience is up to them. I believe that eventually we will have several audiences, not just one, and that will be for the betterment of the audience, the art form and the musicians.”
Whatever the strategy, we can all agree that more people in the seats and in the scene is a good thing. When it comes to expanding the appeal of classical music, the bottom line is much like that of music itself: every approach has its audience, and every new idea will speak to someone out there. We just have to put ourselves out there too.
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