If you were looking for your first audience member who would you choose and why? Your mom would be happy to support you. A friend might provide some positive criticism. The most helpful comments would probably come from someone you don’t know. Someone who wants what you’re selling, someone excited to hear you perform (but who doesn’t care about your personal success) might actively help you make your performance a reality. They might help you see your blind spots. Who could you ask and where would you find your first audience member?
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What’s your ideal audience size? A string quartet is hardly appropriate for a 3,500 person hall. A 70-person orchestra can’t be sustained by 10 people (barring unusual and extraordinary wealth). Your ideal audience size tells you about the identity of your group and how to appeal to that group. Maybe your audience is a small number of people interested in specific music. Or maybe a bigger audience has more diverse tastes. Serving your audience means knowing how much you have to serve.
What kind of relationship do you want with your audience? What do you want them to do? Should the show up, listen, clap, and leave? Should they hang out after the performance? Do you want to be friends? Do you want a fan-idol relationship? Is the relationship about you? Them? Building something meaningful? Know the kind of relationship you want, and you can easily figure out how you should treat your audience.
Imagine you’re in a relationship with someone. That person wants you to show up, pay for dinner, and enjoy your company. They never ask what you want or what you want out of the relationship. They tell you what you want. This doesn’t sound like a fun or healthy relationship for you. Why would we make audiences play that role of passively subdued experiencers in our ensembles?
We need to accept our audiences for who they are. Although we usually intend our performances for a specific group, sometimes an altogether surprising group becomes the primary group attending. We can either accept that we now serve this group, or we can change what we’re offering to attract the expected audience.
Maybe the intended audience does, in fact, come by the droves--but they come with unexpected wants and needs. Perhaps all those former musicians with jobs also have young children. Or maybe those college students can’t pay $30 a ticket each week or month. Either way, we must be responsive to the audience we do have--not to the audience we want or anticipate or accept. (In the same way, we have to work with the ensemble we have, not the one we want or the one that could be.) An audience, ideally bigger than the ensemble, chooses (for the typical concert) to arrive at an event and chooses to watch the performance from beginning to end (hopefully). They have chosen to trust the ensemble with their time. Parents have trusted the ensemble with the attention of their children. People come to see, to hear, to experience. The ensemble determines what occupies their time and attention. The people in charge of ensembles end up leading both the ensemble and the audience in a journey that can uplift, move, elevate, inspire, or otherwise contribute to the soul and the world at large. Or music’s power can be diffused through poor planning, squabbling players, or a bad concert experience. Deciding on a worthy journey and conducting it in a thoughtful, respectful way that maximizes music’s power to change the world for the better are two of the sacred duties of musical leadership. Choose wisely, choose carefully, and choose music over ego.
Sometimes we have unintended audiences. It might be a group of people we didn’t realize would be interested in what we’re performing. Or it might be a group that also benefits from your performances (say, the kids in the basketball league who hear you rehearsing every Thursday at the church). Sometimes, the musicians themselves might be an unintended audiences. (Think about the winds packing up as the strings rehearse Barber’s “Adagio.”) Regardless of the situation, you probably have people watching--people you didn’t think would watch (for whatever reason). If those outside of the core group are, in fact, watching and listening, what should you do differently?
What are your goals with your audience? What do you want to accomplish with them? Do you want to affect them emotionally? Should they do something? Should they be different after attending your concert? How? What specifically are you trying to change? Do you want to convince them that classical music is fun or are you trying to inspire that fun feeling in them? Knowing the change you want in an audience helps you understand how to achieve that change. You have to 1) know who your audience is 2) know how you want to affect them and 3) have some ideas about how to bring about that change in your audience. Classical music should do more than just exist for the “enjoyment” by the general public (the major orchestras already do this). Instead, we need more ensembles working to accomplish something specific for a specific audience.
When was the last time that you were in the audience of an ensemble? Going to other performances allows you to see what other ensembles are doing, and it can provide insight into what your ensemble is doing. Maybe you use the same theater, and you notice that the ushers don’t show people all the way to their seats. Maybe the ensemble starts 10 minutes late. Does the ensemble tune? How do they structure their concert? How long is the performance? Does the audience shift restlessly in their seats? Do they smile? Do they chat excitedly as they leave? You’re in a strange position to notice these things. When you’re with your own ensemble, you might get lost in all the details and responsibility. At someone else’s concert, you can sit back, enjoy, and notice the audience.
How do you know if an audience enjoyed your performance? Asking directly will probably get the most accurate response. Conversations (with people you don’t know) and in-person or a-page-in-the-program surveys might be a good way to start. The audience sees the whole performance and know how they feel. If your goal is to serve them, they probably have the best ideas on how to do that, even if your goal is education. Maybe a 5 pm start time is better for families. Maybe not having an intermission makes life difficult for anyone who drank liquids before the concert. Maybe someone was unkind to an audience member. Whatever it is, the audience probably has some ideas on how to improve performances geared toward them.
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