How specific can you get with your audience? When you close your eyes, who is sitting in the hall/ school/ basketball court watching you? Underprivileged kids from a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. White affluent women in the suburbs of Boston. Affluent young professionals originally from/ with ties to Mexico. Appalachian young professionals in the Morgantown, WV area. Fans of video games from the late 90s through the early 2000s. Inmates at the Northwestern Correctional Facility. People who are formerly musicians. Families with children under 15. Single-parent families. Pregnant women. The husbands of pregnant women. Young moms. Grandparents with young grandchildren. Gifted children who really like the early Romantics. Kids in music class. College students in music appreciation. First responders. Military veterans. Astronomists attending the conference in San Diego.
Most of these (and almost limitless more!), are small subsets of the general public. Astronauts who’ve been on the the moon might be too small of an audience to fill large hall--but it might be the perfect audience for a commissioning project related to the moon. What’s your group? How are you perfect for them?
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What if your audience doesn’t respond? Then, you’ve learned some lessons: 1) they, in fact, are not your audience 2) the people you spoke with are not representative of the broader group 3) they have needs and wants that someone else (not you) is better equipped to handle. The best thing (depending on what your overall thoughts and impressions are): you don’t need to waste any more energy on people who don’t want you. Either there’s someone out there desperate to hear your ensemble or you need to rethink what your ensemble is offering. Maybe coal miners really just don’t want to go to an orchestra concert. But maybe they do want to see an orchestra if it’s with a bluegrass group. Maybe collegiate video game and anime fans aren’t as passionate about live concerts. But maybe slightly older young professionals are. The important thing is to keep reaching out, connecting, offering genuinely valuable ensembles and music.
How do you reach an audience to understand what they want and need in life--and how your ensemble fits in with them? There are a few ways: 1) you might be the typical person of your audience--maybe you’re a video gamer, an avid fisherman, or lover of serialism 2) You can ask one (or preferably more) in conversation--it’s important to get out of your friend circle and go find people who are not invested in your success 3) Someone in the group has probably written something online--what are they saying? What are they complaining about missing? 4) You can approach “experts” or people who run organizations around those subgroups. They probably have done some listening themselves--and they are intimately involved with the group. Even if you’re not sure how to approach a group, send an email or two. Be clumsy. If they are groups that haven’t been approached by classical musicians in the past, they just might appreciate even the clumsy attempts. Simply noticing and being noticed can create a powerful connection.
Who can be the audience of a classical ensemble? “People who like classical music!” is an easy answer, but there are many subcategories within that. People who are searching for something that sparks joy. Or something indescribably beautiful. Or agonizingly sad. Recovering addicts. Parents with sensory-sensitive kids. People who are alone. Veterans. Anime fans. Who your audience is affects programming choices and how you talk to them. How do you talk to “people who like classical music”? Really effective programming means doing the hard work of finding the specific person in the sea of people who who like or might like classical music.
*I have really enjoyed being in Seth Godin’s Podcast Fellowship and his Bootstrappers Workshop. If you are enjoying my posts on audience, I would encourage you to check him out. The Bootstrappers Workshop focused on finding a specific audience for whatever your business might be--and starting your project with them in mind. https://www.sethgodin.com/ Musicians have historically acted in a servant capacity for the church, the court, the military or on behalf of the tribe. Then, Beethoven signaled a flipping of roles--the audience was there to worship compositional and performance virtuosity and genius. To me, music (like all the arts, medicine, and virtually everything) exist to serve humanity through inspiration, emotion, and sometimes the intellect. Art reflects and aspires for the Divine--humanity’s raison d’etre is not to make Art. Instead, Art is part of our raison d’etre. If we are to restore Art to its noble role as faithful servant and facilitator of our best selves, we must think about what our best selves might look like and then use Art to move us, convince us, cajole us in that direction. Rather than a “mere” servant, Art once again becomes an expression of our inner spark of Divinity not our ego.
When was the last time you talked to someone in your audience? Asked them what they thought of the ensemble, a concert, you? I have historically spoken on behalf of my audience (“They do/ don’t like this because…”) when I really don’t have any proof beyond what I happen to think. Rather than divining their thoughts, we should ask them. Surveys can work. In person interviews. Maybe even during a quick chat at the end of the concert. It seems prudent to let the audience you serve speak for themselves.
Contradictions seem to be built into humans. With classical music, it means there are people who love Handel’s Messiah but refuse to listen to Mendelssohn’s Elijah because “it’s opera, and I don’t like opera” (true story!). I think we have to stop working to convince people of anything. Instead, we should focus on doing concerts that are engaging/ fun/ moving/ emotional to our respective audiences, regardless of the repertoire. Have a group of people who really love minimalism? Then, do a concert that engages them without trying to prove to the people who hate minimalism that they should actually love. Maybe, if you can get the core audience really engaged with it, other people will see them enjoying it. Maybe they’ll want to check it out (or maybe not). Either way, you are doing something that is valuable to a group of people. Think about them--not all the people who need convincing or who don’t want to go to your party anyway. You can still have fun.
When was the last time you went to a performance and actually left deeply moved? For many of us, we talk about how music is the universal language and can move anyone anywhere. Yet, how often have we experienced such a profoundly dramatic effect? When did we last truly feel something during a concert that then lingered with us throughout the rest of the day or the rest of the week?
I think these experiences are much rarer than we acknowledge. In part, we haven’t been to concerts that are actually at the front of creativity for now. Orchestras play pieces that were creative back in the day and then tell us how they were great then and why they’re great now. Here’s the problem: if you have to tell someone why a joke is funny, it’s not funny to the person not laughing no matter how much you try to convince them. Why aren’t you laughing?! This joke is so funny!! If you have to tell someone why a piece of music is great, you’re speaking to their intelligence. They’ll say, “Ok. I see why it’s good now.” But they won’t feel anything. I might suggest that rather than convincing someone to feel something during a concert, we should do the harder creative work of making music that makes people feel something. It’s difficult to predict--and it depends on your audience. You might have to include something that goes against your aesthetic principle. The muse, however, is no tyrant. She herself is a servant to humanity and to our other ideals. Is the music for you or for your audience? Do you inflict your music on them? Or do you invite them to have a potentially life-changing experience? Although we will undoubtedly fail countless times, we have a responsibility to keep working to connect with our audience whoever that might be. What if classical music isn’t fundamentally about self-expression (that’s music therapy)? (Of course, we necessarily express ourselves to some extent whenever we compose or perform or listen, but what if that’s not music’s raison d’etre). Instead, what if classical music (like any real art) is about making sounds that improve the world, that challenge us, that inspire us to be better people. What if we have a moral obligation to avoid self-indulgence and instead to embrace our duty to affect people, to remind them of their common humanity, to make them act in favor of change. In a world of moral music, what would you use your music to accomplish?
I recently hiked over 30 miles in the Grand Canyon, where going down is tough and coming back up challenges both mind and body. Disconnecting from our modern world and reconnecting with nature is necessary from time to time. It’s also important to create instances where things will be tough but we must nevertheless do them. The rangers at the canyon remind all who enter: going down is optional; going up is mandatory. Going up might require us to set tiny goals, walking step by step. It’s not glamorous when we’re all sweaty and frustrated at the slow pace—yet that’s probably when we’ve done work that matters to us and to other people. In a field where there aren’t enough jobs, we’re the ones to create them—those who choose to go down, must do the hard work of raising everyone.
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