People Will Listen, If You Teach Them How

The newly rekindled San Antonio Symphony held an outdoor concert last week aimed at the city’s Hispanic population, and (almost) nobody came. Yes, it was a broiling-hot day, but Mike Greenberg suggests that the SAS may be trying to attract new audience members without making a real commitment to the most basic audience-building technique. “A Mexican American doesn’t have to make any more of a cultural ‘leap’ to the symphony than does a German or Polish or Italian American… [But] to build an audience for the long term, the symphony needs to take a long-term view of its educational and outreach missions, and I don’t think it’s done that very well.”