Bar-Hopping? Nahhh. Let’s Go Hear Some Beethoven!

ArtsJournal blogger Drew McManus has declared May to be Take A Friend To the Orchestra Month, and in case that sounds like a dubious proposition in a culture where orchestral music sometimes calls to mind stuffy surroundings and elitist snobbery, Drew has enlisted the help of more than a dozen critics, bloggers, musicians, and administrators to explain how to sell your friends on the concept. Up first is former Chicago Symphony executive director Henry Fogel, who once personally convinced a sixty-year-old Texas pilot to come hear a performance of Mahler 5, while simultaneously rescuing the CSO’s instruments from an overturned truck on a remote highway.