What Happened To “Just The Music”?

More and more orchestras are dangling “extras” to entice people to come to concerts. “Spicing up concerts with bells and whistles may very well engage the short-attention-span set, but those folks may then expect the extras every time they enter a concert hall. And this could keep them essentially stuck in one kind of experience, patronizing only one kind of orchestral product. That wouldn’t matter as long as all the other products are doing well. But orchestras have been suffering mostly from lagging sales for the traditional, just-the-notes-ma’am subscription series, which play to an orchestra’s base and usually do the most to shore up the finances.”