Category: AUDIENCE

How I Learned Systematically To Adore Classical Music

“I stood like a tourist at the foot of Everest. The tower of music loomed forebodingly before me. I began with baby steps, playing piano records in the background as I went about the day, letting the tunes seep in by osmosis, not getting too close in case I scared myself off. Over the next few weeks the slow-drip method started to take and the music began to fall into place. Melodies untangled. Their logic unfurled. Basically, I listened, and listened again, until the music made sense.”

Can The Minnesota Orchestra Hit The Holy Grail Of Attracting Diverse Audiences?

“People say, ‘I would go more if I was represented on stage,'” says one former board member. But it took until 2015 and the Minnesota Orchestra’s tour of Cuba to create a diversity committee. “There is not a single black musician among the orchestra’s permanent members.”

Are Podcasts Going To Replace Written Book Reviews? (Or Have They Already?)

First of all, book review podcasts don’t pretend to objectivity. And then there’s the ease of access factor: “It can be daunting for someone who feels like a literary outsider to pick up a 10,000-word piece on three translated works in The New York Review of Books, but not to download a couple episodes of a show you can listen to while you’re cleaning your apartment.”

Are We Losing Our Common Culture?

We’ve just gone through a political season in which parallel universes of political discourse made it obvious how easy it is to create realities that are narrowly tailored to our own beliefs. Is the same happening to culture?

There will never again be a show like “One Day at a Time” or “All in the Family” — shows that derived their power not solely from their content, which might not hold up to today’s more high-minded affairs, but also from their ubiquity. There’s just about nothing as popular today as old sitcoms were; the only bits of shared culture that come close are periodic sporting events, viral videos, memes and occasional paroxysms of political outrage (see Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes speech and the aftermath).

Instead, we’re returning to the cultural era that predated radio and TV, an era in which entertainment was fragmented and bespoke, and satisfying a niche was a greater economic imperative than entertaining the mainstream.

“We’re back to normal, in a way, because before there was broadcasting, there wasn’t much of a shared culture,” said Lance Strate, a professor of communication at Fordham University. “For most of the history of civilization, there was nothing like TV. It was a really odd moment in history to have so many people watching the same thing at the same time.”

Shared cultural experiences define us as a culture. But they also exclude those who don’t connect with the experience. Broadly shared pop culture can also be generic or trivial in its quest to appeal broadly.

So is the rise of niche culture a polarizing phenomenon? Or does it allow for the rich and diverse expression of individuality that enrich our culture and that we should celebrate? How do we talk to each other if our culture increasingly becomes parallel universes and we lose our common vocabulary?

How Northern Ballet Rethought Its Transactional Business Model

“The greatest challenge was to try to change the existing culture from one that was transactional to philanthropic, removing the need for tiers and associated benefits. The Directors’ Circle was our upper-level membership scheme, designed with its own set of tiers (silver, gold and platinum) and associated benefits. The scheme itself had been relatively successful, particularly in the development of our Sponsor a Dancer appeal. The drawback to the scheme was that it was not cost-effective if supporters drew on all of their benefits. This meant that rather than creating a community of supporters we were at risk of turning those closest to us into transactional givers.”

So Stephen Colbert Put Opera On Late-Night Network TV – How Much Difference Will It Make?

The Met sent Pretty Yende over to sing “Una voce poco fa” from Barber of Seville, and both the studio audience and the Twitterverse were thrilled. “The question is, did the diva appearance foster any new opera fans, or was this just hopeful thinking?” Michael Vincent considers.

All The Events At Hamburg’s New Concert Hall – Yes, *All* Of Them – Are Selling Out

The director of the Elbphilharmonie says that tickets to performances by resident ensembles, touring orchestras like the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony, chamber music, new music and jazz alike are all bought up within hours. He’s even selling “blind date” tickets to concerts by artists to be named later – and people are buying those, too.

Can An Orchestra Bridge A State’s Political Divides? The Louisville Orchestra’s Music Director Means To Try

Teddy Abrams: “I thought, ‘wait a minute, instead of focusing on how to get a larger share of the state budget – which by the way is next to nothing; I think we get $30,000 from the state – maybe we should focus on getting an orchestra to serve the entire state and start using culture to break down some of these divides.’ Because this just can’t go on. It’s ridiculous: Here are people living right next to each other who can’t have a meaningful dialogue, and who assume nothing will ever change.”

Why Broadway’s (And Broadway Tours’) Box Office Is At An All-Time High

Alexis Soloski: “What accounts for the remarkable rise in revenue and attendance … that the last several years have witnessed? The answer probably relies on both the type of entertainment Broadway has been offering and the new strategies it has found to price and sell its wares.”