How She Fills Concert Halls Around the World - Aubrey Bergauer

Check out Aubrey's new book, 'Run It Like A Business', which is a fascinating look into her work and findings about building both the numbers, and the strength, of audiences in art industries!

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[iSlicer]

I often play classical music at recess or lunchtime in my classroom if I have a moment alone. I usually play popular classical music (well known) because when students come in I always allow the music to keep playing for a few minutes. To be honest, the students typically ask me what it is, and often say, oh was that in (insert movie name here). They don’t mind it and they are often interested. However, I do find that as more students come in, they get shy and then stay silent and ask no further questions. I teach Programming and Japanese, so I do go on with the class, but it is interesting that they seem to want to know more. Those that ask me in private, I always give them some links to my suggestions to listen to next. I now teach two students violin and one cello at lunchtime due to this. So, it’s a big win in my mind.

[thiilaak]

The Singapore Symphony is doing great job using social media. When you look at their audience you see lots of young people and even children.

[groovetube]

I first saw Yuja Wang perform on TV and was entranced with her performance and felt compelled to see her live. Luckily was able to see her perform a concert in a nearby suburban theater. She is a good example of a artist who could appeal to a younger crowd. Her eccentricity and fashionable beauty can attract many.

[elizabethkenobi]

It's hard to deny that there is some element of "poshness" or elitism in a classical concert compared to a pop or rock concert. As you already mentioned, there are all the insider terms that we take for granted like concerto, movement, Opus, cadenza, or even oboe for that matter. But for another, audience participation is not really encouraged in a classical concert hall--cheering, laughing, talking, singing along during pieces or even applause between movements is discouraged. Many new audience members don't understand this, and begin clapping whenever they like something, and are often hushed by others or chuckled at. People need to learn the "rules" before coming or else they'll definitely feel out of place, which makes it feel a little less accessible to a newcomer than another type of musical concert.

[stevenpowers]

Great interview. One thing that could help introduce new people to classical music is to present something that they are already familiar with. Have a weekend matinee and instead of presenting a Bach or Mozart piece, give them a full orchestra performing movie soundtracks like Star Wars, Jaws, Gettysburg, Last of the Mohicans, etc. Young people have been listening to symphonic music since they were young in these soundtracks but really didn't pay much attention to it. Once they see one of these performances in person, they're more likely to attend a Bach or Mozart performance.

[JT-tqti]

Musician and professor here. This is all great. One thing that might fuse what you both are talking about is that the education needed for new and old audiences all has to do with understanding more about these remarkable art works and their context and content. At the essence of this art form is a music that speaks without words. The compositional technology needed for this developed in the western music tradition over the course of 500 or so years. It is why we have tonality and form, and melody and structure. It might have reached a peak to many in the 19th century. When they first realized this, for example ETA Hoffman’s review of Beethoven 5th in 1810, they knew this was going to require some degree of dedication and study by audiences to be able to grasp. Indeed musicians who spend their whole lives playing these works (as myself) still find them to be engaging and inspiring after decades. This is the truly high quality product she talks about. It has made converts over the last hundreds of years without any major marketing per se. I still see students who are totally captured by classical music and get obsessed by it. Incidentally this includes thousands of young people who decide to be music majors in college and populate the conservatories and music schools.

So the power of classical music is undisputed. However as a professional I find that students, like amateur audiences have not been given the license to engage the works with the implicit content it was supposed to have. This is a longer discussion about the nature of “absolute” music, but it is undoubtedly supposed to require an imaginative and actively creative listener, not a passive one. Many elements of the content can be both personal but also objectively deciphered. This is what musicologists and theorists and teachers try to convey as they study these works.

So What I think we need for new audiences and seasoned ones as well are inspiring ideas as to what these pieces are about. We need to fire our imagination about the works. When we have a context for the work, it becomes immensely more moving and engaging. This is particularly true for large form works which often have implicit dramatic narratives and psychological conflicts that require resolution of some sort through the work. With shorter works, we may just immerse ourselves in the beauties of a sensation or feeling.

But my point is that I think this is the content of the education that they are seeking. Yes, it should be talking about Shostakovich’s oppression and the dark times of communist Russia which are expressed in his works. It should include Russian folk themes and pagan rituals in Stravinsky’s Rite. And all of this should be a collaboration between the musicians/musicologists who study and know this information and the marketers. The latter can take the ideas and help spread them in an attractive package, whether it is a teaser in a promo or in a significant portion of the actual concert. Btw, I believe Rob Kapilow’s “what makes it great” is something along these lines and seems to be very popular.

[bb]

Aubrey Bergauer is the executive director of the California Symphony since 2014.
She instituted these rules; (My reactions are in parentheses.) 
* Wear whatever you want. (I’m fine with that.)
* Clap whenever you feel inspired to clap. (Good idea.)
* Use your phone during the concert, on silent, of course. (Not in a dark concert hall. There I don’t want to see multiple glowing screens.)
* Bring your drinks to your seats. (In a quiet concert hall, the tinkling of ice and slurping of empty cups is not what I want to hear.)
* They shifted to customer-centric language in their website navigation. (I’ve looked at it and it is easy to use.) 
* They also replaced musicologist jargon in the program notes with more accessible language. (Yes, their next concert is called “Brahms Obsessions”. That’s a good idea.)

** (Get rid of the glowing phone screens and slurping drinks, and I’d consider such an indoor concert. Otherwise, no. My wife, son and I went to an orchestra concert which had cirque acrobats/magicians with classical music. We enjoyed that kind of innovation.)

[danielpincus]

I send classical music videos to usually brides of couples whose weddings I officiate. Many of them are from backgrounds where they were not exposed to classical music. It's one of my ways to spread the word, to spread the love. For calming music, I always send Schubert'a Impromptu in G Flat.

[endah]

There are so many things but here's a couple thoughts
1. Education, the typical system encourages mechanical music making, perfectionism in the pieces you play and neglecting techniques in the pieces you don't. It doesn't educate people on how to listen, people are spending 12 years doing 8 grades on their instrument and still can't track the form of a Mozart piano sonata or identify an applied dominant by ear.
2. Community. Related to the first point, the system doesn't encourage joyfullness and does encourage competitiveness, jealously, insecurity and bitterness.
3. Passionless performers. Too many performers are extremely competetent but utterly uninterested in art. Players in symphony orchestras often look like they'd rather by sitting on the couch watching Corrie. Too many of the best players are merely phenomenally disciplined people and unfortunately too many creative exciting personalities don't have the discipline required which leads me to...
4. Business. The lack of money and time creates a dependence on the best readers and technical players but not the passionate creatives. The lack of interesting programming has led to stagnant manners of performance.
5. New music. Third level composition education is so biased toward harsh-sounding, dissonant, obscenely intellectual yet deeply uninteresting music. It's also too often way too long, Feldman was wasting almost everyone's time. Of course, people should explore the avant-garde and feel free to write uncompromising music but the lack of really any encouragement of music the any average person might be able to emotionally engage with is a disgrace imo. So there's a divide between unlistenable-for-most and unbearably cheesy (Eiendaudi, Whitacre etc.) This has also created a huge rift between performers and composers, the performers spend most of their time with Beethoven, Bach, Debussy etc. so it's unsurprising how hard it is to have new performer/composer relationships emerge. Which comes back to my point about community, youth needs to be able to form bonds, write new music and come up with new methods of presenting the music.
6. Classical music is hard work. It takes effort and engagement to get something out of it and we're perpetually inundated with easily digestable, addictive content. It's so tempting to consume this lowest common denominator slop and really hard to sit down with a 30 minutes symphony and not scroll instagram while it's on.

[DXYSU]

I discovered classical music in college and have been in love ever since. I've been attending concerts, ballets and operas at Lincoln Center in NYC (and elsewhere on my travels around the world), usually as a subscriber, for 40 years. I love classical music from Bach through Mahler, but not so much after that. Although "classical" is but ONE of umpteen Grammy "genres", I see it as (at least) two distinct main genres: one which I will call "humanist" (representative of human emotions) and "abstract" (representative of noise). In the visual arts, I know that I need to go to different venues to see a Rembrandt rather than a Jackson Pollack. If I do see a Jackson Pollack unexpectedly I can quickly move on. But at a concert hall, if a "Jackson Pollack" lasts 20 minutes, I'm trapped. Before buying concert tickets I do considerable research (including listening to excerpts online) and know enough about the field to avoid the noise. Newcomers to classical music are often blindsided. That's why 90% do not return. Unfortunately most new classical composition today is "noise". Noone is working on Brahms' Fifth Symphony.
Unapologetic Romantic

[silviermotova]

really great video. thank you i will definatly buy book and use some things that ve been said. thank you!

[jpbarbagelata]

Really insightful interview, lots of parallels with my recent thoughts about the world of classical. I am actually addressing some of these questions in my thesis on musical experience and understanding. On the topic of formality in the concert hall, I think Ms. Bergauer is totally right about young people and concert hall attire. We do want to dress for the occasion! Jeans and a tshirt simply look out of place in the concert hall because the physical buildings are usually such grand spaces. There is a sense of glamour built in. The problem of formally I think is perfectly exemplified by the fact that clapping between movements is not allowed, or at least heavily looked down upon. It’s fun to dress up, it’s not so fun to be trapped in a rigid environment where we must be still and silent for two hours, forced to suppress our natural instincts to applaud and cheer when we hear something we like.

[dwdei]

At the end of Shostakovich's tremendous 5th Symphony the massed violins play, a top A note over and over again something like 140 times (I do not remember the exact number: there's space below for those who do). I remember reading about how, by that musical act, he makes the entire front of the orchestra appear to be one huge machine locked into mindlessly stamping out the same answer again and again and again - to a state of hypnosis.
I was one of the lucky ones who knew that before seeing the symphony performed live (Edinburgh, Usher Hall). As a masterstroke of visual-musical theatre it chilled the bones. A bit of foreknowledge can really drive home the meaning of a piece of music with real power. I cannot imagine how reduced my experience would have been without - I might have even found every note annoying or superfluous.

[tt-ewrx]

There is no such thing as an audience problem. My local concert hall is filled more or less every time when there is a concert. OK the audience's average age is very high, but this is not a problem, as many of these I chatted to admitted that they started liking this experience after retirement! So "new" older people will walk into these halls continuously.

[sheilabryans]

Excellent interview. I was fortunate enough to have been exposed to a great deal of classical music at home as well as music appreciation classes at school. I am so very grateful now for that early introduction. Many people have not had that background. Thank you for encouraging the love of this genre. Aubrey Bergauer is doing vital work. Two musicians who could have been mentioned as they are also engaged in the same endeavour are “TwoSetViolin” 4.3M subscribers on their Youtube channel alone they are a dynamic force in introducing classical music to new audiences - they are also on all social media platforms. For anyone who has not heard of them do check out their channel.

[bryantohyk]

Great interview, really love this discussion. (at the moment in only a quater in but) I definitely agree with the points discussed in the video that the "packaging" of music needs to change.

But I think the "product" itself might also need to change in order to reach a wider audience in today's society. Classical music as a product has prolly reached its peak maturity and is moving to (already at) the decline stage of its product life cycle. Since there has been little change in the way this product has been delivered for decades, perceptions of it in society's eyes has already been formed. What these perceptions are I'm not too sure as this was off the top of my head😂 but considering the decline in the market, it probably isnt what consumers want nowadays, this point could likely explain the discussion of why 10% retention and repeat visitors for concert go-ers, it might just not be what people like.

Marketing, as much as it is about educating consumers, is also about finding and creating a need for them to want this product, if people arent interested in the product in the first place, then providing the education resource would be less effective.

The current consumer market for the product is too small to sustain in the long run, the symphony group in my country is likely funded by donors and the government instead of the actual sales for concerts thats keeping the organization afloat (what i deduce from them having a donation system). 5-10 years down the line will these partons still be around, will there still be investors willing to support the Performing Arts culture. The product needs to change or branch out to adapt to consumers' changing interest. Do the general population of Gen Zs and the younger Gen Alpha have the attention span to sit in a concert hall for an hour+ listening to music? Are the restrictions of taking photos and videos a misopportunity for more quality User Generated Content. These are some of the things I think the industry needs to take into account. Now the question I have is whether the classical music industry is willing to change to adapt to the times or do they just want to "preserve tradition".

[pada]

I love everything about this. Including the comment section. Thank you.

[DanielMelberg]

I'd like to share a different perspective. I love classical music and i love live music. I've attended concerts in the past and thoroughly enjoyed them. So i was excited to buy tickets to two piano concerts online. I got my tickets in the mail...then i got the email. It was a link to the expectations I would have to meet. After reading it, it was clear to me that i would no longer be welcome. First, the music could only be experienced with a background of complete silence. I'm in my late seventies and have copd. Ocassionally, discreetly, i clear my throat. It's not a nervous habit and i don't do it for attention, i do it so i can keep breathing. I also have to use the bathroom more often than I did at twenty. I was advised that once the concert started, no one would be allowed to leave FOR ANY REASON. Like an est seminar. I didn't use my expensive tickets, and I never considered buying more.

[baguettegott]

As somebody who is relatively young and does not ever go to concerts, I'm just gonne leave some thoughts here that I had while watching the video.
1. Agree completely, if I can't navigate your website and it doesn't tell me how long things will last, how it's structured, when there are breaks etc, I'm definitely not coming. That applies to any event, for anything.

2. Also agree on the technical language. I know more terminology than anybody in my circle who _doesn't_ listen to classical music, but it's still not nearly enough, and that makes it feel a bit hopeless. Just having a glossary would even help, then you don't have to "dumb down" the main text and offend the people who would indeed know what everything means.

3. Education really is key. I don't listen to Mozart, ever, but I don't know a single person who doesn't get super hyped at the end of 'Amadeus' where we see them build up the "confutatis" bit of the requiem piece by piece, and then after understanding it hearing it all assembled... it's exciting, listening to it with all that perspective makes for a completely different experience and it's wonderful.

4. I'm from Germany, and I don't know how our music education compares to that in the US or UK, but mine was pretty bad. In the last two years we basically only watched movies. But it still was the one occasion in my life where I actually got to hear some classical music without actively seeking it out, and that still did something. I was bored to death by art songs, and then one by Schumann came along that I randomly fell in love with and listen to and cherish to this day.

5. I will say, the elitist impression for me does mostly come from uhh... the people I've met who are into classical music. This comment section included btw. There are a lot of _really_ snobbish, condescending people out there, and maybe they're just the loudest ones, but they are very loud. I completely stopped telling people what music I listen to because of bad experiences with classical music enthusiasts (and heavy metal fans, to be fair, they were also occasionally quite mean about it!).

Now that I'm thinking about it, I kinda had bad experiences across the board. Every time I did discover a classical piece that I liked, and mentioned it to people who were into classical music, they would deride my taste for being basic. Which yes, it is, go figure, I enjoy summer by Vivaldi, haha, but it doesn't feel particularly good to be laughed at for that.

[PedroMarques-lk]

Hello everyone. Thank you for this great video (and for the previous one too!). I agree partially with the problem that is exposed and the solution Aubrey presents. Classical music is a daunting prospect to many people who have no experience and knowledge of music and that puts people off, and so there is an absolute need to facilitate content so that people know that it is accessible and easy to listen. I think that this is crucial and I can give the example of a friend of mine who went to see "The Magic Flute" in Vienna with english subtitles and told me he didn't like because there was an issue with subtitles and half way though he lost track of the story, and without the story the music was not that engaging. I proceeded to tell him some of the more geeky facts (life the relationship of the opera to the massonary and how this shows in the opera, and other details) and he actually told me he wished he new that before he had gone to the concert hall.
What I don't agree in this thesis is that the main fault (or at least a substantial part of the fault) is on the orchestras. I come from a medium class family and my grandparents were poor. My only mean to access classical music at home were the cd's my father had and some books, among them, a 5 volume encyclopedia which covered composers from Sachultz to Monpou (who was actually still alive of writing the encyclopedia). Some of the professor at my were not accessible or captivating. The only concerts we went were the ones from the music school me and my brother went to. At that time, there was information, we just had to look for it (encyclopedias, cd booklets, this was the only source of my classical music knowledge at that time, in the 90's!).
Nowadays there is internet, there is a tone of educational content out there and accessible for free (beginning with "Peter and the Wolf", which I believe is from the 50's and Leopold Mozart's Toy Symphony). I feel that people simply do not search for it. People can make a 5 to 10 search on the internet, but that is not nearly enough in classical music (and it can be a point to improve in content release) . I feel (and this is towards most things nowadays, not just classical music) that todays society has grown accustomed to receive things without much work. It's an old problem (I can think of the comment the Austrian emperor supposably made to Mozart's "The Abduction of the Seraglio") but today is a consequence of automatization and digitalization, not necessarily directly the individual's fault. However, we can facilitate all the content we want, if people don't go and explore, they will never find it, and classical music needs that curiosity from people. If my friend had explored for 5 minutes in wikipedia before he had gone to the concert hall, after the subtitles disappeared he would have had something to latch on to: the music.
What I feel that orchestras can and should improve is the marketing of the need to explore before you go to a concert hall. I feel that much of the good publicity classical music needs is done or already being made, we need a society more open to exploration and in depth knowledge of things, And this applies to music, politics, science, everything. It is easier to hear some talk about something and take it for granted that actually do the job of looking at the matter in an curious and open but informed way and for me this is one of the main dangers of todays society.