And he puts his finger on the crux of the problem facing most symphony orchestras in the country today:<\/p>\n
Look, the symphony isn’t going away. The repertoire is here to stay and people will always want to hear it. What needs to change right away is the orchestra’s relationship with the community. The problem is, orchestras don’t know how to change. They have this thing, this music, this product and they don’t know how to adapt it to today’s market.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Stabler then goes on to talk about alternative venues, ways of formatting concerts, the nights\/times that we play as areas that can be changed to better reflect the desires of our current and prospective audiences. All well and good, but to take the Sunday matin\u00c3\u00a9e example for a moment: we tried some Sunday matin\u00c3\u00a9es for classical subscriptions, and the attendance was terrible. Now, I don’t know why it was terrible – was it the fact that these were add-on concerts to fill out a series – i.e. the subscribers mostly got Saturday nights, but for one or two concerts of their series they got a Sunday afternoon, so they just didn’t go to a concert on a day they didn’t really want? Or do people in Portland just want to spend their Sunday afternoons outside and not in a stuffy concert hall? The problem is that, unless we try the idea as its own series, we’ll never know. The half-hearted, tentative way of introducing the matin\u00c3\u00a9e practically doomed it from the start.<\/p>\n
It goes back to the issue I talked about some time ago: orchestras are risk-averse institutions, because if you risk it all on the wrong idea, you may never get back to even the poor place where you started. Taking smart, educated risks is the way to go, but then you’ve got to embrace the risk and go for the strategy 100 percent. A prime example is when the symphony started playing Saturday nights (back in 1995-96 or so). Instead of saying that we’d take one concert out of both the A and B classical series and try them on Saturday nights – and royally pissing off our existing ticket holders who wanted to go on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday night – management decided that to be competative with other arts organizations we need to stake out Saturday night for every series, and get rid of Tuesday nights. All at once. We lost a lot of “Tuesday nighters” as Jimmy called them, but many returned, and new subscribers came as well, and now it’s the one night on which we almost never have “comp” tickets available for orchestra members. An educated risk was taken, the long view was held, and we gained our best selling night. This is the way decisions should be made – a bunker mentality only means that you’re cut off from the community that you serve, the musicians you employ, and the ideas to which you aspire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oregonian classical music critic David Stabler just wrote an entry on his blog which talks about the recent Crosscut article and his take on the state of the orchestra. He comes out swinging on the merits of the piece: Stephen Beaudoin is right about one thing in his doomy Crosscut piece about the Oregon Symphony. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[148,115,2],"tags":[67,117,55,3666,3662,62],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appreciations","category-music","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-classical","tag-critic","tag-orchestra","tag-oregon","tag-portland","tag-symphony"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-8m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":513,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/03\/how-not-to-fix-the-oregon-symphony\/","url_meta":{"origin":518,"position":0},"title":"how not to fix the Oregon Symphony","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Over the last two years, the coverage of the the Oregon Symphony in the local press has become more sporadic, and when it does happen, much more pessimistic, and maybe a little bit cynical. First, an outline of what constitutes the press in Portland, Oregon, for those of you who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":516,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/06\/oso-president-responds-to-crosscut-article\/","url_meta":{"origin":518,"position":1},"title":"OSO president responds to Crosscut article","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"[This was forwarded to me by OSO president Elaine Calder - a truncated version will be published at Crosscut.com.] Response to: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can Anybody fix the Oregon Symphony?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Stephen Marc Beaudoin Crosscut Seattle Friday, November 2nd, 2007 Of course it will take more than an endorsement from Thomas Lauderdale to fix\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2698,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/06\/15\/2698\/","url_meta":{"origin":518,"position":2},"title":"oregon symphony ‘crisis’","author":"Charles Noble","date":"June 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Classical music critic from the Oregonian, David Stabler, gives a short, not-so-sweet synopsis of the state of the Oregon Symphony at the end of the 2008-2009 season: The symphony in crisis","rel":"","context":"In "fundraising"","block_context":{"text":"fundraising","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/fundraising\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":511,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/02\/more-ink-on-the-oso\/","url_meta":{"origin":518,"position":3},"title":"more ink on the OSO","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Stephen Marc Beaudoin just wrote a piece for Crosscut which is entitled \"Can Anyone Fix the Oregon Symphony?\".\u00c2\u00a0 Squarely in his sights is the newly-formed collaboration with Pink Martini front man Thomas Lauderdale.\u00c2\u00a0 Clearly, Beaudoin does not know of Lauderdale's training as a classical pianist, for he seems to find\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":979,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/19\/crosscut-article-full-interview\/","url_meta":{"origin":518,"position":4},"title":"crosscut article: full interview","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"As you may know, I was recently profiled as part of a Crosscut article about Portland arts advocates. It was ably written by Portland music writer and musician Stephen Marc Beaudoin. It was an honor to be included, and I was happy with the article as it was published. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "bloggers"","block_context":{"text":"bloggers","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/bloggers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":523,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/07\/stablers-must-see-list\/","url_meta":{"origin":518,"position":5},"title":"stabler’s must-see list","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Oregonian classical music critic David Stabler has posted his list of 10 guest artists that he'd like to see at the Oregon Symphony.\u00c2\u00a0 It's a good list - I'd add Jonathan Biss, pianist; Tabea Zimmerman, violist (I know, I know...); Janine Jansen, violinist; and Daniel Barenboim, conductor\/pianist, among others...","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}