TAFTO 2008 Contribution: Charles T. Downey

Charles T. Downey has become a fixture of Washington D.C. based culture and music and rightly so as he’s plugged into just about every aspect of a major metropolitan area’s classical music scene. As moderator of ionarts.org, Charles is a major figure on the new media front but he also has a hand in traditional media as well. Add to that active work on the academic scene as a teacher of music and art history and work as a professional pianist, organist, and choral singer and you have the makings for one well-rounded cultural figurehead. Charles’ TAFTO contribution touches on a number of points that are near and dear to my cultural conscious and I’m certain you’ll enjoy what he has to say…

Half of my job as a teacher is simply to put young ears and eyes in contact with classical music and art. In my experience, if you can do that with a modicum of knowledge and enthusiasm about the subject and then just get out of the way, the aesthetic experience does the work of conversion in most cases. Although the background can be handled in a classroom or in a conversation with a friend, the real magic has to happen live, with the visual sparkle of paint on canvas or the crackle of musicians in unified attack in the concert hall.

Taking a Friend to the Orchestra is not much different, and anyone who loves classical music and wants to continue attending concerts by a local symphony orchestra needs to evangelize. As a reviewer, I attend concerts with lots of friends and family, but I do set aside some time to take people along who have never been to a concert. In fact, I have done this before in a more public way, inviting a non-music blogger for a "ride-along" review, and in both cases the only hard part was making it work with another person’s busy schedule. Allow yourself some time, choose a concert that is not too esoteric but — and this is important — of very high quality, and then just let the experience unfold.

It is surprising that people can live in a city like Washington, D.C., and never have visited the Kennedy Center or another concert venue. People are far more likely to have missed out on classical music than on museums or other cultural fare. One of my own editors, a cultured and intelligent person, went to the Kennedy Center for the first time when I took her to hear Yo-Yo Ma. That brings me to my first point of advice: if possible, choose a concert with a performer a novice may actually know. No one is likely to turn down the chance to hear Yo-Yo Ma or Joshua Bell, and chances are that one will be predisposed to enjoy the experience if it seems at least a little familiar.

The second point of advice is, as mentioned above, to choose something of very high quality. Nothing against minor symphonic ensembles or community orchestras, but if you have only one chance to convince a person that Italian food is worthwhile, you would not take him to a lesser restaurant. Stack the deck in your favor, and present your friend with a real delicacy. Last April, in honor of TAFTO 2007, I co-authored a review of the truly extraordinary Australian Chamber Orchestra with a sports writer. His comments about the experience provide the template of what to watch for.

First, take into consideration your friend’s busy schedule when you choose the time of your concert: we went on a Friday night, and he was exhausted. Similarly, I recently attended an opera with a friend whose work day had not really ended when he rushed to the theater to meet me on a Wednesday night. He spent the first intermission on a conference call. Little wonder that audiences are predominantly gray-haired: retirees have less hectic schedules.

Second, your friend does not need much specialized discussion of what she is about to hear. In fact, somewhere in the back of his mind may be a certain discomfort or fear of unfamiliar territory. At a recent National Symphony Orchestra concert, to which I took a relative neophyte, the main feature of the program was Mahler’s sixth symphony. Without giving a long lecture, I simply explained that the big table at one side of the orchestra was where a percussionist was going to wallop the surface with an enormous sledgehammer. She looked really surprised but did not ask any more questions: when we got to the hammer-blows, she looked like she was about to jump out of her skin with excitement.

If you point out one thing about the piece, your friend may want to know more and could ask you questions. Just watch for that glazed look in her eyes: that is when to stop talking. She should not be overwhelmed before the music starts. Afterward, find a place to take your friend for a celebratory drink of his choice. That is where you can share your impressions and find out what each other liked and did not like, and make plans for the next concert. Don’t expect a miracle, because you are unlikely to create a new subscriber in one night’s worth of music. You will have opened up a possibility in your friend’s mind, however, and hopefully at least dispelled some worries and misconceptions about what symphony orchestras do and how easy it is to enjoy them.

– Charles T. Downey