Do Orchestra Concerts make for good Dates?

In New York City, where a whopping one in three homes contains a single dweller, there are a lot of single people looking to meet, and presumably, to go out on dates. While it is not a place lacking in suitable date options, one thing remains consistent: in over a decade of attending orchestra concerts here, I’ve noticed that the number of young couples out for a night at the concert hall is startlingly low.

Indeed, it was with some trepidation that I considered an orchestra date in preparing my contribution for Take a Friend to the Orchestra month. One never wants to make a social faux pas, even in the name of journalistic inquiry. But I wanted to resolve a nagging question: do orchestras routinely undersell their worthiness as date venues? If “music is love in search of a word,” to quote the French novelist Collete, what can orchestras do to better position themselves for a romantic night on the town?

Certainly, the recording industry has recognized classical music’s sex appeal, with albums like “Classical Candlelight” and “99 Most Essential Romantic Masterpieces” dotting the iTunes classical chart. And relationship experts often tout concerts as surefire date options. In her book Dating for Dummies, Dr. Joy Brown clinically observes how “a concert lets you relate to each other while the music plays, or in the midst of a break.” In the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Dating author Judith Kuriansky offers this tidbit: “If you’ve ever been to the opera, symphony, a rock concert, or karaoke or piano bar, you know that music brings people together. Also, chemicals flow in the body that psychologically create a feeling of relaxation or excitation, making sure you are more open to falling in love.”

Fair enough. For the more bookish and reserved among us, a concert is an activity that lets someone else do the entertaining for two hours.

For the present experiment, my concert-going companion and I had been out only once before for drinks at an Upper West Side wine bar. I deemed it a modest success, enough to warrant a second date. Fortunately, I had an extra ticket to a New York Philharmonic concert featuring the violinist Joshua Bell and because she enjoyed classical music, it wasn’t a major risk on my part (a relationship expert might deduct points here for providing a better-looking, wealthier, and more talented guy for my date to gaze upon, but that’s for another column). Tonight, I had a pair of prime press seats: Row X, Seats 1 and 2. This ought to be impressive, I figured.

We met near the recently restored fountain at Lincoln Center Plaza. The unusually balmy, early spring evening was refreshing after a particularly punishing Northeast winter. Then we entered Avery Fisher Hall. A crush of stressed-out patrons pushed through the congested lobby like cattle to the ushers with ticket scanners. There, the scanners weren’t working properly and some ticket-holders were being sent back to the box office. There was also the obligatory security bag check jamming up the process (does anyone really think a terrorist is going to target the Philharmonic?). Then came the effort to find a Playbill, by which time it started to feel like the TSA screening at LaGuardia.

Once we settled into our seats, there were other issues any would-be Casanova would have to contend with. During the first piece, a woman to our left launched into an uncontrollable coughing fit, which led to the familiar sequence of events: the painfully slow unwrapping of the cellophane-covered hard candy, the inevitable glares and shushes from fellow patrons, and so forth. Surrounding us were people mostly our parents’ age – and many who were older. Some nodded off during the Brahms Fourth Symphony on the second half. Not exactly a way to inflame the passions.

My date, a Juilliard graduate in piano performance, sat through the entire two-hour program without any obvious signs of boredom and she later expressed how much she enjoyed Bell’s performance in particular. Granted, she had home court advantage. A few rows down and to our right, another date was underway, and the warning signs were much clearer. At several points the young couple, probably in their early 30s, seemed ill at ease, whether clapping in the “wrong” places or almost tripping down in the isle in their ill-fitted formal wear and uncomfortable shoes. While I knew nothing about what brought them here, it struck me that they were not fully enjoying themselves or feeling at ease.

If that is the case, I thought, would they be happier at a movie, a restaurant or perhaps a museum? After all, museums have adjusted their programming to the changing lifestyles and tastes of younger patrons, with later hours and special events to create casual, date-friendly environments. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta offers the occasional “Single Mingle,” with wine tasting and such innocuous activities as scavenger hunts and art-themed bingo. The Minneapolis Institute of Art puts on Romantic Third Thursdays. The series includes gimmicks such as speed-dating and mini-French lessons. Here in New York, several museums stay open into the evening at least one night a week and attract huge crowds.

So what steps could an orchestra possibly take to reach the culturally curious young couple who might otherwise choose a museum as a date venue? A few suggestions:

• Allow patrons to bring drinks to their seats. If moviegoers can eat popcorn and soda, why not let a couple enjoy a glass of merlot during a performance.
• To that point, make the concession areas in the lobbies more user-friendly. Many concession stands are drab, utilitarian affairs, geared to high volume turnover rather than fostering a fun and relaxed social environment. Consider some themed cocktails that match the program. Turn down the lighting and set up a few strategically placed low-slung sofas for couples to hang out on.
• On stage, ditch the tuxedos and formal gowns. Yes, these Victorian holdovers might inspire images of steamy Edith Wharton novels among a few imaginative concert-goers. But to many young couples, tuxes connote stuffiness while doing little to enhance the music itself.
• Beef up ancillary activities. Keep the lobby open afterwards and offer drink specials and hors d’oeuvres. Invite some orchestra members out to mingle with the crowd. Hire a DJ to spin remixes of orchestral pieces from the program before and after the formal concert.

A few orchestras have taken tentative steps in this latter direction including the Toronto Symphony with its after-party events and the Detroit Symphony with its sadly discontinued “8 Days in June” festival. But it requires orchestras at all levels to think much more creatively about the kind of experience they provide patrons, which goes far beyond repertoire, soloists, and whether or not there’s convenient parking nearby.

As for how my date experience went? A gentleman doesn’t “kiss and tell” but something tells me something more interactive would be the next step in a post-orchestra relationship. Bowling anyone?

Just press play to become one of Ms. M’s concert crowd elite…

Rebecca Winzenried’s well-written article, “Into Thin Air,” in the January/February issue of “Symphony” was a discussion about a groundbreaking study called the Audience Growth Initiative. It caught my eye, not because its results were at all revolutionary, but because they were so predictable.

Anyone with a pulse on modern society knows that, while getting people in the door of a symphony concert hall is half the battle, once they are there, people expect certain things: Convenient parking, plenty of restrooms, easy-to-purchase refreshments at intermission, comfortable seats and, in cities such as Cincinnati, where the hall is in a touchy neighborhood, a feeling of safety. All of these things will keep them coming back.

But in the 18 years I have been covering the arts in our city, I have found the orchestra to be behind the rest of the entertainment industry when it comes to considering the extra-musical needs of its audience. Ironically, it owns an outdoor venue, Riverbend Music Center, where it presents a contemporary music series, which is experiencing record ticket sales. From the outset, patron amenities and continuous upgrading of the grounds (they recently added a second smaller stage) have been an important part of the “vision” that retains the ticket-buying public. That attitude has lagged behind in the orchestra’s home, and ongoing discussions to update the hall have been complicated by its ownership, the other tenants, and now, the economic slump.

Orchestras still have not fully realized their potential of being a destination, and of setting the social tone for a city. People attend the symphony for different reasons, where it is to be enlightened or entertained. I believe that they do want to feel as if they are attending an event, and many really do want to see and be seen. For those who may feel ambivalent about hearing an all-Bartok concert in their subscription series, it may be the welcoming atmosphere that keeps them interested and willing to subscribe again next season.

I’m always impressed when I visit European concert halls, as I did last April while covering the Cincinnati Symphony’s tour of 12 cities in five countries. Patrons throng the lobbies and bars, eating little sandwiches and desserts and downing beer and champagne. Some theaters, such as Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, have a café where you can order your plate before the concert and dine comfortably at intermission. Americans today are working longer hours than ever before and live farther away, often an hour or more, from the city centers, which are still home to many of America’s distinguished old concert halls. Orchestras such as the Cincinnati Symphony have tried to accommodate people coming right from work by offering a series that includes a free buffet dinner. It’s wildly popular, and I’ve seen everyone eating the free buffet from wealthy donors to federal judges. As a concertgoer once told me, “We need sustenance!”

Over the years, I have taken myriad friends and relatives to the symphony. When I bought a subscription for my daughter and son-in-law, I heard one complaint from the latter, who is 6’4″ – the seats were too cramped. They have not been back. Legroom matters.

When it comes to inviting friends to the symphony, there is also the dilemma of the music education barrier. I’m not talking about teaching children in schools, although that is a dire problem for orchestras. But even high-level executives, such as my friends who oversee multi-million dollar projects at G.E. and Procter & Gamble, as well as the physicians who save lives at Cincinnati’s world-renowned medical center, have a very real fear that they are not knowledgeable enough to attend the symphony.

For many years, I annually brought my dinner club of about 35 people to the New Year’s Eve pops concert. Without fail, “Bill” would ask me later, “Well, did I enjoy the concert?” as if he could not form his own opinion. But something must have clicked, for recently I ran into Bill at a symphony concert, clutching a CD by Paavo Järvi and the CSO in one hand, chocolates in the other, and exclaiming to me, “Boy, that Paavo is really great!”

That leads me to another area where orchestras need to improve: Personal contact. When I moved to Cincinnati from San Francisco as a newlywed, one of the first calls I received was from a volunteer member of the CSO Women’s Committee, inviting us to try a subscription. How she got our name, I’ll never know. She knew we had little money, suggesting, “I can give you two great seats in the gallery.”

In those days, 35 years ago, the orchestra had a committee of 1,300 women who poured tea, organized themselves in ticket-selling precincts, conducted marketing campaigns, went door-to-door and made calls. The orchestra’s home, an immense 3,400 seats, was usually full. Of course, times have changed, more women work, and the idea of a “women’s committee” is an anachronism. But we had a name, a face and a phone number to call. It was like having your own personal shopper. Someone was looking out for you. When the orchestra moved to telemarketers in the early 90s, one important volunteer told me, “We were fired.” Attendance began its downward slide, no doubt for a number of reasons. We had those seats for 30 years.

Definitely, when it comes to inviting people to try the symphony, the personal touch matters. Recently, my husband mentioned to a young physician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital that Sir Roger Norrington would be in town conducting an all-Mozart concert, including the Horn Concerto No. 4 with the orchestra’s principal horn, Elizabeth Freimuth, as soloist. He knew that Dr. Sharp had played the French horn as a student. Thrilled to find out about the concert, she immediately invited a friend to go with her. Dr. Sharp was impressed by the performance. Later, she e-mailed me her impressions:

“The music was wonderful. I especially enjoyed the Mozart horn concerto, since I played the French horn when I was younger.”

“I’ve attended symphony concerts at Music Hall before, so I already know my way around. The symphony website has clear directions to Music Hall, so getting there and parking was no problem. I also bought my tickets on-line and had them held at the ‘will call’ box until the concert, which was very convenient. I will definitely attend the symphony again in the future.”

Clearly, the orchestra is doing everything right – except getting the word out. Despite her Internet expertise, Dr. Sharp would never have heard about the concert had she not learned about it from a colleague at work. She told me she didn’t know about it, despite prominent advertising in the newspaper.

Ah, newspapers. In ten years, will 20- and 30-somethings even remember what they were? With the print press imploding before our very eyes, I worry about all of the arts organizations that I cover. How will they advertise their product at a time of dwindling space for arts coverage? With our own reduced staff, which has endured rounds of buyouts, layoffs and now, furloughs, we are already making choices between printing a preview story or reviewing the event – rarely both. My own time is now divided between classical music, visual art, jazz and pop, and anything else that lands on my desk. I also take my turn working the metro shift, manning the police scanner, on Saturdays. And of course, I have a blog.

The arts will need a new grassroots program, like the CSO Women’s Committee. Perhaps in the future, the new “personal touch” will mean Twitter and Facebook. Already, I see organizations using these tools, a smart idea, I think. But will that reach everyone? I do not know.

My most rewarding experience taking someone to a concert happened a few months ago. I took a special little girl to her first concert, a “Lollipop Concert,” in Music Hall. Katie, 2 ½ was enthralled, not only by the music on a “bug” theme, but also by the student ballet dancers who participated with the symphony. She stood by her chair and imitated them. So, I thought that taking her to “The Nutcracker” the next month would thrill her even more. But when the curtain rose, she loudly announced, “I can’t see the orchestra.” She wasn’t content until later, when we leaned over the pit and she could see the musicians. I think I have planted a seed in the next generation of concertgoers.

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.

When Drew McManus asked me to participate in the 2007 Take a Friend to the Orchestra project, I interpreted the M.O. rather literally: so I endeavored to take a friend to the orchestra. This was actually something of a challenge since the majority of my friends are deeply involved with music–either as composers, performers, journalists, or are in some other way related to the biz–and therefore attending a concert wouldn’t be that big of a deal for most of them. But then there was Joseph Ornstein. Joe is one of my closest friends and his thoughts about virtually all subjects, including music, matter a great deal to me. And no surprise, he is also a musician. (I’ve regularly collaborated with him for well over a decade playing old timey/bluegrass-type music.) And he’s also a hardcore music fan: in addition to being an accomplished mandolinist with an impressive collection of musical instruments, he is an avid listener to recorded music from a wide variety of genres including some classical music from time to time.

Joe actually perfectly fits the demographic of an occasional classical music concert attendee. In his late 50s, Joe was exposed to classical music at an early age. Not only is he a music lover, he’s also an avid reader and is culturally astute, plus he lives in Manhattan’s Upper West Side only a short walk away from Lincoln Center. But Joe is an only occasional partaker of live music events and the orchestra is really not a part of his life. He recently heard a concert of a friend at a jazz/cabaret club and doesn’t remember exactly the last time he went to hear an orchestra. He thinks he attended performances by the New York Philharmonic many years ago, but the programs didn’t stand out in his memory.

The more I thought about Joe’s simultaneous passion for music and distance from it as a live experience (other than when he was performing), the more his behavior seemed to be a disconnect, and TAFTO seemed the perfect opportunity to probe further into this. Admittedly, a major contributing factor to Joe’s meager concert attendance record in all the years I’ve known him has been that for over 15 years he has worked a late-night shift and therefore most of concerts he’s been missing have occurred when he was asleep. He has recently retired so this is no longer a problem, so this event was also something of a re-entry for him into the life of someone with a normal schedule. But all of these things are ultimately circumstantial details, a slight plot twist.

Since the reason that I usually attend live music is to hear new music, I knew that I had to take Joe to a contemporary music program. So, since this project was about the orchestra, it was inevitable that I’d bring Joe to hear the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), a New York-based group that exclusively plays the music of contemporary American composers. And luck was with me. On March 26th, the ACO was celebrating its 30th anniversary with a concert in its Orchestra Underground series at Carnegie’s still relatively new Zankel Hall. So I arranged to get three tickets for Joe, myself, and my perennial concert companion, my wife Trudy Chan, an active musician and a promotion associate at the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes. The plan was to attend the concert and grab a bite to eat afterwards, a fun New York night on the town.

The program for March 26th sounded particularly exciting–it included a new concerto by and featuring jazz maverick Vijay Iyer as well as a work for orchestra with electric guitar and drumset by Steve Mackey. Plus, in addition to performances by the orchestra, the concert would also feature solos by classical guitarist Andrew McKenna Lee and Chinese pipa virtuosa Min Xiao-Fen. How could mandolin-playing Joe say no? As it turned out, he was really excited about it and took the night off from his job so he could be completely focused without worrying about having to get to work. And in the days leading up to March 26th, I’d more than done my homework, too. I had actually hosted a radio program about this concert for New York’s public radio station, WNYC-FM, in which I talked with Iyer, Mackey and the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, one of the ACO’s founders, who was returning to its podium for the first time in several years for this special event.

Joe had the ultimate inside track. In fact, after the concert, Joe even came along with Trudy and me to the post-concert reception and got to shake hands with Vijay, Steve and Dennis. Arguably the only people who were more connected to this experience than he was were the composers, the ACO staff and board, and the musicians who were playing on stage that night. Joe had a fabulous time. We spent over 90 minutes talking about it over dinner at a nearby pub following the reception and he continued to email me and leave answering machine messages with even further thoughts about the evening. Joe’s reaction was fascinating and offers some valuable insights that market researchers are unlikely to uncover. Here are a few choice highlights…

According to Joe, “The idea of going to sit in a place that’s basically not comfortable is tough. Sitting down for that long is not riveting. And there’s no room. You don’t know what to do with your legs and there’s the whole armrest thing. And coughing really doesn’t thrill me; somebody had a really big one. There is a thing about a cough being an expression of tension. If you’re uncomfortable you might be more tense and a cough can result from it. Mercifully there were no cellphones going off.” When I pointed out to him that the experience of going to the movies is similar, he concurred and pointed out that he also doesn’t go to movies. In the era of NetFlix, there are many folks who never go to the movies. I myself have not gone to a movie theatre in more than five years.

Yet despite the discomfort. Joe acknowledged that there are important distinctions between live and prerecorded music. “We can all agree that live music is better than canned music. There isn’t a recorded medium in the world that sounds like real. Recordings can sound great but they don’t sound live. Maybe it’s psychological; I don’t know. Seeing the musicians makes the whole process a human process rather than an engineering process. All other things being equal, comfort level etc., live music is better. One of the great things about hearing a live orchestra is you get these sounds that really have space as opposed to just direction.”

Luckily I chose a contemporary music program; Joe was incredulous that people regularly attended programs of the standard repertoire. He also admitted to being put off by what he perceived as a snob factor in such classical music programs: “This was atypical of what I think of as an orchestra and it’s nice to know that there are orchestras doing this. I’m not really likely to go see a Beethoven concert; I’d go the library and get a CD. If you’ve heard Beethoven a hundred times, you’ve heard it a hundred thousand times. Not the first time. But if you’ve heard it a hundred times, the next hundred times are going to be pretty much identical. People who go to the three-B concerts are snobs generally speaking. And if they aren’t, I don’t know what the hell they’re doing there. I really enjoy reworkings of the old masters on different instruments, like the Koto ensemble that recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. That’s a legitimate excuse for doing the same old. But there are people who will not even listen to Bernstein conduct Beethoven, though they’d put his Mahler up against the guy with five letters and one of them’s a Z. With the three Bs there’s a built in snob quality. You go to the Philharmonic on a Thursday night and you’re going to see it.”

Yet at the same time, Joe had no problem with the formality of classical music presentation, both for the musicians on stage: “It’s better than everybody wearing different clothes. It’s OK when the soloist is wearing something different, but generally if you’re an ensemble you ought to wear a uniform. You have to treat your audience with respect.” And the audience? “I still like the opportunity to put a tie on. One of the positive things about the snobbiness of going to a concert is that you get to put a tie on.” (Ironically, Joe wasn’t wearing a tie this time around.)

What’s a fair price for this experience?

“Thirty-five bucks, even fifty, sounds reasonable. You’re getting a lot of good music. And if there’s a clinker, you can always ride it out. There’s no reason why you should enjoy every single piece.”

What else worked for him?

“It said in the program approximately how long everything would run; I loved that. OK, this is twenty-three minutes; I’m in.”

Might concerts be too long?

“Generally I was able to stay focused. It might be nice to be able to grab just an hour of something real and then go off and have a beer. When there are so many pieces, it’s a lot to absorb.”

So, did I convert someone buying an orchestra subscription series? Not quite: “I like to think that I would do it again; I’ve just been out of the habit for so long. It terms of the whole thing, if I had someone to go with, it wouldn’t be so hard. If you can’t share it with someone, it’s just not really as much fun. Almost everything that’s fun is more fun with someone else. I actually do remember going to some subscription concerts of the New York Philharmonic during the Boulez days. It was mostly the old stuff, but there was some new stuff because he was Boulez and he could do it. I recall him doing one of his own pieces for nine instruments. I loved this piece; I thought it was really swell. But he got booed. The Thursday crowd didn’t want to hear anything that didn’t have a tune, which was very important to me to learn in my own growing up musically. Just because they didn’t like it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to. Like just because all my friends think that Barry Manilow is bogus doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy the hell out of him, to pick an anti-Boulez. People love Kenny G. and they’re entitled to. It’s perfectly valid. If Mantovani moves you (and I don’t know how he could), but if it puts you in a frame of mind… If somebody moves you, that’s what it’s all about. I don’t care.”

In fact, Andrew does a wonderful job at pulling the veil of elitism away and showing you just how easy it is to find ways for you to make classical music important in your life and then share it with others – all under your own terms. ~ Drew McManus

“So, you dare to think you might possibly be qualified to even consider buying a ticket for classical music concert? Really? But you don’t even have perfect pitch! And you surely don’t know the Kochel numbers of Mozart’s big works. Answer me this: what instruments use a double reed or when should you applaud in a concert? No, why don’t you just reconsider now and save yourself the embarrassment.”

If even a smidgen of the preceding, supercilious-toned remarks passed through your mind the last time you jumped in the car or subway to head down to your local symphony hall, I apologize. Not that I had anything to do with it. Well, maybe, something I wrote over the years may have seemed arcane, but I am one of a growing number of critics who steadfastly feel that the stuffy atmosphere at classical concerts needs to change. Actually, most orchestras, operas and chamber presenters already becoming more relaxed and not nearly as elitist as they used to be, although there are occasional curmudgeons.

I am here to tell you classical music need not be stuffy and elitist. Its concerts are not only often spiritually moving, they are fun. They may never be cool — that’s more of a term of fashion and pop culture — but there are many cool things to be experienced within them. The greatest is, of course, the music. So, here is my advice to anyone going to their first classical concert, or first since they were a kid.

One, just be yourself. Don’t worry about how to dress or behave, just do your best to be polite and to learn from watching others what is acceptable behavior. Use common sense. Why should going to a concert for the first time be any different than your first visit to any social gathering? If you attend a church of a different faith or a local school board meeting, wouldn’t you be polite and take your cues from others until you got the lay of the land? Do the same at a concert hall.

Two, don’t fear — or mock — what you don’t understand. Either enjoy the music you hear on a purely sonic level and or take some time to get to know it. I think many of the posts on the Take Your Friend to the Orchestra thread mention becoming familiar with the music before you go. It’s a great idea, if you want to. But if you don’t want to, that’s okay. You don’t have to do anything in advance to enjoy a classical concert, but don’t complain that you don’t understand something if you haven’t taken the time to do so!

I can’t stand when someone thinks classical music is elitist simply because it asks you to reach out and learn about it. Everything does! You couldn’t show up at a pop concert cold and understand the meaning, let alone the lyrics, behind every song. If you stopped into a hockey arena for the first time, you wouldn’t find the rules passed out in a handout. You would have to ask questions and do a little research. Classical music is no different. So, if you want, buy a CD or download the music you are going to hear, Google it or — gasp — head to the library to read up on the composer. You will vastly improve your enjoyment of it.

Three, have an opinion about what you hear! I don’t care if you never played an instrument and only think you know “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.” If you have a brain, you have an opinion; if you attended a concert, you are able to say what your feelings were. It may be that another patron or (hopefully) the critic has a more informed opinion, but that doesn’t make yours wrong. The more you think critically about what you hear the more you will be engaged by it.

And don’t end with saying that you hated it or you loved it. Express to your date or guest the shades in between or why you felt that way. This is the true way to becoming a fan of classical music — not swallowing the party lines about which composers are great. Plus, if you went to a concert of Mozart and decided you really just can’t get into him, it won’t sour you on all classical music, a scenario that happens far too often for first-timers. There’s plenty of music out there. In fact, that’s the beauty of classical music. Far from being only the mythical “canon” of a few pieces, actually a wild variety of music has been written and continues to be programmed everywhere.

So, relax a little, don’t worry, but get to know classical music like you would anything else before and during your first concert.

Based in Chicago, he consumes a regular well balanced diet of classical music events and has something unique to say about them at his Time Out Chicago column. If that weren’t enough, Marc also maintains a blog aptly named Deceptively Simple which tunes a finely tuned ear to the Chicago arts scene. ~ Drew McManus

A recent cartoon in The New Yorker showed two men wearing business suits, one standing up, the other seated behind a desk. “Christianity isn’t the only thing that needs evangelists. So does big oil,” the seated one says. While none of the Take a Friend to the Orchestra contributors thinks of themselves as lobbyists for classical music, we are, in a way. But we have the benefit of advocating for an art form whose continuity we care about, and any money we happen to pull down from our employers is almost incidental. We also tend not to be subpoenaed.

As part of my evangelism–the good-natured, non-confrontational kind–I’m here to help you help a friend get the most enjoyment from their first trip to the symphony. As with all first experiences, the first time tends to be a disaster. But because you know so much about your local orchestra and classical music, the chances for success are much higher.

Let’s start with that local orchestra. You’ve heard them play everything from Beethoven to Bach transcriptions to Stravinsky to works by living composers. You know the players’ strengths and know which composers’ music they play as if they enjoy it, and which composers’ they don’t. If you’ve never heard them really lay a Shostakovich climax on the line, then the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony they have coming up probably won’t be the best introduction to the concert-going experience.

But if the Mozart symphonies and piano concertos you’ve heard them play were filled with whip-smart phrasing from each section, that’s the ticket you want to buy. Hearing your orchestra’s tight-knit strings, your concert companion will likely enjoy themselves and the music much more than when that same string section just can’t give Shostakovich the heft he needs.

Since you’ve been able to hear each of these musicians over the years, you know their strengths and weaknesses almost as well as they do. Use that knowledge to help your friend. If your orchestra’s principal flutist is a stunner, then that concert with Debussy’s La Mer will probably impress your friend. And if the brass likes to trample over every other section, then the Mahler First Symphony concert could be an eye-opening evening.

The other knowledge you have is of the orchestral repertoire itself. What got you interested in it all those years ago? I look for works for first-timers that are impolite and have big climaxes that can’t possibly be missed. Prokofiev usually fits the bill.

I took a circuitous path through Mahler, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Boulez and Shostakovich to become a seasoned orchestra fan. It wasn’t through Haydn and Mozart. They just sounded too predictable, mainly because I didn’t know how to hear their surprises. Many of today’s listeners, reared on rock, jazz, Philip Glass and African drumming also need some time to find the surprise in Salzburg’s favorite son. Find whatever first interested you, and if you are still passionate about it, you’ll be able to communicate it that much more easily to your friend. You may have lots of fascinating stories of playing Mozart’s symphonies in college; use them to your advantage.

If you’ve followed these steps so far, you’ve thought about which sections of your orchestra are the strongest and which composers you would like to use to introduce your friend to the orchestra. Now you get to introduce your friend to the music prior to the concert.

Two or three weeks before, give your friend a CD of the big work on the program. Tell them just to put it on in the background while they unload groceries or wash the dishes or help with their children’s homework. If they don’t have kids they’re helping in the evening, suggest that they play the disc and read a magazine instead of watching TV. Make it clear you don’t expect them to stare at the walls as they listen.

There’s no need to give them a history lecture on how Beethoven straddles historical styles or how Mahler’s Sixth Symphony is the only one of his symphonies in which he repeats the exposition. Critical listening can come later.

If they listen to the CD three or four times, they will absorb all the big melodies and loud parts by the time the concert rolls around. During the concert, those moments will serve as tent-posts they can string the rest of the work on as it progresses. The quiet parts they missed when the CD was playing in the background? Your friend will be astonished at what they missed and by what they had no idea to expect.

Treat going to the concert like going to a baseball game. Get there early, and instead of watching batting practice, watch the musicians warm up. By telling stories about these players, you’ll bring them into your friend’s orbit. Tell them about the amazing duets you heard the oboist and flutist play in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony last year. Tell them about how loudly you heard that percussionist hit the bass drum in Verdi’s Requiem. That phrase the principal horn-player keeps repeating? That’s in the big piece on the second half, and your friend will probably appreciate knowing that these players are human, and like–need!–to practice up to the absolute last minute.

While you can watch the pre-concert warm-ups like a baseball game, you probably shouldn’t suggest your friend wear what they would to the stadium. I wear jeans because they’re comfortable and no one seems to mind. But if your friend feels like getting a little more dressed up, let them. If they want to throw on jeans and t-shirt, that’s cool, too, but you should drop a small hint that maybe they should spiff up the ensemble with nice shoes.

Then again, a friend of mine who regularly goes to the Chicago Symphony last showed up in a long-sleeved shirt that looked suspiciously close to long underwear underneath a polo shirt and a vintage tie. No one batted an eye.

Newcomers often complain that an orchestra looks like a passionless bunch of robots, so suggest that your friend watch a single musician for a few minutes at a time. Look closely and you’ll see the clarinetists swooping their instruments along with a melody, a back row violinist smiling (it does happen), and the brass players shuffling their feet to congratulate a trombonist’s well-played solo. By watching an individual for minutes at a time, these subtleties will become much more apparent. (I recommend finding the most attractive woman to look at, but your friend can adjust to their preference.)

Go have a drink after the concert. If your friend is the type that prefers a swanky place, go there, or if a dive bar is more their speed, head there. Your goal isn’t to turn them into old-money concertgoers, but to help them appreciate the orchestra on their own terms, so let their comfort zone work in your favor.

Ask how the concert fit with their expectations. Find out how the performance sounded to them after they’d been listening to a recording. Did it sound familiar or like an entirely new version? Ask them which solos they remember. Did they like hearing one musician or section better than another?

If they were bored, what caused that feeling? Was it the music, the performers, the atmosphere, or something else? If it was a dreary performance, then your friend’s boredom is justified. But if it wasn’t, find out what they heard that you didn’t. Tell them where the excitement you heard started from, whether it was the brass or how the conductor drove the players to the end of the movement. If your friend was nodding off in the slow parts, explain how it’s the way the melodies get passed from section to section that keep those languorous passages interesting.

If it was the atmosphere that they found stultifying and condescending, insist that they ignore it. Every music scene has its annoying members of its crowd, and those who insist that everyone treat the concert hall as a temple are classical music’s.

These few tools should give you a head start on inviting a friend along, and just might help them enjoy their first time even more. As we all know, the more you like something, the more likely it is that you will do it again.

Alex Ross’ contribution stokes that fire again while simultaneously confirming why he’s one of the best cultural writers today. Having conducted his own private TAFTO program for some time now, his insight is subtle yet profound. Alex allows you genuinely experience what it’s like to make classical music yours, on your own terms, and without the stereotypical pretense or pomp.

And after all, that’s really what TAFTO is all about; empowering people to feel that classical music can be whatever they want it to be on their own terms. Classical music isn’t some “absolute greatest of art forms” with an obstinate sense of entitlement; it’s what each one of us wants it to be and how each person experiences the music is different from one seat to the next, one performance after another.

Take the time to read Alex’s contribution a few times, send it to your friends, and let it roll over your mind; then go take a friend to a concert this weekend. ~ Drew McManus

I was reading Evan Eisenberg’s book The Recording Angel when I came across the following sentences: “Most concert music written before the present century strikes the casual listener as a little too noble, too pure. As Nina put it, ‘I don’t want to be ennobled.’ Her urban nervousness won’t be Platonized away, and only sometimes submits to the fine alembic of a Beethoven sonata. The raw materials are too coarse, the premises too ugly. Most of the time punk rock works better, even for a woman who grew up playing Chopin on a blond piano.”

I also recently came across an article that appeared in the New York Times on May 26, 1939. It was on page A1 above the fold, next to stories about Republican attacks on the New Deal. Headline: “Paderewski Collapses at Garden as 15,000 Gather for Concert.” Some representative passages: “Paderewski … collapsed from what was officially announced as a ‘slight heart attack’ last night in a dressing room in the Madison Square Garden a few minutes before he was scheduled to give the twenty-first concert of his present American tour …. Dr. Dunham sped Mr. Paderewski to his private Pullman car, the Henry Stanley, berthed on Track 31 in Grand Central Terminal … While Mr. Paderewski was being taken to his private railroad car, the huge Madison Square Garden audience, in which were many notables in the musical world, was filing out of the building in stunned silence. When it was announced over the Garden’s loudspeakers that the concert would have to be canceled …many burst into tears. Some were still weeping as they left the auditorium.” What a huge gulf separates that spectacle from the modern classical concert. Only at pop-music events do you see audiences weeping en masse. In general, we in classical music are too busy being “ennobled” to engage in such emotional exhibitionism.

As a critic, I often receive two tickets to performances, so I often take friends along with me. Few of them grew up with classical music, but they always arrive full of curiosity. I usually get the sense that some aspect or another of the experience intrigues them. But I also get the sense that the concert fails to engage them on a fundamental level. In very few cases have I seen friends acquire a full-blown love for classical music. It’s simply not something that fires their imagination. And these are friends who see complex art-house films, who pick up the latest Ian McEwan novel or read Trollope for fun, who are
generally bright or even brilliant people. Based on this small, anecdotal sample, I’m guessing that the task of finding new audiences for classical music in America is going to be immensely tough, and that it’s going to require bold strokes of a sort that we haven’t seen yet from even the most adventurous ensembles.

In an article written for the New Yorker last year, I tackled some of these bigger questions about where
classical music fits in modern American culture, and in the last section of the piece I tried a thought experiment, shaking off my identity as a critic who’d grown up with classical music. Instead, I reimagined the concert experience from the standpoint of those smart friends of mine who go to concerts with me. At the risk of being lazy, I’d like to repeat those paragraphs here, because they sum up
everything I know about “taking a friend to the orchestra”:

I’m imagining myself on the other side as a thirty-six-year-old pop fan who wants to try something different. On a lark, I buy a record of Otto Klemperer conducting the “Eroica,” picking this one because Klemperer is the father of Colonel Klink, on “Hogan’s Heroes.” I hear two impressive loud chords, then something that the liner notes allege is a “truly heroic” theme. It sounds kind of feeble, lopsided, waltz-like. My mind drifts. A few days later, I try again. This time, I hear some attractive adolescent grandeur, barbaric yawps here and there. The rest is mechanical, remote. But each time I go back I map out a little more of the imaginary world. I invent stories for each thing as it happens. Big chords, hero standing backstage, a troubling thought, hero orating over loudspeakers, some ideas for songs that don’t catch on, a man or woman pleading, hero shouts back, tension, anger, conspiracies assassination attempt? The nervous splendor of it all gets under my skin. I go to a bookstore and look at the classical shelf, which seems to have more books for Idiots and Dummies than any other section. I read Bernstein’s essay in “The Infinite Variety of Music,” coordinate some of the examples with the music, read fun stories of the composer screaming about Napoleon, and go back and listen again. Sometime after the tenth listen, the music becomes my own; I know what’s around almost every corner and I exult in knowing. It’s as if I could predict the news.

I am now enough of a fan that I buy a twenty-five-dollar ticket to hear a famous orchestra play the “Eroica” live. It is not a very heroic experience. I feel dispirited from the moment I walk in the hall. My
black jeans draw disapproving glances from men who seem to be modeling the Johnny Carson collection. I look around dubiously at the twenty shades of beige in which the hall is decorated. The music starts, but I find it hard to think of Beethoven’s detestation of all tyranny over the human mind when the man next to me is a dead ringer for my dentist. The assassination sequence in the first movement is less exciting when the musicians have no emotion on their faces. I cough; a thin man, reading a dog-eared score, glares at me. When the movement is about a minute from ending, an ancient woman creeps slowly up the aisle, a look of enormous dissatisfaction on her face, followed at a few paces by a blank-faced husband. Finally, three grand chords to finish, which the composer obviously intended to set off a roar of applause. I start to clap, but the man with the score glares again. One does not applaud in the midst of greatly great music, even if the composer wants one to! Coughing, squirming, whispering, the crowd visibly suppresses its urge to express pleasure. It’s like mass anal retention. The slow tread of the Funeral March, or Marcia funebre, as everyone insists on calling it, begins. I start to feel that my newfound respect for the music is dragging along behind the hearse.

But I stay with it. For the duration of the Marcia, I try to disregard the audience and concentrate on the music. It strikes me that what I’m hearing is an entirely natural phenomenon, nothing more than the vibrations of creaky old instruments reverberating around a boxlike hall. Each scrape of a bow translates into a strand of sound; what I see is what I hear. So when the cellos and basses make the floor tremble with their big deep note in the middle of the march (what Bernstein calls the “wham!”) the force of the moment is purely physical. Amplifiers are for sissies, I’m starting to think. The orchestra isn’t playing with the same cowed intensity as Klemperer’s heroes, but the tone is warmer and deeper and rounder than on the CD. I make my peace with the stiffness of the scene by thinking of it as a
cool frame for a hot event. Perhaps this is how it has to be: Beethoven needs a passive audience as a foil. To my left, a sleeping dentist; to my right, an angry aesthete; and, in front of me, the funeral march
that rises to a fugal fury, and breaks down into softly sobbing memories of themes, and then gives way to an entirely new mood hard-driving, laughing, lurching, a little drunk.

Two centuries ago, Beethoven bent over the manuscript of the “Eroica” and struck out Napoleon’s name. It is often said that he made himself the protagonist of the work instead. Indeed, he engendered an archetype the rebel artist hero that modern artists are still recycling. I wonder, though, if Beethoven’s gesture meant what people think it did. Perhaps he was freeing his music from a too specific interpretation, from his own preoccupations. He was setting his symphony adrift, as a message in a bottle. He could hardly have imagined it traveling two hundred years, through the dark heart of the
twentieth century and into the pulverizing electronic age. But he knew it would go far, and he did not weigh it down. There was now a torn, blank space on the title page. The symphony became a fragmentary, unfinished thing, and unfinished it remains. It becomes whole again only in the mind and soul of someone listening for the first time, and listening again. The hero is you.

- Alex Ross

Some years ago, I’d defected from classical music to pop, and I was working as senior music editor of Entertainment Weekly.
I had a girlfriend with no classical music background, a smart woman in
her late thirties, a good example of the kind of person orchestras now
want to attract. Sometimes she’d suggest we go to a classical concert,
but I wasn’t interested. At least for a while, I’d put classical music
behind me.

One night we were walking past Carnegie Hall, just as a concert was
getting out. Well-scrubbed, comfortable people in their fifties and
sixties surrounded us. “Who are these people?” asked Joanna, in utter disbelief. And she never wanted to go to a classical concert again.

Now, somebody might say she was being shallow. Who cares what kind
of people go to a concert? Isn’t the music what matters? But I might
mildly say that other arts don’t have this problem. Joanna was
perfectly happy going to a museum, or going to the theater. There she
found people she could identify with.

And who among us goes to events where nobody is like us? I don’t
think that’s common at all. I’ve been the only white person at a Luther
Vandross show, the oldest person (by miles) at countless heavy metal
concerts, the only person at a Neil Diamond show who wasn’t a fan, the
oldest person at hiphop shows in Los Angeles where gangs of Crips ran
wild, the only non-Goth at a Fields of the Nephilim club date (except
for a geek in a plaid shirt, from the band’s record label).

I did these things because I was a rock critic and it was my job.
But it’s never quite comfortable. Don’t throw stones at Joanna until
you’ve done what she didn’t want to. If we imagine the look and feel of
an orchestra concert doesn’t matter to put this in a wider perspective
then we’re trying to pretend that classical music has some special
status in the world, and is somehow exempt from the social currents
that swirl through everything else in our lives. (This, actually, seems
to be the thesis of the only book I know on this subject, Julian
Johnson’s Who Needs Classical Music? But that’s another story.)

The irony, of course, is that to the extent that ideas like this are
alive in the classical music world, classical music will attract people
who believe them. And then others will look at who’s at an orchestra
concert, recognize that this is a foreign country, and say what Joanna
said.

But I digress. What I really want to ask is this: Why should anyone go to an orchestra concert? What’s there to attract them? Why should we assume they’d get anything from it?

The first problem might be this. How well does any orchestra play?
I’ve been lucky this year, because most of the orchestra concerts I’ve
heard have been in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, where the orchestras play
really well, in Pittsburgh with a lot of warmth, and in Cleveland with
a cool explosion of fire. (I also heard one performance by the St. Paul
Chamber Orchestra, which was joyful.) But many concerts are
indifferent. We all know this. If I were taking a friend to something,
of course I’d pick the event carefully. In New York, maybe I’d choose
the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. But I blanch a little at the thought of
people going off to orchestra concerts just anywhere. The odds, I fear,
is that what they’ll hear will just be routine.

And what’s the point of the event? A year or so ago I went to a St.
Luke’s concert, all Haydn and Mozart. Just stellar playing, all
precision, joy, and grace, but what’s with all the 18th century music?
To us it seems natural, but to a smart, educated, experienced outsider,
it might seem blank. What’s the perspective on the 18th century? What’s
being communicated? A museum wouldn’t mount a show, and a theater
wouldn’t produce a play, without having some point of view, but
orchestras mostly just go through the music. Thus, to a smart person
who isn’t already seduced by the music, they’re mostly going to seem
unintelligent, at least when compared to other arts (and to popular
culture, but that, too, is another story).

Of course, the orchestra really might have a point of view. But how
often is that communicated? In Cleveland, Franz Welser-M�st is going to
conduct the Beethoven Missa Solemnis. He’s loved that piece
ever since he was a teenager, relates to it strongly in part because
he’s an Austrian Catholic, and has vivid ideas about what every moment
of it means. The Cleveland Orchestra asked me to write a program note
for the concert, which would convey all that. So people who come or at
least people who read the program note will know what Franz is trying
to do.

But how often does that happen? How often do people who come to an
orchestra concert know what the musicians are trying to accomplish?
Almost never, I’d submit. Recently, as part of a new project, I talked
extensively to people from the audience of a major orchestra I’d never
worked with before. What came out was stunning. Here were people who’d
been going to serious classical concerts for 20 years or more, and once
they realized that someone really cared what they thought they were
bursting with questions about why the orchestra did what it did.
Questions about the performance they’d just heard, questions about
things that happened five months ago, even questions about one concert
that happened in the ’80s. They had no idea how the orchestra thinks
about music. They have no idea why they’re forced to listen to new
music they can’t understand. Not that they’re hostile. Just the reverse
they’re eager to understand. But nobody, in all the time they’ve been
going to concerts, ever talked to them. Of course there are program
notes, but these give a detached view of the music being played, with
no relation to anything the conductor or musicians might think.

When I was finished, I thought: There’s a dead zone between
orchestras and their audience. The audience doesn’t know what’s going
on. They don’t know what really happens at the concerts they hear what
chances are taken, what musical problems are solved, what anyone is
trying to express. And of course any smart person who comes in from the
outside can sense this. It’s engraved, somehow, on the whole orchestra
experience: the blank rituals, the empty formality, the distant,
scholarly program notes, all the rules about when to applaud, the very
look of the people in the audience (thanks, Joanna), who for the most
part, and through no fault of their own, are only passively engaged.

Who can blame anyone for staying away?

- Greg Sandow

Blair’s first book, Mozart in the Jungle, comes out in late June. Composer William Bolcom says “Blair Tindall’s book combines a personal memoir of her years as a gigging oboist in New York’s Upper West Side musicians’ ghetto with a trenchant analysis of what’s wrong with classical music today.”

With a review like that, how can you not be interested in what Blair has to say about bringing your friends to an orchestra concert? (Yes, I realize Blair is the second contributor who is also a professional oboist. Maybe it’s just a double reed thing; perhaps all of that back pressure helps stimulate neural activity.) ~ Drew McManus

Recently, I saw Renee Fleming on one of the morning news shows where pedestrians outside the television studio are visible through a glass wall. Svelte in her contemporary hairstyle and pantsuit, Fleming looked nothing like a stereotypical diva. She began to sing and people on the sidewalk gathered to listen, their faces becoming calm and beatific. Almost certainly, some of them would have said they didn’t like classical music and yet all were mesmerized by Fleming’s simple, moving performance.

Watching the impromptu audience confirmed my belief that everyone possesses an innate feel for music. Classical music uses the same twelve tones and rhythms as pop tunes which sometimes borrow symphonic melodies verbatim — so why are the classics often perceived as foreign and difficult to comprehend?

In the case of Renee Fleming, the music was brought into the listeners’ everyday lives; they were not plopped into a world of classical music that can seem forbidding, from price to protocol. As other TAFTO contributions have pointed out, today’s concert format bears little resemblance to our 21st-century lifestyles. With so many fast-paced entertainment options available today — many of them interactive and involving multiple senses — asking a newcomer to pay top dollar to sit still for two hours is asking a lot.

Let’s follow “Eric,” a fictional friend who works as a web designer. He’s the go-to guy in his office for different musical genres rock, zydeco, hip-hop, anything but classical. But Eric rented the film, “Amadeus” and was surprised at how much he liked the music. He decides to try the local orchestra’s Mozart festival that was featured in yesterday’s newspaper. After checking for tickets online, he almost changes his mind because admission costs more than he’d anticipated. Still, he buys a single seat and randomly selects a date since he doesn’t recognize any names or works on the schedule.

Once inside the concert hall, Eric feels like he’s landed on Mars. Is anyone else wearing jeans? Why are the musicians costumed like extras for a Victorian-era film? He relaxes upon recognizing the first piece from “Amadeus” — he loved that music! He moves to applaud when it ends. But no one else is clapping, and the man in front of him glares. Eric slides down in his seat, feeling hopelessly stupid. He’s so intimidated he can’t even focus on the next piece. He leaves at intermission. “What was I thinking?” Eric mutters to himself. “This classical stuff is over my head.”

Rewind!

Imagine Eric told you about his interest in classical music instead. You load three different Mozart works into his iPod and ask him a week later which one he likes best. Although he doesn’t know the name of the piece, he mentions a work for piano and orchestra. That particular concerto is programmed on the Mozart festival, and you arrange for two tickets to hear it. You add the Idomeneo overture and Jupiter Symphony to Eric’s music library, since they will round out the program. Eric attends the concert with you, looking forward to exciting live performances of the music he has become passionate about through recordings.

When music is introduced into ordinary life, a newcomer is free to evaluate what he or she likes without feeling like an outsider. The music speaks for itself, and it’s essential that a new concertgoer feel confident, intelligent — that his taste is valid and he holds ownership of his concert experience.

I’d like to offer some ideas   and they are only ideas, not prescriptions — for introducing a friend to live classical music:

• Let your friend discover his taste in music. Lend him CDs of four works from different periods perhaps Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, a Mozart piano concerto, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, and Mahler’s Fifth or pick works that are actually scheduled to be performed in your area soon. For a more advanced listener, diverse contemporary works might be more appropriate. After a few days, ask which piece is his favorite, and to describe why in his own words. By choosing the concert based on these preferences, your friend will approach the performance with a point of reference so that the environment will not seem so foreign.
• Consider informal concert formats for first-timers. Many orchestras have become sensitive to changing American lifestyles by offering shorter rush-hour concerts at convenient times. Outdoor concerts and open rehearsals are other possibilities.
• Choose a concert that includes a descriptive work, like Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, a Strauss tone poem, or Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony. As a little girl, I was bored by long evenings of concert music but loved opera because of its story line a phenomenon that might explain the enduring popularity of film and theater.
• Look for concerts that feature a lively pre-concert talk or a conductor known for interacting with the audience. For example, Michael Tilson Thomas’s comments from the podium are balanced to embrace neophytes without patronizing subscribers. Another great communicator is Robert Kapilow, whose “What Makes it Great?” programs educate in a smart but fun format.
• Consider taking not one, but two newcomers to the concert. Their shared experience may lead to a more candid conversation about the music they’ve heard.

By offering these suggestions, I don’t advocate dumbing down the concert format or suggest that recordings substitute for live performance. What I propose is to separate pure music from its ritualized presentation, and to gear an introduction to classical music to each person’s personality and level of knowledge.

Who’s the “Eric” in your life?

- Blair Tindall