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

Keeping in mind the simplest solution is most likely correct, Paul provides a wealth of sources for helping you increase you’re chances of intersecting live performance “magic”. ~ Drew McManus

The orchestra has become an institution where the rituals of attending a concert have replaced a transcendent musical experience. Unfortunately, with the limited rehearsal time and a long season of uninspired programming it’s easy for a musician to feel that he is not any more special than a plumber. When going to a concert, being a savvy shopper can do you some good. If you look at your concert schedule you have many types of concerts to attend; First Nights, Thursday Masterworks, Featured Soloists, and my current Los Angeles favorite, Casual Fridays. This entertainment oriented marketing approach is akin to putting “old wine in new bottles”.

A musical performance has three main levels; physical, mental, and emotional. Physical is knowing the notes, rhythms, dynamics, articulation and intonation. Mental is blend and balance, dynamics, phrasing which lead a high level of nonverbal communication between the musicians and the conductor. After the first two are accomplished musicians can have that emotional performance where the wall between the performers and audience is removed.

How do you find a concert that will change your life? A good orchestra probably has 4-5 times a season when the magic happens. If it was every night it wouldn’t be as special, but these are the most important performances to attend. A technically proficient performance compared to another performance that touches you down to the bone is life changing. Like sex and the search for the Holy Grail it’s hard to talk about unless you have been there.

Keeping tabs on music bloggers and performers is a start. If you are lucky enough to have musician friends, keep in touch and have them send emails the next time a real special performance comes around. Keep online and keep an eagle eye out for that next diamond in the rough. If you are reading this, you are in the right place. Pass it around, promote through your friends, and put it out through email. Attending an earth shattering performance should be the goal for everybody.

The next time you take a friend to the orchestra, point out that although the night will be insightful and entertaining they might be in for a “surprise”. The search for these special performances is worth the effort.

time stops

all of our problems disappear

the audience is transported

those moments make life worth living

- Paul Bailey

Not only does Lynn offer a sincerely unique perception with her contribution, but hands down, she provides all of us some of the best advice offered when it comes to inviting uninitiated friends.  I won’t spoil the surprise, but I’ll tease you with the fact that it’s about misconceptions – make sure you take the time to read down to the third paragraph from the end! ~ Drew McManus

My Kid Dragged Me to the Opera

Summer of 2000. My two sons,  then aged 16 and almost 20, were
having a seemingly endless conversation about cars. The older one was
at the computer and the 16-year-old was standing nearby.  Feeling the
inspiration for a bit of  mischief, I thought to interrupt their
conversation with something – anything – that they had absolutely no
interest in.

I had just recently heard an ad for the Tulsa Opera’s upcoming
season so I cheerfully cut in, “Hey, guess what. The Tulsa Opera is
going to perform The Marriage of Figaro next May.”

I anticipated the classic eye-roll and, if I was lucky, one or two
smart-alecky remarks. Instead, my younger son lit up like a
six-year-old who has just been told that there will be an extra
Christmas that year and said, “I want to go see that!”

At the time, I listened almost exclusively to instrumental music and
had almost no interest in opera but I experienced a  rush of parental
pride. My kid wanted to go to the opera. You can brag about your
children’s little sports accomplishments and academic achievements but
MY kid wanted to go to the opera! You can’t top that.

Later that year unrelated musical explorations led me to suddenly
develop an interest in choral music. The Tulsa Philharmonic and the
Tulsa Oratorio Chorus were scheduled to perform Mozart’s Requiem in the
spring so I asked my son if he would like to go to that also and he
said yes so we went to Mozart’s Requiem in March and The Marriage of
Figaro in May.

We enjoyed both and have attended several more operas. I took my
older son to La Boheme and both of them to The Barber of  Seville.
Neither of them have changed their listening habits at all but I think
they would both go again and I discovered, sooner than I might have
otherwise, that I love opera.

Contrary to my attempt at humor in the title, I was not “dragged” to
the opera. Coercing a person to do something he does not want to do
rarely turns out well. The person you take to a concert should be at
least curious, therefore, the first step  in taking a friend to the
orchestra should be creating interest. The way to do that, of course,
is to talk about classical music and concerts in the same way that
anyone else talks about the things they are interested in.

That sounds simple but there is a huge problem in talking about
classical music with people who are not already into it. If we express
more than a casual interest we risk being accused of elitism,
therefore, many of us keep our interest to ourselves when among the
uninitiated. I have a bad habit of going to extremes. I either don’t
talk about it at all or I crusade for the cause. I think the best
approach is to be as casual as possible. Talk about the music itself
but also talk about the lives of the composers. Share some of the
sleazier legends. Tell a few jokes about musicians.

Be especially careful in the way you go about correcting
misconceptions. Most people love their misconceptions and will cling to
them as if all life on Earth depended on these false notions being
true. Attempting to take away these cherished beliefs will only cause
resentment. If you can just get them to listen, and if they’re
interested enough to keep on listening, they will learn.

When it comes time to go to a live performance you will at some
point have to address the sticky subject of concert etiquette. Don’t be
too pedantic about it but don’t leave your friend in the dark, not
knowing what to expect, either. And even if you, personally, think the
customs are wrong or outdated, tell him the reasons some people feel
that the “rules” are important, without being overly critical
concerning the issue. There will be ample opportunity for ranting later.

Unless your friend is one of those people who can’t stand operatic
singing, consider going to an opera. The “rules” are a little more
relaxed than at classical concerts. If you love that aria, it’s okay to
applaud after it’s finished. If something is funny it’s okay to laugh.
Reverence is expected at concerts but opera is fun. It’s a grand
spectacle that can hardly fail to delight even skeptics.

- Lynn Sislo

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

Lisa’s TAFTO contribution is also one of the most unique and well thought out pieces yet.  I’ll add some of my own thoughts to her superb point of view; but first, enjoy her contribution. ~ Drew McManus

So, it’s Take a Friend to the Orchestra month, and you’re casting around among your friends, trying to figure out which one to invite along on your extra subscription ticket. I have a suggestion for you: take a kid to the orchestra.

You probably know some kids, right? If you have children of your own, it’s likely you’ve already taken them to the orchestra or the opera or some other live event. If you don’t, maybe friends have a kid you could borrow, or your neighbors do. Maybe you have nieces and nephews, but your siblings only listen to rock. In any event, there is a kid somewhere in your life and I’m defining “kid” to mean anyone under about 18 who has never heard live concert music.

Let’s say you’ve picked a kid to take to the orchestra. Now it’s time for a talk adjust these questions accordingly if you know the answers already or if they don’t seem age-appropriate.

Start by asking the kid if she’s ever heard a symphony orchestra, live or on record. Ask if she can identify orchestral instruments in fact, ask if she has ever had any music lessons. Can she read music? If she could play an instrument, which one would it be?

What kind of music does she hear in her house? What kind of music does she like to listen to? Hard rock? Folk? Blues? Gospel? Guitar music? Jazz? Piano? Singers? Quiet, meditative music? Loud, exciting music? Music from India, or from South America?

Then it’s time for a listening session or two. What you’re going to do here is try to calibrate what your kid likes, so that you can then choose an appropriate concert. It’s not safe to make assumptions; I know someone who became enamored of opera at age 14 after hearing the Norwegian Radio Orchestra recording of Gutterdemmerung, which has little to offer beyond Flagstad and Svanholm. I know people who love Janacek and lots of 20th century music who can’t made head or tail of Mozart. And of course, if the chosen kid has not heard much classical music, she hasn’t got preconceived notions about what is “good,” what is “difficult,” what is a “pop classic.” That’s in your favor! Whatever you pick, consider sticking with five or ten minute excerpts. You’ll know when something has hit the spot.

Here are some composers and specific pieces I’d consider running by a potential classical music fan, but you know the kid in question and I don’t, so be imaginative:

• Something by Bach or Handel; maybe a Brandenburg concerto or the Royal Fireworks Music. There’s always Vivaldi, of course.
• A movement of a Mozart piano concerto
• A movement of a Haydn symphony
• The scherzo of a Beethoven symphony, or, if the kid likes big, gorgeous tunes, the slow movement of the 5th
• One of the Paganini caprices for violin. No, it’s not orchestral music, but these little gems define virtuosity, and you’ll know right away if you’ve got a violin fan on your hands. For that matter, make it the 24th, then put on the Rachmaninov Rhapsody. If your kid is adventurous, try Lutoslawski’s puckish variations for two pianos on the same theme.
• A Wagner opera overture or prelude and your choice of vocal excerpt, preferably with Flagstad or Melchior or Leider or Nilsson.
• Your choice of a symphony movement by Brahms, Dvorak, Mahler, Bruckner, or other composer of big, romantic works.
• A movement from a nice, juicy romantic concerto. One of the Saint-Saens piano concertos or Brahms piano concertos? You kid might find the S-S more fun than the Brahms. The Mendelssohn violin concerto?
• A chunk of any one of Richard Strauss’s tone poems
• The Janacek Sinfonietta or Glagolitic Mass
• Stravinsky’s Petrouchka, perhaps the opening Shrovetide Fair tableau, or maybe a scene from The Firebird
• A couple of Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra
• Your choice of a symphony movement by Sibelius or Nielsen or even Vaughn Williams
• Let’s throw in Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. It’s a great piece for helping someone learn the sounds of orchestral instruments, besides being a great set of variations!
• Messaien’s Turangalala, especially if the kid likes loud music

That’s a lot of music! You’ll have to decide how to limit your listening session so your kid stays interested. And here are a few more suggestions beyond the music you listen to:

• Depending on the age and sophistication of the child, do bring out Fantasia for a viewing. There are worse things than seeing dancing hippos whenever you hear “The Dance of the Hours.”
• Have some information on hand about each of the works and the composers, so you can answer questions.
• Don’t hesitate to ask questions, starting with “did you like that?” and “what did you like about it?” or “what did you dislike?”
• If you have the time, and if the kid is the right age, you might even go through one of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, now available on DVD; there is no better advocate for classical music.
• If the kid plays an instrument, by all means, find a concerto for that instrument!
• If the kid reads music, and you read music, consider taking some orchestral scores out of the library. Sure, the kid may not be able to follow the score very closely, but she might find it a thrill to see what the score looks like anyway.

If you make it through the above, or your own selections, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what the kid will like. Then the two of you can scout for an appropriate concert (or two). You might be able to catch a full-time professional orchestra, if you live in or near a city that has one, or one might be visiting.  A nearby college might have an orchestra or might have a visiting-orchestra series. I suspect it doesn’t matter much; while you definitely would like the best possible experience, what’s probably most important is that it’s a group that plays with passion and commitment, and has a reasonably exciting
conductor.

When you go, make a day out of it! You might consider going to an outdoor free concert, where a picnic is appropriate and you can talk during the selections without annoying the conservative members of the audience. If it’s an indoor concert, maybe have dinner or lunch beforehand, especially if there is a restaurant in the concert hall. Plan on hot cocoa or ice cream afterward to talk about the concert. The questions suggested above will give you plenty to talk about.

And then pick another concert to go to together.

- Lisa Hirsch

As a passionate believer in taking the lead when it comes to bringing music to the people, Bill is well equipped for the task. He possesses first rate musical credentials, enough performance experience to fill a few lifetimes, a razor sharp wit, and (much like the late Douglas Adams) a well honed personal philosophy about Life, the Universe and Everything. ~ Drew McManus

“Louise, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Humphrey Bogart

(The Scene: Late night…… wispy fog…… clock tolling the hours in the distance…… cat knocking over a trash can……. entrance to a dark alley………… Humphrey Bogart look-alike in rain coat and Fedora hat……..)

“Psssst!!……. Hey buddy!….. Yeah, you der…….. c’mer…… over here………. yeah, dat’s right, over here……… say, buddy, I’se got an offer youse can’t refuse…….. yeah, dat’s right……..Say, do ya wanna go to an orchestra concert?……..”

OK, it hasn’t gotten quite this bad, but that day might not be too far off. Every week that I’m on the road someone, at some point, will get to the moment in the conversation where they discover that I’m a musician. Usually they are very intrigued. Then they learn I play the piano, which frequently generates stories of how their parents tried desperately to get them to learn the instrument but they didn’t have the time/patience/whatever. This last part is always accompanied by a certain wistfulness in the eye that betrays that they wish they had kept at it. But then comes the fateful moment that they discover that I play gasp! Classical music. Not only that, I’m that rarest of the specie Homo Musica Musicallis a CONDUCTOR!

Instantly the barrier comes up. They look at me like I’m some Old Testament prophet baying at the moon. I guess the fact that I’m a black guy from Buffalo dressed in jeans, dark sunglasses, a t-shirt, and sporting a silver cuff in my left ear had thrown them off. Gee I wonder why? I look in the mirror and I could just swear I look like a typical conductor. Well, the next several minutes is spent with me trying to assuage them that: 1) No, I don’t sleep in a coffin during the day; 2) Yes, I love garlic; and 3) what I do is not the cultural equivalent of selling your soul to Bill Gates (I use Macs anyway). If I manage to calm them down enough then I can move on to #4 “Say, would you like to come to one of my concerts?” Critical to this idea is getting the mark’s email address so that you can hound them mercilessly over the next couple of days.

Hound them, you say? Of course. You see, the response to the “would you like” question is always that they’ve wanted to attend an orchestra concert forever, but they’ve felt intimidated by the idea, the setting, the music, the etc. So if you don’t hound them, answer every question, calm every fear, threaten their soul with eternal damnation, etc., they’re probably going to get cold feet. Now this is our own fault the ridiculous self-important aura that permeates how we in the Classical music business are perceived by “civilians” has been excellently described by other TAFTO contributors, so I shan’t go into it here. Suffice it to say we still have a lot of work to do before the average Joe will be willing to take a flyer on an orchestra concert without having his sanity questioned by friends and family.

But how do we (and by “we” I mean either musicians or music advocates) get a friend to come to a concert? Familiarity helps. Let me quote from a recent email I received from my friend Margaret L. who lives in Australia and had a run-in with Messiaen’s Catalogue d’ iseaux:

“The Music Festival day was incredibly stimulating and actually very demanding on the ear, the brain and all the senses. The performance space is in the wine barrel storage shed which gives a wonderful acoustic and the performances are very intimate (about 260 people are fitted in very tightly) and very immediate. (We) had to work harder than perhaps we would have wished on the Messiaen Catalogue d iseaux. This was helped by

1. The pianist, Michael Kieren Harvey is Australia’s leading Messiaen interpreter and in fact premiered the whole work at a recent Tasmanian arts festival
2. Is an old friend, having stayed with us a couple of times during the Barossa Music Festival, so we are forgiving
3. Talked us through the work first and played the signature motifs of the various creatures, colours and geographical bits identified by M in the score before playing the whole piece. At least one felt that one was given some signposts. “

The important points: interesting setting; very intimate; familiarity with performer; and the performer thought enough of his audience to help them through this amazing piece. Now all this isn’t easily done with an orchestra (sticking a symphony orchestra into a wine barrel storage shed is a recipe for disaster on about 17 different levels), but several orchestras have programs designed with these ideas in mind. Case in point, the Minnesota Orchestra’s Casual Classics series which I started in 1995….. or was it ’94? If you’re going to bring someone to an orchestra for the first time this is a great way to introduce them to the idea. And as much as I am a fan of his music I might not recommend starting off a newbie with Messiaen, though one never knows, do one? I remember back in the college days getting an aging hard rocker hooked on classical music by sitting him down, turning off all the lights, and cranking the Rite of Spring. Three years later that guy had a bigger classical collection than I will ever have.

Next: find out what type of music people like. You would be surprised what orchestras are involved in these days. My own orchestra (Edmonton) actually has a Country Music Series, and I’ll be hanged if it isn’t the most popular thing since sliced bread. Please don’t be afraid of a good Pops show. My friend Doc Severinsen was in town (Minneapolis) recently and there are few people who can put on a show like he can.

Please, try to find interesting performers. Due to the near monopoly of the Big New York Talent Agencies many of the truly interesting artists can, unfortunately, be few and far between. These Agencies have a vested interest in making money, as opposed to making music, and their monopoly means that artists that don’t fit neatly into the Paradigm can end up on the sidelines. Despite that, interesting folk such as Robert Bonfiglio (harmonica), Manuel Barrueco (guitar), and Margaret Tan (toy piano) do occasionally creep through. These are wonderful musicians who are not the “usual” and a performance of theirs can be quite surprising for the orchestral neophyte.

Don’t forget to hand the newbie a copy of Sam Bergman’s TAFTO contribution. They’ll be laughing so hard they might forget to be nervous about attending the concert.

Fergodsakes please, please, please take the newbie to a concert with American music. Or if you like, American music. Just as long as it’s from this hemisphere. People relate to music that reminds them of their own society. As much as I personally love Mozart most newbies I know are bored to death by the guy. He reminds them of elevator music. But there isn’t anyone who’s lived in the USA for at least five years who isn’t familiar with Bernstein, Copland, Gershwin, etc. They just might not know it yet.

Now some advice for the newbie: don’t be shy about having a good stiff drink before the concert. God knows half the people on stage had one so you might as well follow in their footsteps. We are professionals after all. Goodness, in Germany they actually have bars backstage for the musicians!! Talk about gilding the lily. Oh, and if you’re being taken to a concert that features Mahler you’d better make it a double.

Also HAVE FUN!!! I can’t help but believe that Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, whomever, would be down right sick to their stomach with the hero-worshipping over-glorifying idolizing holier-than-anybody veneration that’s thrown at them these days. They wrote music to be enjoyed. Please do not approach them as if they are the 2nd coming of Christ. As it is many of the best composers were Jewish, so that’s not going to fly at all.

Now, if by some odd chance you liked the concert then please applaud, whistle, holler, jump up and down, but definitely do not spare one second worrying about the “stick-in-the-mud” next to you who believes in (the next phrase said in a exaggerated British accent) “proper concert hall etiquette.” Said person needs to get over their bad self.

If you didn’t like the concert then by all means boo lustily. Just as long as it isn’t at one of my concerts. If I hear any of that I’ll sick the guy in the Fedora on you.

“Pssst…… Mac……. c’mer…….. I’ve also got some tickets to a modern music festival…… cheap!!”

Peace wfe

May is “Take a Friend to Orchestra Month,” a new initiative started by Drew McManus, author of the blog “Adaptistration”, in order to bring newcomers to the concert hall. In the spirit of the month, Drew has taken host John Schaefer’s brother Jerry to a concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Jerry has previously never been to an orchestral concert, busy as he is running a lumber yard in Queens. Today, we get Jerry’s reaction to the experience when both he and Drew join us on the program.

You can listen to the entire show via the audio player below or visit the  Soundcheck archives.
Part 1

Part 2

His personal research and effort into a variety of endeavors to benefit classical music in a number of mediums are simply too numerous to mention.  Frank’s contribution recounts a lifetime of personal experience and is filled with so much good material you’ll need to read it through a few times just to absorb everything. ~ Drew McManus

“Taking friends to a concert” can be a metaphor for the task of revitalizing classical music in
America. I make no apologies for being an end-member proponent of
audience empowerment, I disagree with recent writers who variously
opine that classical music is moribund, or was only superficially
connected with the U.S. in the first place (Joseph Horowitz). It has
indeed declined – but McManus’ initiative is an example of emerging
movements that have the potential to revive it.

I was fortunate to grow up at a time when classical music was an integral
part of America – where even the restored  19th Century mining town of
Central City, Colorado, had its Opera House, and Count Basie had a
long-running radio music show entitled, lovingly,  “The Chamber Music
Society of Lower Basin Street”. As an end-member proponent for audience
empowerment, I find the anthology idea pertinent and fascinating. I’ll
look forward to other contributions.

First, let me introduce my discussion with a sampling of concerts whose attractions caused me
and my wife to take the initiative in inviting friends to join us.
Then, let’s take up the subject of “attractions” a little more
systematically. We’ll look at strategies of the Board of the Falmouth
Music Association, the oldest music performance society on Cape Cod,
MA, while I was Program Chairman of the FMA from 1979-1983.

Kennedy Center opera:  I have not attended many live opera performances in my
life – though all that I did were memorable. But since I arrived here
in the Washington D.C. area (1999), it became clear to me that it was
mandatory to take advantage of the high quality and imaginative
programming by Placido Domingo – supported by the highly capable
Kennedy Hall director, Michael Kaiser. This team has elevated opera to
a high level of interest in a sophisticated public – and has ticket
prices up to  $200 to prove it.  We decided to make it known through
our local church bulletin that we wanted to share an advance series
ticket block to opera selections. That way we could get affordable
seats whereas these might already be sold out by the time
single-concert tickets were opened to the public. We found  takers -
and made some good friends in the process.

One of Domingo’s hallmarks is to always include unusual, attractive operas each season.
Thus, we have been attending such rare spectacles as Handel’s Julius
Caesar, Massenet’s Le Cid (first U.S. production in 100 years), and
Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades. In some cases, the people we invited had
never attended opera. In this case I lent them an opera book so that
familiarity with the plot and characters would heighten engagement.
When we attended the same event, we arranged to have dinner at Kennedy
Center’s fine buffet restaurant in order to “talk music”, warm up, and
make the most of the occasion. The idea is, of course, to make concert
going a celebratory and fun event on several levels.

Telemann: Day of Judgment (Der Tag des Gerichts): I am a fan of baroque composer,
Georg Philipp Telemann,  not least because among all composers in
history, he was probably the most committed  to performers and
listeners. He and J.S. Bach held each other in  high mutual regard (he
served as Godfather to Bach’s son, Carl Philipp Emmanuel), but took
different musical approaches. Bach, in following his muse, could
neglect singability or effect on his audiences in a number of his
choral works (e.g. the “sublimely ugly” St. John’s Passion). Because of
Bach’s profundity and uncompromising mastery of seamless counterpoint,
our musical establishment leaders have singled him out as THE baroque
composer. Telemann – though the unquestioned leader among German
composers of his time, has been relegated to footnotes.

Unlike Bach, Telemann normally rejected strict structural counterpoint,
preferring to innovate with decorative counterpoint and harmonic
effects. He played every instrument of the then orchestra in order to
be able to exploit its timbres to maximum effectiveness. Telemann
openly sought to bring enjoyment to players of all levels of skill, and
prided himself for placing musically interesting material in the
continuo part of trio sonatas, and the orchestral component of
concerti. Through continuing research of the 50-year old Telemann
Archiv new editions of hitherto unknown Telemann masterpieces continue
to roll out.

When one of Telemann’s late (and still relatively little-known) choral-orchestral masterpieces was to be
presented under the aegis of the International Institute for Culture in
Baltimore (2000) I knew we couldn’t miss it. We invited a USGS
hydrologist who plays violin in the Fairfax County Symphony, his wife
and family. During our preliminary dinner in Baltimore (combining food
and conviviality with music is no-fail) I talked about why I liked
Telemann, including the fact that Telemann was a modern-leaning
democrat in philosophy. He eschewed the courts that chased him in favor
of working in independent cities (Frankfurt and Hamburg), where he
could serve the public free of the whims of royalty. Our friends were
musically literate but rarely attended concerts. Their knowledge of
classical music was largely limited to “standards”.

In sum, the performance, led by Thomas Hetrick, was superb and a powerful
experience for  all of us. However, a significant part of the obvious
enjoyment of our friends was the novelty and surprise elements in the
evening. Getting to know Telemann better helps explain why, after being
relegated to footnote status, classical radio stations like WGMS and
WBJC that cater to more general audiences now tend to play more
Telemann than Bach. In contrast, WNET, which maintained a more
academically correct repertory, overwhelmingly favored Bach – but has
now dropped classical music altogether.

The Falmouth Music Association grows its audience
As chairman of the Program committee I had a good-sized, music-loving
board to assist in operating a 4-performance winter music season of
professional soloists with accompaniment, or chamber groups. The choice
of groups was predicated on the usual criteria that would appeal to the
maximum number of a diverse audience. Proposed programs were reviewed
by all 15 members of the board, most of whom were called on to help
with practical tasks – advertising, program & ticket printing,
stage management, refreshments, etc. The “popular market” test of
program choices helped assure that idiosyncratic personal tastes didn’t
dominate  the repertory.

We undertook serious audience research: with the aid of an engineer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution, we conducted a poll of a randomized selection of the
entire community of 28,000 persons, chosen from the telephone book.
From that poll we learned the musical tastes of the community, ranging
from pop (rock) through country, and folk, to classical in various
subcategories (20% of the half of the polled population that had
serious interest in music “liked classical”).

Next, we initiated “Local Artists Concerts”, which combined local professional
musical talent  and skilled amateurs in carefully prepared theme
concerts. This was truly a fine learning experience. I came to
understand that professional impresarios don’t guess how many people
are going to come to their concerts. They program and plan to achieve a
requisite audience size. We cultivated the musical resources and
interests of the community. One year we put on a sellout Evening of
Cape Verdean Music, featuring a band known to the Cape Verdean
population (Portuguese-African) of southeastern Massachusetts. Half the
evening was concert – the rest dance – at the Cape Verdean Club.

Knowing the  interest in early Americana in a town incorporated in 1686, we
acquired microfilms of the entire Thomas Jefferson Monticello music
collection (Jefferson was an accomplished violinist and avid music
lover) from the rare book archive at the University of Virginia in
Charlottesville,. We then staged a “Music of the Time of Thomas
Jefferson” concert – including composers enjoyed by Jefferson but  now
forgotten, like Balbastre and Schobert. No music-loving person could
pass up novelty features like this rare opportunity, or an
“Austro-Hungarian” evening, the hall festooned with appropriate flags.
The families and circle of friends of locally-based professionals and
skilled amateurs contributed their numbers to the audience. With
performers donating services, these moneymakers increased the funding
available to hire  professional groups. Children under 12 always came
free to FMA concerts – encouraging families to attend, and providing
exposure to music for  young people.

A popular feature that I now long for in vain in the concerts I now attend in the Northern
Virginia -DC area was the longstanding tradition of getting to meet
performers after the concert at an open reception with refreshments:
cookies and punch, etc. The musicians enjoyed them too. Many
professionals admitting to feeling a let down when they simply packed
up instruments and went to their hotel after making beautiful music. At
these receptions we learned, for example, how the distinguished
contrabass virtuoso, Gary Karr,  had acquired his magnificent Amati
bass (over 300 years old). It was GIVEN to him – to his utter surprise
- at a special party after his Carnegie Hall debut by the widow of the
famed Russian-American conductor of the Boston Symphony, Serge
Koussevitzky.  Koussevitzky had been a virtuoso bass player in his
native Russia, before he became a conductor and came to the U.S. Again,
breaking down the wall between musicians and audience was a win-win
proposition for both.

In short, we learned that the keys to filling concert halls began with providing quality classical music but
by no means ended there. It was essential to provide novel and
interesting experiences for the audience in question in a human and
convivial environment.  And the potential for the experience had to be
conveyed through intensive and preferably enticing advertising. We spun
coming concert events (especially the Local Artists Concerts) into
interesting features that we could place in the local paper without
paying for advertising. We prepared posters on 11×17 colored card stock
that could be printed from computer format on Xerox machines – almost
trivial in cost, but highly effective. In short, creativity substituted
for expensive services wherever possible.

I emphasize that much of what I myself enjoy in music and what, in my experience,
attracts audiences, is not necessarily classical masterpieces certified
by the professional establishment (which I  revere for its knowledge
and skills). Rather it is music selected and performed for the
edification of audiences as special or novel events – perhaps unlikely
to be heard again. Success in achieving this goal means knowing the
audience and making sure it gets the message about a proposed event. In
a sense, musical programming, done right, is as creative a process as
playing music.

Sam’s Take a Friend to Orchestra contribution utilizes that last expertise to give everyone a health dose of humor while simultaneously convincing those readers who have almost invited a friend to a concert to actually do so.  Sam calls his contribution “How to Be an Elitist Snob in 20 Easy Steps” but I call it “Everything You Wanted To Know About The Orchestra But Were Afraid to Ask”.

It may be long, but it’s also a quick read; you’ll be laughing out loud and wanting more by the time you’re through reading it. ~ Drew McManus

How to Be an Elitist Snob in 20 Easy Steps

When people ask me what it’s like to play in a symphony orchestra for a living, I generally respond that it’s just like everyone else’s job, with all the office politics, boring meetings, and meddling middle management, except that the last few hours of the work week take place on stage, in formalwear, with 2,500 people watching to see if you screw up. That having been said, it is a job which a great many people pay to watch us do, and this gives rise to certain, shall we say, specialized areas of concern.

As you may have heard, the classical music biz has been going through a bit of a crisis for the last few, um, decades. Entire books have been written declaring that our industry has, in fact, ceased to exist, or is at least in the final convulsing spasms of near-death. The fact that the authors of such cheery tomes are almost invariably self-promoting idiots who wouldn’t know a business plan if it walked up and bit ‘em in the ass doesn’t change the basic perception that classical music is something of a dinosaur. Which, of course, it is. I mean, the whole point of an orchestra’s existence is wrapped up in the fact that we spend a great deal of our time playing music that everyone has heard before. (Of course, this differs from the careers of Tony Bennett and Bruce Springsteen not at all, and nobody’s writing books declaring them to be dead.) But one of the more ludicrous facts of life in 21st-century America is that no one takes you seriously as an entertainer if your core audience is rude enough to sport an average age above 24, and, let’s face it, most people don’t make the switch from Weezer to Wagner until a lot later than that. In fact, I suspect that a case could be made that the majority of classical music fans begin listening when they get old enough to feel embarrassed at rock concerts, and then decide that some of this Beethoven stuff might not be too bad, and is undeniably less likely to result in a drug arrest or a sprained back.

Consequently, the audiences who show up at our concerts tend to be a rather interesting cross-section of elderly diehards, middle-aged converts, and college music majors, with a sprinkling of squirmy high-school boys who think they’re impressing the taffeta-wrapped female specimens next to them with their grasp of high culture. (They aren’t, but who are we to point this out? They’re buying tickets, and the girls always seem to get something out of the music, even if the boys have zero shot of getting anything out of them in return.) And while there is a certain percentage of this audience for whom the routine of a symphony concert is old hat, most people seem to have a hard time knowing how to go about being a good audience member. It’s really not that complicated, but, like anything else in life, it’s not gonna feel natural until you’ve done it a few times. And how are you supposed to do it a few times when no one ever tells you what ‘it’ is?

With that in mind, I am pleased to present the following handy set of answers to any questions you might have about the orchestral concert experience, plus a few you haven’t thought of yet. On behalf of the world’s symphony orchestras, I thank you for your attention to these guidelines, and hope that they may alleviate any ‘concert stress’ you may have previously experienced.

1. Before buying your tickets, for God’s sake, check to see what we’re playing. Being a fan of the genre writ large does not obligate you to like everything we do, and a boatload of in-concert grimacing could be prevented by a cursory glance through the program book before you get in line at the box office. If you often find yourself humming Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ while unloading the dishwasher, you might want to think twice before shelling out a couple hundred bucks for great seats to a world premiere by a composer described in the program book as ‘controversial’ and ‘challenging.’ On the other hand, if you’ve been to a handful of concerts featuring Bach, Brahms, or Haydn, and have
   frequently had trouble staying awake in the slow movements, new music may just be your thing, even if you’ve never considered it before. Glance through the schedule, keeping an eye out for such key phrases as ‘programmatic’ or ‘percussion concerto,’ and take a chance. And finally, if your favorite classical masterworks are available on albums with names like ‘Acoustic Landscapes,’ or are frequently heard at weddings, really, save your money for the next Josh Groban concert. Pachelbel’s Canon just isn’t what we do.
2. Reading a review of a concert is not generally a good way to find out if you will like it. Critics tend to be failed musicians, or at the very least, music history majors (which amounts to the same thing,) and frequently harbor some pretty dark views of the whole business. Furthermore, most critics have been cowed over the years into declaring every new musical work as a thing of utter genius, especially if it’s completely impenetrable to human ears, the theory being that if we can’t understand it, it must be because there’s something wrong with us. There are some excellent critics out there, but the bottom line is that usually, they’re giving you their opinion without giving you any frame of reference as to where your tastes do or do not coincide with theirs. It’s like deciding whether a Red Sox game is worth your money based on a Yankees’ beat writer’s recap of yesterday’s game.
3. When getting ready to go to the concert, think for a minute about what you want to wear. If you’re a man, your suit from work is fine, if you’re really comfortable in it, but your favorite pair of khakis and a polo shirt might be a lot less constricting when you consider that you’re going to be sitting in one place for a couple of hours. And honestly, very few people dress up for concerts anymore in most American cities, and no matter how casually you dress, there’s almost guaranteed to be some college kid who got assigned this concert by his music history prof sitting two rows in front of you, and he’s going to be dressed like he’s going duck hunting, so seriously, comfort first, okay? Women, you too. This is not the place for your rustling silk prom gown. Do you see the women on stage wearing elaborate dresses with ruffles and huge shoulders and plunging necklines? No, you do not, and a good general rule of thumb is that you should not be more formally dressed than the people holding the instruments. Because trust me, we are not comfortable, and you should be.
4. When you arrive at the concert hall, you may be forced to hang around in the lobby for a while before the house is opened. During this period of time, you may notice large boxes full of cough drops positioned strategically next to the doors to the auditorium. Take some. No, seriously, take some. Because you will cough. Everyone does. And most of the time, it’ll just be a single cough, or a subtle clearing of the throat, but once in a while, it’ll turn into an unstoppable hacking, heaving, chest-constricting fit, and you need to be prepared for that eventuality. We don’t use microphones in there, so the hall you will be sitting in is built to be little more than a giant echo chamber, and the people in the third tier really don’t have any interest in your phlegm. Oh, you say you brought a bag of your own cough drops? Throw them away, and take some of ours. Because you brought the kind that come in individual crinkly cellophane wrappers, that’s why, and if you start to unwrap one of them in the middle of a soft passage, you’re going to hear the crinkle and freeze, and then you’re going to try to open it really, really, really slowly, so that the whole room is subjected to five minutes of tentative crinkling, and there’s just an excellent chance that eventually, one of us in the orchestra is going to snap and come into the crowd and beat you to death with a bassoon, and it would suck if you were the one to have to pay with your life for a hundred years of other people’s crinkling.
5. Turn off your cell phone.
6. Now turn it off again.
7. We don’t care if you’re a doctor on call. Go see a damn movie. If you’re staying here, the cell phone is off. Not set on vibrate, not set to ring softly. OFF. Thank you.
8. Upon entering the auditorium, the usher will hand you a program book. This contains interesting information about the music we’ll be playing. If it’s the Mozart and Beethoven, you can skip it unless you really care a lot about the minutiae of composers’ lives. Having known many composers, I can pretty much assure you that they are very odd people, and the less you know about them, the more comfortable you will be. However. If you took the daring route, and are attending a performance of some seriously new music, you should glance over the program notes, especially if the title of one of the pieces suggests that there might be a story behind it. Sometimes, the story is pretty cool, and sometimes, it involves really awesomely dark stuff like murder and suicide and rape and so on, and you’ll honestly get a lot more out of the big crashy, boomy sections if you know what’s supposed to be going on.
9. If the concert you have chosen includes a work with a chorus or a solo singer, the program book may also contain several pages of lyrics, both in the original language of the piece, and in English. It is perfectly all right for you to follow along with these lyrics during the performance. But do keep in mind that there are 2,499 other concertgoers in this room with you, and they have all been given the same program book as you, and it therefore stands to reason that they will be coming to page turns at the same time as you. And while one person turning a page is a relatively quiet operation, 2,500 people doing it sounds like a flock of pigeons descending on a loaf of Wonder Bread, and we don’t need that. It won’t kill you to turn the page a little early or a little late. Just watch the people on either side of you, and turn when they’re not. It won’t matter, since everyone else will still be doing the pigeon thing, but you will be able to bask quietly in the pride that comes with not being a clueless moron.
10. By accepting the program book in the first place, you have entered into an implicit agreement with the orchestra to keep it on your lap. Because, due to an astonishing anomaly of acoustical law, a 32-page program dropped on a floor during a concert makes the same amount of noise as the complete works of Shakespeare dropped off the top of the Empire State Building onto a Chinese gong. You don’t want this.
11. When the conductor walks out, you should applaud. You should not shout “bravo,” because he hasn’t done anything yet. What if he sucks? You’d feel damned silly. Just a nice golf clap is all that’s required at this point. And speaking of things that will make you feel silly, the orchestra is going to stand up while he walks to the podium. This is not a cue for you to do the same.
12. If you wear a hearing aid, trust us: it’s working. If the music sounds really, really soft, all of a sudden, it’s because we’re playing really, really softly. Do not crank your hearing aid up to the maximum, because (and we realize that you have no idea that this happens) hearing aids turned up to the max emit a high-pitched squeal that can be heard by every single person in the hall except you. The music will get louder soon, and if it doesn’t, then it’s possible that you need to face up to the reality that you are finally, truly deaf, and concertgoing is probably not a wise expenditure of your retirement funds anymore.
13. Please don’t talk while we’re playing. We know this seems silly, and we know you believe you’re capable of whispering some witty comment to your wife without disturbing anyone around you, but you’re just wrong. The concert isn’t that long, and you’re really not that funny, either, so just save it, okay?
14. At intermission, you will see a small number of people who have approached the stage and are talking to the musicians. You are welcome to try this if you wish, but keep in mind that these are mainly people we already know, and the ones we don’t generally get classified in the ‘scary orchestra groupie’ category. If you’re cool with that designation, c’mon up. We love to talk about ourselves.
15. It is considered bad form to boo at an orchestra concert, but I have no idea why. If it was an undeniably bad show, or if the conductor had clearly mistaken ‘violent thrashing’ for ‘leadership,’ or if the trumpets appeared to be more interested in giving you a migraine than in playing their part nicely, and you can’t believe you paid good money for it, go ahead and boo! Of course, many of your fellow patrons will stare at you in horror, but honestly, we know when we’ve blown it, and it would be somewhat refreshing to know that you know it, too.
16. If you feel like cheering, that’s okay, too, but know that the “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” that you break out at the hockey game is unlikely to be well-received here. Try shouting something that sounds vaguely Italian in your deepest, most masculine voice. No one will dare ask you what it means for fear of looking uncultured.
17. After the concert, if you have occasion to speak to one of the musicians, do not ask us what we think of the conductor. We are unlikely to tell you the truth, and the question merely forces us to construct an elaborate half-lie with a pained smile on our face when we’re already very tired. And besides, we tend to hate almost all conductors, regardless of their individual merits, and we are therefore not reliable sources of accurate information on the subject. If you liked him, that’s all that matters.
18. And while we’re on the subject of questions we hate, do not ask us if this is ‘all’ we do for a living, or if playing in an orchestra is ‘really a full-time job.’ Yes, it is. And most of us gave up our childhoods to get it, so we’d appreciate not being trivialized. Thanks.
19. That having been said, we honestly don’t mind talking to you. We have performers’ egos, and your wanting to talk to us makes us feel important, even if you just want to rant about how bad the world premiere tuba concerto was, and how the rocket scientist next to you took five minutes to unwrap a cough drop.
20. If you came to the concert because a particularly famous soloist was playing, and if you have made your way backstage in the hope that said soloist might sign something for you, or at least listen to you talk about how you used to take violin lessons when you were 10, know that you will get a lot farther if you have a small child in tow. And that goes double if the small child is carrying an instrument case.

So there you have it! The complete guide to becoming a knowledgeable fan of the only form of live entertainment still kicking thirty years after its death certificate was signed by every hack writer in the Western world. We can’t promise you’ll come out of the experience a better person, but we’ll do our best. And all cynicism aside, thanks for plunking down your hard-earned dollars to watch us work. Because most of us don’t really know how to do anything else, and believe me, you don’t want egos like ours in the cubicle next to you.

- Sam Bergman