I have been reading Greg Sandow’s book in progress, The Future of Classical Music? over on Artsjournal.com. I haven’t linked to him much, but I am always interested in what he has to say in his blog about arts communications–often how press releases and program notes are written well and poorly. Many times I go and scrutinize what I have written after reading his entries.
One thing in his book that really floored me was his report of the lack of passion in orchestra administration.
The people who work for major orchestras typically don’t go to concerts. Almost never in the office of the orchestra will people come to work and talk about the music. Isn’t there something wrong with this? I’ve talked to a consultant who’s worked both with orchestras and with theater companies, and he’s stunned by what he finds in orchestras. In a theater company, people come to the office the day after a new production opens, and the production is all that they can talk about (the play, the acting, the directing, the sets and costumes, everything). But at orchestras, after a concert, no one says a word. If this is great art, where’s the depth, the transcendence, or even the certainty, both audible and visible, that everybody’s giving everything they’ve got?
I guess I always assumed that people involved in an art organization had some passion for it. As a person who comes out of theatre, I pretty much pictured what Greg describes as the day after in a theatre as happening in ballets, orchestras, museums and galleries. I figured I wouldn’t understand the conversations as people employed the jargon of their particular niche or used obscure terminology to inflate their sense of self-importance.
I never imagined that the conversations wouldn’t take place. A career in the arts is a labor of love after all. Analyzing how well or poorly something when the next morning with equally impassioned people is one of the few rewards one gets for choosing this path in life.
If what Greg says is true, it puts a lot of things in a different context for me. When Drew McManus over at Adaptistration criticized orchestra administrators as heartless individuals who were out to enrich themselves at the expense of the musicians, (I am generalizing his sentiments a bit here, though not too far off), I figured they were perhaps people without the talent or discipline to be musicians but possessed still of a passion for the art.
Now I am starting to wonder if they aren’t just heartless individuals out to enrich themselves on the labor of the musicians. Okay, may be it is a little hyperbolic to ascribe nefarious intent to orchestra administrators. There are certainly better ways to go about exploiting the labor of others.
I have to wonder if the whole orchestra system needs to be revamped. If people can’t be moved to discuss the basic merits or disappointments of a performance, they don’t deserve to benefit from the performance revenue. (Which isn’t to imply that people who do talk about it should be permitted to exploit others either, of course!)
Another related bit of information comes from the entry just prior to the third chapter of Sandow’s book in which he talks about quality control in orchestras.
“Who in an orchestra has the power to tell the musicians that they’re not playing well enough? Not the executive director. My partner in this discussion had gotten shot down by his musicians simply for bringing the question up. Not the chairman or president of the board. Can anyone imagine a board leader going out on stage after a rehearsal, or gathering the musicians in the green room after a concert, and saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, that simply wasn’t good enough”? It doesn’t happen.
So the job falls to the music director. But music directors absolutely don’t do this, to my knowledge, about concerts that they don’t conduct. Some people in the discussion even brought up names of music directors whom they thought were happy when their orchestras played badly for someone else.”
This revelation didn’t strain my incredulity as much because I understand that different industries have varying operating situations and standards.
I come from the theatre world where the stage manager is empowered to tell the actors the quality is falling and where actors can be fined under union rules for repeatedly straying too far from the vision of the play. In late 1996, Cameron McIntosh, the producer of Les Miserables, fired most of the Broadway cast because he felt the show had become stale.
I am not going to even consider claiming live theatre is at the zenith of quality and artistic excellence. They got problems for which I can’t even begin to start to suggest solutions.
I will say that if there is any truth at all beyond these stories about lack of passion in the administration and apathy (and perhaps plain intentional antagonism) among musicians and musical directors in regard to quality, it is a clear starting point for turning the fortunes of orchestras around.
How can audiences have an appreciation for the experience if the orchestra itself doesn’t value what they produce? As with live theatre, quality control and passion won’t solve all problems and result in fiscal solvency.
But at least when you say “We have a great product, why won’t anyone show up,” you are speaking with certainty and with a unified voice top to bottom.