Zakir Hussain

The Developing Audience Member

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Over the last year, I have written about masterful performances that really affected me: the taiko performance a week ago, the kathak/tap dancing of Chitresh Das and Jason Samuels Smith last year and Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer’s performance last September. There have been a couple times I have brought up the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master your craft.

It occurred to me recently that if it takes that long to become a master, it likely takes a fairly significant fraction of that to develop appreciation and discernment of arts and culture. This isn’t something that really gets discussed enough I think. In fact, with all the studies that have done been, I don’t think anyone has ever studied how long it takes for a person to develop an understanding and appreciation for art. I am sure the subject has been studied tangentially in relation to learning and meta-cognition. But has anyone sat down and approached it head on how much time people need to process and internalize experiences?

What I am really getting at is the oft espoused idea that once someone is exposed to some form of art, they will fall in love with it forever after. The fact is, once may not be enough and it is pretty unfair and unrealistic that we expect it to be. We give performers hundreds and thousands of hours to gain proficiency and yet we expect our audiences to absorb just how sublime our work is after just two hours.

Yes, we have a need to have them fall in love quickly because the opportunities for exposure are so few and audience members becoming fewer. We are doing a disservice to our audiences to expect so much from them. We want them to realize what a great experience we are offering, but don’t really know how to guide them to that place and how long it might take.

If you are involved in the arts, then your discernment and appreciation were probably developing roughly in parallel with your mastery of whatever you were pursuing. Even if you stopped, your critical skills may have continued to improve as you processed new experiences through the filter of your knowledge. You likely did not notice it happening and so assume you always had pretty good aesthetic sense. But I bet you can look back and grimace at all the crap you used to like and produce–some of it was probably pretentious crap too. (Of course, it was still better by half than the stuff kids are listening to today!)

So the more I think about it, the more I believe that becoming the audience member we all want is as gradual a process as becoming the master we want them to applaud. As I referenced producing awful stuff when we were younger in the preceding paragraph, I was envisioning my dismal acting skills in college vs. what, in my foolishness, I perceived my acting skills to be. One of the things I clearly remember from that time was a friend telling me he was really getting into Indian raga. I immediately laughed because it seemed absurd to me that anyone who wasn’t of that culture would listen to raga, (I think that was my classic rock phase), and I suspected he was saying that to get women. But he said he was serious.

But today I have cited the excellence of three events, two of which were heavily infused with Indian music and instruments and the last that included taiko drumming. At the time I was making fun of my friend about ragas, I had no concept taiko existed. Now I am encouraging people to see these performances and it is difficult to imagine people not enjoying them.

So while we don’t know how long it make take to bring someone into a receptive outlook about the arts, what we do know is that Generation X is not experiencing the upward bump in classical music attendance as they move into their 40s as previous generations did. Alex Ross doesn’t think it is too late to reverse that trend by increasing exposure through a lot of hard work.

I will openly admit that at this juncture, my thoughts on this matter are completely at a preliminary stage. This idea is only a day and a half old in my mind. But as I think about it, it seems to me that people don’t necessarily need direct experience in a situation to gradually develop the ability to confidently approach it. You may not necessarily need constant exposure to classical music and sculpture to acquire critical evaluation skills in these areas.

This winter I went to a number of contemporary art museums and I think that I gained the confidence to do so from having built and lit sets for the theatre. Even though I haven’t done so for awhile, all the times I have watched a show and evaluated these elements since then has improved my ability to recognize how certain effects have been accomplished. That in turn gave me the confidence to walk into an art museum and understand a great deal about what I was looking at. Granted, it might not be what the artist and the critics intend me to understand and perhaps that will come later. For now I am deriving enjoyment when I visit.

I had a similar experience with sumo wrestling. I really don’t watch a lot of sports at all. I have seen a little baseball, football, hockey, soccer, wrestling and martial arts in my time. I went to a sumo event a few years ago knowing nothing and was soon enjoying myself. I think the little bits of experience from these other sports provided a context for the sumo bouts. Though admittedly, sumo is pretty easy to understand. None of my past sports experience is likely to be much help with cricket.

I will concede there is a great theatricality in the sumo ritual and my experience in that area probably helped as well. I have tried to watch bouts online since and find those videos which edit out a lot of the ritual unsatisfying.

Anyway, my point is– the skills/tools/abilities needed to appreciate an arts experience isn’t necessarily cultivated solely by exposure to the arts. While one exposure may not be enough, devising a way to nail people’s feet to the floor en masse so they can’t leave won’t be necessary either. There are myriad situations which are improving people’s capacity to understand and enjoy occurring all the time. The trick is to identify these situations and make people aware of the connections. I felt confident walking into a museum because I knew my comprehension of the use of light and shadow in a performance could translate to visual art because I was aware of their use in that discipline.

Planning 2010-2011

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Had a meeting with my booking consortium today and learned some interesting things.

First of all, in relation to my post on advocating to keep our state arts council staff from being laid off. I was told that during the hearing, it came to light that the decision to lay the staff off came after all a consultation with all the unit heads–except the council’s executive director. Apparently it was felt the arts council was not an important unit and the grant administration could be accomplished by the general state accounting staff. Then it was decided that the grant administration was specialized knowledge the accountants couldn’t handle themselves so the executive director and one assistant should be kept to help the accountants. (So the restoration of two of about 10 people slated for layoffs.)

The final decision has yet to be made. It did occur to me that while we can recite the economic impact of the arts stats in our sleep, there are still people who don’t know the arts contribute to economic activity. The president of our group said he was able to easily point to a recent $10,000 artistic fee payment that yielded $150,000 in additional direct spending independent of any restaurant checks, parking fees and babysitter payments.

Second thing I learned is that with funding so uncertain, especially among universities, a lot of tour decisions are being made much later in the year. Apparently this was a topic of conversation at a recent regional conference. Because we depend so heavily on artists touring the West Coast to keep our prices down, we will have to make our own decisions for the 2010-11 season months later than we usually do because opportunities may never emerge. I am sure since four of our members are associated with universities this will just perpetuate the cycle of postponed decisions.

One of the positive things I noticed during the meeting was people were proposing many more artists I could afford to present. Last year’s cycle seemed to emphasize higher paid acts, but fewer of them. I haven’t quite analyzed how things resolved themselves this year to determine if artists are lowering their fees or if my partners are looking at a greater number of less expensive performers. If the latter is the case, they are either instinctively or intentionally following the Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser’s advice not to cut programming in tough economic times.

I am personally feeling less anxious than I was at this time last year when I was faced with the proposition of putting together a slate of performances without the benefit of as many partnerships as I had in the past. Of course, it also helped that I walked into the meeting knowing a show I started conversations about two years ago would be opening my season.

Another thing that came up was a desire to have much closer communication between those organizations that aren’t consortium members and those that are. Someone initially proposed Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyers for the coming season unaware that they were playing with the symphony this year. This represents something of a missed opportunity for the symphony since they have played in at least one of our member’s venues before and could have partnered to take the performance there. (Though it ain’t cheap and given the symphony’s recent financial problems, it was probably more prudent to do as they had.)

Having heard how great the concert was, member organizations seem likely to pursue presenting the trio alone. People expressed regrets that the two weeks notice they received in speaking with agents didn’t provide the opportunity participate in the tour this time around. The problem of duplicating another local arts entity’s efforts has been an ongoing one. Any show that doesn’t have an agent or rights holder monitoring it for geographic conflicts, Shakespeare’s shows for example, has the potential of popping up more than once as a local offering. In some areas groups try to get together and alert each other to future plans. But even that arrangement might not be effective if groups need to postpone their final decision making until later.

That said, we all get tons of emails every day alerting us to routing opportunities. It is amazing that there are actually some acts touring whose plans we haven’t heard about.

Next Time, Ravel On Tabla

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I went to see Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer perform with the Honolulu Symphony this weekend. I had heard an interview with Zakir Hussain about the project on PRI’s The World a week or so earlier and was intrigued by the description of the project. (There is another interview and video here. Scroll down a little.) When I saw they were coming to a concert hall near me, I hopped on the computer to order tickets.

It was really a wonderful performance and a lot of fun. There were some encounters I had and some comments I overheard that were illuminating to me. Most of them weren’t really about the Honolulu Symphony in particular. From what I have heard they are pretty much industry wide practices.

Actually, the first incident I never expected and I don’t think had any reflection on the symphony or industry at all. The first half of the program was Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A, Op. 90. Apparently there was more than just coughing going on during the piece because as soon as I exited the door into the side hall, I walked into two guys arguing. One suggested they take it outside and the other moved outside. The first guy’s girlfriend restrained him from going outside. I don’t know how that developed so quickly except the second guy said something about having a skin condition so maybe he was scratching a lot during the performance.

Maybe Mendelssohn just inspires violence. That final movement was played a little more energetically than I anticipated.

Anyway, having avoided a scuffle, I made my way to the Italian ice line. A group near me was talking about the performance and one person wondered where Messrs. Fleck, Hussain and Meyer were. He was a Fleck fan and came specifically to see him perform. From the way he spoke, he thought he was coming to a Bela Fleck concert where the symphony was contracted to back him rather than Fleck being the symphony’s invited performer.

Had you visited the website, you might get the impression the guest artists were performing first from the way the information was ordered. (see below)

fleck screen grab

A woman in the party noted the program listed the Mendelssohn first but she thought the trio would be participating in that piece.

I have to confess made similar assumptions. Even though the order in the program was reversed from the website, the trio’s names were listed so prominently, for a moment I thought maybe they were playing in the Mendelssohn. Then I began to wonder if there had been enough time for them to rehearse with the symphony to do a credible job. (Well, if I am really being truthful, I thought they were going to be playing Ravel. If you notice there is a Ravel quote on the screen capture above I had it in my head I might get to hear Bolero interpreted on the tabla, banjo and double base. You gotta admit that could be cool. )

Then I remembered something I had read on a blog this past spring/summer. I thought it was either an entry or a comment on one of my Inside the Arts compadres blogs, but I couldn’t find it. (Happily link to it if someone points it out.) In any case, someone wrote something to the effect that the common practice of Pops concerts was to make you sit through classical to get to the featured pops artist.

In any case, the people I was standing near didn’t sound as if they felt they had been hoodwinked, but did sound a little mystified about the experience. I am sure their concerns were forgotten in the second half of the evening. I am hardly an expert on the music, but I found the piece Meyer wrote for their three instruments very engaging. They played a couple more pieces, did their bows and then came back for four encores.

It was a conversation I overheard walking out to the parking lot that I hoped was not widely held. The people behind me pondered if the orchestra musicians might be angry about the recent financial difficulties because they were so stiff and emotionless compared to the guest artists which one woman described as looking as if they were having fun. One of her companions suggested the orchestra musicians were probably required to maintain a discipline like soldiers.

I imagine that isn’t too far from the truth. Bela Fleck nodded his head and mouthed the tabla beats as Hussain played and exchanged a look with Meyer that seemed to say “he is kicking butt.” Hussain grooved out while Fleck was playing. (Meyer was profile to me so I couldn’t see what he was doing as well.) Having an entire orchestra exhibiting their individual reactions to a performance is likely to get distracting if the focus is supposed to be on the music.

During the performance, I had some interesting conversations with the woman next to me. I think she thought I had some sort of expertise in classical music or at least the attendance experience because I correctly guessed that the people lined awkwardly along the edge of the stage and the walls of the seating area were there to perform “The Star Spangled Banner.”

She told me the best place to sleep was in the orchestra hall. I suggested that it was an expensive undertaking to spend so much only to sleep and it might be better to buy music. She told me she could never experience the quality she was that night because she didn’t have an expensive stereo system.

I don’t know that she actually slept, but she did spend the first half with her eyes closed and her hand across them. I can’t imagine she comprises a significant untapped niche for orchestras. For me the encounter just proved that we can never entirely understand the nuances that provide people with enjoyment while attending events.

Near the end of the performance, everyone rose to give Messrs. Fleck, Hussain and Meyer a standing ovation. I didn’t stand because I was pretty sure they weren’t done yet and had held some great stuff in reserve. My new friend turned and asked, “Wasn’t that good enough for you to stand?” When they were done, and don’t get me wrong they did confirm my suspicions, I felt a little obligated by her earlier question to stand and make a comment that now I was ready to stand.

I felt a little insincere doing it. I generally have no problem keeping my seat and clapping enthusiastically while the world rises around me. But I have never had anyone looking to me for leadership and confirmation. In retrospect, I am not sure if they deserved it or I just succumbed to the pressure.