It’s always interesting reading about the various ideas people have in order to increase the attendance of younger people going to classical music concerts. Justin Davidson, guest blogging on Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise, recently offered his perspective on some methods orchestras are trying out (towards the end of his post). I’m in agreement that affordable tickets are one of the key ways to get more young people going to concerts. It was the exact thing I was thinking when I read Greg Sandow’s post on the topic. Jen Horne’s post over at a collective music educators blog agrees as well. Making the concert experience less elitist is another tactic that is often discussed. I haven’t heard anyone calling for orchestras to ditch their tuxedos and go for the Evo Morales look, but some occasional changes in venue, and decorum could make classical music concerts more appealing to people who are currently reluctant to attend and could attract younger people. I wonder what would happen if more venues worked with the model that The Stone uses?
Unfortunately, we rarely hear of young people being asked what would interest them in going to concerts. I’m not promoting using youth to market to youth, or calling for eliminating artistic directors and holding American Idol-esque voting for all concert programming (though the infusion of direct democracy into what pieces appear on a program could definitely make for some interesting results), but to create deeper relationships between music institutions and public school music programs where students, teachers and the arts world can better understand one another. There do seem to be pockets of collaborative projects here and there but if the time, resources and money that were put into advertising and marketing to people with money to spend were put into educating and cultivating audiences for the future in public school programs we could worry less about the lack of young audiences and focus more on the issues that arise once they are coming!