Jim Palermo's blog
1.) Clean off my desk: Those nasty loose leaf papers, all of which represent uneasily solved problems, won’t sort or solve themselves. An hour a day, perhaps before or after regularly scheduled work hours, should do the trick. After a week, I might just have a clean desk.
2.) Deal with my phone call list: Start at the top (calls received longest ago) rather than the end.
3.) Sort through the reams of artist materials I receive weekly: Regularly scheduled listening and score reading sessions should help whittle down the stacks considerably.
4.) Hang those framed photos and posters I’ve had stacked against my office walls since we moved into our Jay Pritzker Pavilion offices in May 2004. I think it’s finally time.
5.) Organize my office CD collection and bookshelves. A simple visit to the container store to buy some organizers should help me get going. Remember, the longest journey starts with but one step, so…it’s one shelf at a time.
Happy New Year!
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I just downloaded the free CSO Mahler Symphony No. 3 (5th movement) and the Rachel Barton/Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Mackenzie Pibroch Suite (3rd movement) and am enjoying both on my new Ipod Nano. Thanks to the CSO and Cedille Records for supplying us with the freebies.
The free MusicGiants downloads aren’t quite ready for consumption but our trusted colleague Angela is working to resolve the issue so you can begin downloading their freebies very soon. Thanks for your patience as we work through the glitches.
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By now you’ve noticed that our chicagoclassicalmusic.org website has been revitalized and re-launched. By now you’ll be registering, hungrily downloading free product, passionately looking for Hot Deals and hopefully saving the site on your “Favorites” list.
But I wonder how many of you realize the significance of this project as a collaboration. Imagine, 14 Chicago area classical music organizations representing chamber music, opera, chamber orchestra, full sized symphonies, Festivals, new music and voice banding together to further the art form, donating product to the cause and just plain being good corporate citizens.
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I recently spent a few days in New York combining business with pleasure. On the business side I attended a meeting at the League of American Orchestras (formerly known as the American Symphony Orchestra League) with colleagues from across the country to discuss issues related to our field. I also spent the better part of three days meeting with artist managers to get caught up on artist happenings and discuss upcoming projects for the Grant Park Music Festival. These meetings are important because direct face to face contact always makes doing business so much easier the next time one finds himself haggling about fees over the phone or email.
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I recently read a fascinating article on Polyphonic.org about “growing” audiences. The marketing consultant Christopher Stager was on a conference audience development panel in London and had some practical advice about how audiences “behave.” He outlined 8 fundamental beliefs he says we should consider when trying to get people into our concert halls.
How many of us think or care about how audiences respond when we plan our seasons? How many of us ask our artistic or music directors for programs with no thought of the marketing and attendance implications?
I am on a list serve discussion group of managers who are members of the League of American Orchestras (formerly known as the American Symphony Orchestra League.) The topic we are currently debating is how music directors, marketing staff and managers should interact and eventually agree on concert programs. The practice in our field varies widely. Gone are the days when music directors turned over programs and said, “Here, go sell it.” Today market pressures require a more collaborative approach.
In my own experience, staying true to one’s institutional priorities, matching those fundamental guiding principles to artistic personnel who share them, and of course employing the art of compromise, all combine in helping achieve those objectives.
The good news as reported by Stager is that overall, repertory is more important than guest artists. That’s good news because guest artist fees, especially for the big names, have skyrocketed past our ability to recoup them at the box office. Stager says the best selling concerts are those that match a big name with a mega popular piece. Yes, Perlman playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto will pack ‘em in.
I always wonder at badly attended concerts why the marketing didn’t work. Then, I realize at all Mozart concerts or when people cram the aisles to hear Boleró that audiences are shrewd, selective consumers. People know what they like and act accordingly. Never underestimate the intelligence of your audience.
Here’s also what I find hopeful: Stager says that “an institution’s unwavering will to present interesting programs – not simply popular ones” builds audiences over time. Great, so we can have our cake and eat it, too, that is, if we do everything else right.
But, since audiences tend to select the familiar and since ticket prices are accelerating beyond inflation, “audiences are less willing to risk the investment in what they don’t know. As ticket prices increase, their trust declines.”
Stager goes on to discuss “where” and “when” we program concerts, with interesting anecdotes to support his opinions. But the most compelling thing he cites as fact is that a solid music education is the main predictor of attendance.
Ta da! Or should I say, “Duh?”
How many of us have asked that question of our audiences? And how many of us are actively marketing to community music schools, conservatory students, or collaborating with those organizations on audience development programs? I don’t do enough of that yet for my organization, certainly at the level the evidence suggests I should.
Stager’s presentation closes on a hopeful note: that Classical music is in transition, not decline. I agree and feel that while our business model may be antiquated and not yet fluid enough to respond to our audiences’ needs, there is a large and loyal market share for our music. The way to reach audiences, the solution, whatever that is, has to be found by each of us on the local level.
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Part of my fall season includes travel to visit other festivals, to check out what colleagues in my field are doing and to study “best practices.” Last week I visited Los Angeles to meet with a colleague at the Hollywood Bowl to see what new and innovative programs they are planning. The Bowl organized The Decemberists national tour last summer, and as you may remember one of those concerts was with the Grant Park Orchestra in Millennium Park. We’ll see what we can cook up together for the future, but it was good to see that amazing Hollywood Bowl operation from a backstage perspective.
I also met with a colleague from the LA Philharmonic to pick her brain about some contemporary music issues, the goal being to find cool new pieces for the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus to perform as part of our Festival.
While in LA, I visited the recently renovated Getty Villa in Malibu. Wow – 
so that’s what you can do with a lot of money. If you haven’t visited the Getty, I highly recommend the experience. This is so LA: the museum is free, but parking reservations have to be made in advance. Since practically no one out there travels without a car, your trip to the Museum is dependent on whether or not you can reserve a parking spot!
I had one celebrity spotting in LA: Ron Rifkin, who plays Sally Field’s brother on the television program Brothers and Sisters. He was out shopping and about to get into one of those SUV/Limo monstrosities, with the help of a burly looking body guard.
I then traveled to Portland, Oregon, to work with our GPMF Principal Conductor Carlos Kalmar and to hear a concert of the Oregon Symphony. After working all afternoon long on Grant Park business, I was pleased to hear the Oregonians in a concert program of Haydn, Berio and deFalla. That Orchestra has made great strides with Carlos at the helm these past four years and it was an impressive performance.
Now, it’s back to work as we put the finishing touches on our 2008 Grant Park Music Festival season -- eight months from now and counting.
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Amy Iwano. I was on a Southwest Airlines flight the other day, off to attend to some family business in Ohio before the Grant Park Music Festival is scheduled to swing into action later this week. Leafing through Spirit Magazine, the Southwest Publication designed to keep our minds off turbulence and on happy, interesting thoughts, I happened upon an article featuring the Chicago Chamber Musicians’ own Amy Iwano.
The subtitle reads, “A musician (and mother) picks the best classical albums for kids.” Since Amy is an expert on chamber music AND kids, I urge you to pick up a copy this month to see what she has to say. If you don’t have access to a Southwest flight this month, check out the article online by clicking here. Go Amy.
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I guess I shouldn’t be offended. Someone named Nunpuncher posted a strange and funny blog on Tiny Mix Tapes NEWS about The Decemberists upcoming orchestral tour, one concert which is here at Millennium Park with the Grant Park Orchestra. It seems that Mr. or Ms. Nunpuncher thinks the band’s orchestral tour is a serious problem, and worse, next they’ll be abusing cocaine. 
The blog blends genuine criticism with tongue and cheek humor, and actually is fun to read, but really, explain WHY you think concerts with orchestras are insanity. You even had to whisper the word “orchestra”, it seemed so offensive.
And lastly, I know it must be a generational thing, but really, the name Nunpuncher? As a product of 12 years of Catholic education, I’d never say or do it! Sisters, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
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Ever wonder what it would be like to DJ at a classical music station? Just ask me sometime after Tuesday, May 22 when I “sit in” as guest host at 98.7 WFMT from 3-7 p.m. with Kerry Frumkin.
OK, I think that must be the coolest job in the universe: playing all the music you 
love the most for people who want to hear it. Speaking with my colleagues at WFMT, I was advised to pick music about which I was passionate, sticking to the repertory and artists I find exciting and meaningful. Too bad I don’t have a week.
Last weekend I went through stacks from my own personal CD collection, thinking about the wonderful morsels I would offer. I wish I could give you some hints, but I will say that there are some old favorites, novel works with great artists, some of whom you know from the Grant Park Music Festival, and some performances many of you never have heard. Tune in, Tuesday, May 22 from 3-7 p.m. and please let me know how I did. Happy listening.
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I am eagerly anticipating the Chicago Opera Theater’s opening night performance (tonight) of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schönberg’s Erwartung. Wearing my Chicago and COT cheerleader outfit today, here are my top eight reasons you should see these operas:
1.) They are so seldom performed. When again might you have the opportunity to hear these masterpieces live and staged?
2.) Because Sam Ramey is Bluebeard. Did any of you hear his performances of this work with Jessye Norman at the Met in 1989? It was riveting theater and it scared the heck out of me. Spooky stuff. Click here for the cast list.
3.) Because Ken Cazan, who staged COT's haunting Death in Venice, is back.Death in Venice was about the most emotionally engaging opera I have seen in this town (right next to LOC’s Dialogues of the Carmelites this past season) and I can only imagine what he has in store for us this time.
4.) Because Nancy Gustafson is singing. A Vienna State Opera star, and a Chicagoan, it is a real coup for COT to have her.
5.) Because the talented conductor Alex Platt is on the podium. COT reserves its most technically challenging scores for Alex to conduct, and he always “delivers the goods.”
6.) Because COT (thanks to its visionary general director Brian Dickie) gives us high quality and brave theater for Chicago. COT needs and deserves our support to continue presenting operas of this calibre.
7.) Because Krisztina Szabó is singing. This Canadian singer is the real deal.Do you remember her as Ottavia in L'Incoronazione di Poppea? She was stunning. It will be great to hear her stretch into “Judith” territory and take on Bartók’s dramatic score. Her ethnic background is Hungarian so I am counting on her.
8.) Because I said so?
I encourage you to go, go, go – and enjoy.
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