How to Build an Audience

I think that any music teacher should be concerned if his or her concerts are only drawing in a small amount of audience members.  Not only is it disheartening for the students if they just worked on their music for months to only perform it for an audience of 50 when the auditorium can hold 5 times as many people, but it also does not look good to the administrators.  Music teachers are constantly trying to prove the value of their program to administration and a small audience turn out to concerts is not going to help the cause.  So what can we do?

First off, build a bigger ensemble.  The more students in the ensemble, the more parents and guardians that will be in attendance at concerts.  It also doesn't hurt to have more bodies in your program!

Secondly, low hanging fruit.  My college orchestra director always gave a speech during the rehearsals before an upcoming concert about how we needed to reach out to the all the low hanging fruit in ours lives (family, friends, relatives, teachers, co-workers, roommates) and tell every one of them about our concert.  It made sense, we saw these people almost every day and had contact with them so it was easy to tell them about our concert.  Since we knew them personally it made it easier for those people to come to our concerts, maybe not to see the ensemble but to see the individual play.  Most of the people close to us in our lives know we are involved in music and a concert would be a good chance for them to see what we have been working on.  The other half of this is getting strangers to come to our concert.  My college orchestra director had the whole orchestra write their own 1 minute "elevator speech" so that everyone would be prepared to sell the concert to any person they met.

In order to get people in the door, we as directors need to push our students (sometimes very hard) to talk about their show and hopefully they have all worked hard enough and would want to share their hard work with family and friends because it is something they are proud of.  It is the student's time to show off what they can do.

Furthermore, in building a music program around a community it helps to get your students playing and performing in the community.  If the ensemble is active in the community then the concerts will not just be school events, but community events.  If we are willing to share our music, people will listen.  Hopefully over time a tradition can be built around the community coming together to attend concerts and celebrate the hard work that our music students do.

Creating a Love for Music

As a music teacher, the big question that I face is how can I create a love for music and performing in my program?  I recently watched a documentary called "Thunder Soul" which is about the Kashmere Stage Band, an all black high school jazz/funk band that became a national sensation in the 70's.  The band was lead by director Conrad O. Johnson or "Prof" and the band won many jazz band competitions and even recorded top selling albums.  It takes a special kind of person to take a group of high school students and make them into a professional band.  Johnson believed that if his students could play with the same quality as a professional, then they would stick with their music.  He gave his students a means to be amazing and he pushed them and challenged them to be the best they could be.  These high expectations are what some of the members said "saved their lives."  Many of the members of the band did not have father figures in their lives and were not motivated or committed to school but Johnson became a father figure all of his students and he trained and shaped his student's minds.  He gave them something that they could lean on for the rest of their lives.  He believed that there was no limit to a child's ability to play music, so he set high goals and inspired them to put everything into it and he could see the future inside of each of his students.

Johnson not only inspired his students, but he has also inspired me to be the the teacher that could have such a profound effect on his students.  To create a love for music I must remember that every child can play music and like Johnson said, there is not limit to a child's ability to play music.  I have to believe in my students because in some cases they might not believe in themselves or their family might not believe in them.  Giving a student that hope will motivate them to continue playing.  I want my students to know that they are part of something great and that they are representing the school and the community and that they are creating an identity for themselves and their home.  Music is extremely powerful, even if students do not continue to pursue music after graduation, they still have something to lean on for the rest of their lives that many people are not lucky enough to have.  My goal is to create a life long love and appreciation for music and be able to open a new world for students to explore and be a part of.