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.
Hi Dylan,
ReplyDeleteYou make some particularly important points in your posting for this particular blog prompt, many of which we would all do well to take into consideration. I think that for performers in any artistic discipline, if they have toiled and agonized over repertoire or material for months on end, they want to put on a memorable, energized and powerful performance for as many people as possible. Consequently, as you allude to, walking on stage for an audience of only fifty people is about as disheartening as disheartening could be. I think that we have all been in that position and certainly aim to avoid having this be a regular occurrence for our students. Initially, the reality is that we might all have to experience one or two concerts where audience numbers are on the lower end of the scale, if for no other reason than so we have a starting point to build up from. I am right with you when you discuss building a bigger ensemble. Going back to one of the very first discussions that we had in Professor Schneider's Music in the Secondary School class, after we finally met in person, we all have to decide if we want to be a shepherd or technician. My personal belief is that one can be both, because there are plenty of schools out there, a handful that I can name in the Greater Hartford area alone, which have a huge percentage of the overall school population active in some area of the music program. Are all of these students seeking to pursue a career in music? By no means, but almost all of them could be considered dedicated, focused and invested in what they do as a member of the band, orchestra, choir, jazz ensemble or multiple performing organizations. When the ranks of your ensembles increase, logic would dictate that audience numbers will build as well, at least to a certain extent. Your college orchestra director hits the nail on the head when discussing the concept of "low-hanging fruit". As musicians, I think that many of us are too reluctant to hide behind our instrument(s), allowing these "tools" to do the talking for us. If we hope to survive as performers or "entertainers", we must have the ability to be personable. We have to put ourselves out there and be willing to self-promote, at times shamelessly. This is an aspect of our "business" that I have never enjoyed, but it is a necessary evil, as the saying goes. The idea of an "elevator speech" is terrific and I definitely plan to keep that in my back pocket for future students whom I have the privilege of working with. Particularly by the time that learners get to the secondary level, they need to be comfortable speaking publicly and interacting with peers, teachers and superiors. Putting together a blurb or "blast" about one's event, which highlights only the key aspects of the "happening", is an invaluable skill for anyone to have. All of our ensembles deserve to experience the joy and jubilation of showcasing that which they have struggled so hard to take on. Once we get people in the door, our chances of bringing them back in the future increase monumentally. I couldn't have said it better myself, when you outline the idea of making an ensemble a visible part of the community. When this happens, the community develops a sense of pride within and about the organization, realizing that it only serves to benefit them. The entity becomes a source of positivity for everyone, ultimately leading to a rich tradition, which as you say will hopefully continue for generations to come. Thank you for sharing these wonderful thoughts my friend. I enjoyed reading your writing!
-Matt Chasen-
Should a director be judged on concert attendance?
ReplyDeleteMr. Schneider, I personally do not think that directors should be judged on concert attendance, but concert attendance is an easy way for an administrator to quickly measure the success of an ensemble and its director. I'm not implying that administrators only come to concerts to take attendance but that it is natural to notice when an auditorium that holds 300 is only filled with 50 people and that an administrator might remember that. I would rather have my administrator remembering a sold out show and be concerned with getting a bigger venue for the next concert, rather than have an administrator remember an empty auditorium and reconsider the value of the program. Overall a director needs to impress and prove that music a viable subject that the students and community benefit from and I think that good concert attendance is a good way to do that.
ReplyDeleteMatt-
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you enjoyed some of these ideas, I hope they help you in the future. They are great methods that I have been lucky enough to learn and I think they not only benefit concert attendance and audience building, but also serve the students. These ideas teach students to take pride in what they do and to be proud of the work they put in. It also helps them communicate with family, peers, and even people they may not know which is an invaluable tool to have in life.