The new OSO season

I attended the Oregon Symphony's 2008-9 season preview event tonight, having been asked to share a few words about what makes me 'excited' about the contemporary works we'll be performing next year. Since I got bumped due to time constraints (and the obviously correct need for less words, more wine), I'll share here the gist of what I had intended to say there....

These days, the paradigm at the OSO is audience growth, and the easiest way to accomplish that is via tried and true repertoire. That programming philosophy is typified by the all-Tchaikovsky program that is slated for next season, as well as the Beethoven 9th, Brahms 3rd, Rachmaninoff 3rd, etc.... I understand the reason for this strategy, and support the idea that our organization needs to take this approach to build its case for community relevance in terms of audience numbers. I'm also fully confident that we have the right manager in Elaine Calder, a smart leader who really gets what this orchestra should be about in Portland. Combined with Carlos Kalmar's emphatic leadership of the orchestra, I'm confident that our performances will continue to impress everyone who attends the concerts.

So.....what's not to love????

I guess it depends on what you want from your orchestra. As Carlos mentioned in his comments this evening, the OSO audience consists of multiple constituencies, and you just can't please all the people all the time. I'm wondering, though, if we're finally ready to start moving beyond that mindset. I'm seeing more and more examples of orchestras who are committing major parts of their seasons to introducing and educating their audience about the important work of living composers. Marin Alop's work with the Baltimore Symphony to include the Composers in Conversation series looks fantastic. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't do it if they didn't think they could sell tickets. What can we learn from their approach? Also, orchestras up and down the west coast are putting great resources into developing audiences for new works, from LA to Seattle. It can be done.

I'm so glad that my orchestra has chosen to commission my friend Tomas Svoboda to compose a new piece for next year. I also think it's a shame that it will be the only piece in the entire season that is of our current century, which is already 8 years old! Just here in Portland alone, we have a thriving scene in contemporary art, theater, dance, and writing. The audiences are here, waiting for the right reason to start their relationships with this music. Are we ready to be that kind of matchmaker?

I've been so fortunate to get to know so many composers who are doing great work, whose life stories are so compelling, whose music is important to hear because it reveals who we are. For example, working with and getting to know Chen Yi has been a transformative experience for my colleagues, myself, and our Third Angle audience. We've been moved by the earnest beauty and tremendous energy in her music, and find that our lives are forever changed by knowing her. And there are many, many others who tantalize us with their musical perspectives on our current culture. I want our symphony audience to be just as tantalized.....

I recently came across the following quote by my new favorite music writer, Alex Ross (if you haven't already, go buy "The Rest is Noise"), which I think sums it up pretty well why I feel lucky to be a musician at the beginning of the 21st century, and why all hope is not lost:

"Classical music is always dying, ever-ending. It is an ageless diva on a non-stop farewell tour, coming around for one absolutely final appearance. It is hard to name because it never really existed to begin with—not in the sense that it stemmed from a single time or place. It has no genealogy, no ethnicity: leading composers of today hail from China, Estonia, Argentina, Queens. The music is simply whatever composers create—a long string of written-down works to which various performing traditions have become attached. It encompasses the high, the low, empire, underground, dance, prayer, silence, noise. Composers are genius parasites; they feed voraciously on the song matter of their time in order to engender something new. They have gone through a rough stretch in the past hundred years, facing external obstacles (Hitler and Stalin were amateur music critics) as well as problems of their own invention (“Why doesn’t anyone like our beautiful twelve-tone music?”). But they may be on the verge of an improbable renaissance, and the music may take a form that no one today would recognize. For now, it is like the “sunken cathedral” that Debussy depicts in one of his Preludes—a city that chants beneath the waves." (Alex Ross)

The new OSO brochure says "We've been listening to you.....", and the season reflects that kind of focus group tested approach. I'm sure it will sell more tickets. But what about the part of the musical world that our audience doesn't yet know about, the world of the artists who are currently using the orchestral canvas to speak truth about the world?