Getting back to our roots

How did all of this transpire? In the very American way of building an audience person by person and achieving artistic greatness one concert at a time. So what’s happened, why are the concert halls half empty and why are seasoned cultural institutions failing by the dozen? Because we’ve forgotten how to build. The orchestra industry has been so pleased with its success and has enjoyed good times for so long that its executive leadership has forgotten what made them an “institution” in the first place. They’ve forgotten that at its heart, an orchestra is still a grass roots organization.

An orchestra executive once charged me with being unfit to participate in the established orchestra administration business. “You won’t fit in here,” he said. “you’re really just a builder”. But that’s the problem with our orchestras, they’ve become so established they don’t even see that it still takes grass roots efforts to maintain their ensembles.

I once heard an orchestra marketing director giving an account of why there was only a 50% turnout at their orchestra’s recent pops concert. “Well our budget for that month was already used up so there was nothing we could do.” This marketing director makes over $75,000 a year and has a staff of four full time employees, but he simply gives up at trying to fill the hall because their marketing department had an overrun on that month’s budget. Why can’t they drum up support for ticket sales by contacting local public and private music teachers? Or how about coordinating with a symphony volunteer and use the knowledge of their neighborhood to help canvas churches, youth groups, social groups, or even political associations (the number of young democrats and young republicans are growing don’t ya know)? Band and orchestra parents associations, PTA’s, book clubs, and health care establishments, the outlets for free advertising go on and on. All it takes is previous preparation, man-hours, and the know-how to get people motivated and excited about your orchestra.

Here’s where the orchestra world can learn something from politics. Regardless how many millions of dollars a political party can raise, they still focus on getting people involved at the grass roots level. Political parties are smart enough to realize that simply because they are popular in a region now, they may not be later. So it’s essential for them to maintain and effective grass roots structure to fall back on in hard times and augment their status in the good times.

Slick marketing campaigns are great and should be a part of every orchestra’s marketing efforts, but they are no substitute for the down-and-dirty grunt work of cultivating grass roots support. Granted it means that you expend more effort per ticket sale but it doesn’t mean you have to spend more money. Orchestra administrations need to stop acting so much like privileged institutions and return to their roots so they can start building again.

So what do you think?