Beware the artistic bait and switch scam

Over the past several years, a number of US ballet and opera companies that used live instrumental music have made the decision to classify that segment as a frill and subsequently cut it out of stressed budgets. As recent as February, 2009 I published an article that examines these issues among smaller budget ballet and opera companies in the Milwaukee-Madison-Chicago region. At that time, one of the four groups examined made the decision to eliminate live music from their 2009/10 season.

In situations where the ballet or opera company uses musicians employed under a collective bargaining agreement, decisions to eliminate live music aren’t as cut and dry. During the 2005/06 season, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater endured a public and nasty labor dispute over the decision to forgo live music (we examined that situation in detail as it unfolded). Ultimately, live music made it back into productions but not long after that incident, a similar situation erupted in Atlanta.

Even if you remove the artistic argument, the UK situation should provide some valuable guidance with regard to proper marketing: If you’re producing a performing arts product that uses recorded or entirely synthesized music to replace what was originally written for live instrumental accompaniment, you had best make it painfully clear in all advertisements lest your profits suffer the wrath of patrons scorned.

But after reading all of the comments and opinions other Inside The Arts authors, and taking some time to think about it, I do have a few thoughts; but to be fair to Joe, I really shouldn’t paraphrase his questions. Here’s what he originally wrote:

“Orchestras have some of the best trained and skilled musicians around. Why do they primarily confine themselves to a certain genre and periods of music? Why aren’t they playing all the best music out there? I know most groups have a pops series, but that still barely scratches the surface of the available material and it is separate from their main product. And really, why are the pops separate?”

What I think Joe is asking about touches on a very old but relevant discussion which can trace its roots back to the rise of the motion pictures business and the resultant commercial music business. From that point forward, the world of traditional classical music and commercial music began to grow apart (in spite of the fact they are based on the same musical language).

Harbor is safe, but it also makes you an easy taget.

Sure, there have been plenty of prominent composers that have dabbled in writing for film but they don’t make a living at it. And since it is human nature to use the shoulders of others to reach to new heights, traditional classical music institutions began elevate their status by marginalizing the accomplishments of commercial composers and musicians. An interesting divergence to this was Bernstein who was able to master commercial classical music and the likes of Mahler and Beethoven. He had the right skill set to stand across the classical/commercial chasm without losing his footing.

Nonetheless, as Joe points out, most classical musicians have enough skills to perform just about any style of music out there. If they don’t have familiarity with certain styles by the time they leave music school, it won’t take long to acquire them. Still, Joe would likely interject here asking again why pops series even exist and why they feature a relatively narrow cross section of available music.

I’m glad my straw man representation of Joe is so instant because he allows me to bring up my final observation. There isn’t a wide variety of pops music out there because most of what’s written sucks. There’s not much money in it and what orchestra is going to take a chance on someone to write quality pops music. For non-commercial composers, they risk marginalizing their reputation and for good commercial composers, there’s more money to be made in Hollywood and the video game business.

In the end, orchestras continue to program commercial music from a few well known names in pops concerts and standard repertoire plus music written by living composers who stay away from the commercial circuit in masterworks and new music series. In fact, there’s no good reason why they should do this other than because it has always been done that way.

In twenty years, I would like to believe that we’ll see more gray and less black and white but then again, this is the classical music business. For my money, I love commercial composers like Ron Jones (alive) and Cal Stalling (not so alive); in fact you can read more about how Ron and other popular commercial composers think about this topic in an interview article I published back in July, 2004.

Ultimately, it all boils down to how well music is written/arranged for the vehicle known as the symphonic orchestra. Sometimes, Jimi Hendrix sounds great on violin, other times it sucks; in the case of the latter, orchestras should stay away from it regardless if it was written 30 or 300 years ago. Everything else related to labels and categorization is just semantics.

• Bill Eddins
• Holly Mulcahy
• Ron Spigelman
• Comments to Joe’s original post

Postscript: for you quote junkies out there, the title is from William Shedd.

The many blogging faces of Jaosn Heath

Check out more of Jason’s blogs:
Arts Addict
Double Bass Blog
Jason’s Twitter page

If that weren’t enough, it’s simply fun to use; so much so that I have to consciously check that I’m not getting carried away with it and lose track of time. If you’re a visual oriented learner, visuwords is for you so to all the professionals out there who get tired of using the same old bag of terminology but relish the idea of using MS Word’s synonym feature about as much as getting a physical from Dr. Mengele, add visuwords.com to your favorites.

P.S. Don’t forget to double-click suggested words – it’s fun watching the screen explode in an array of suggestions!

As a result, I took some time to update both pages so they project an image that sums up what the blog is all about. When revising the blog’s about copy, I was struck by how little that needed to be changed. When Adaptistration was launched in 2003, the business was amidst one of the toughest economic climates experienced in decades.

At that time, orchestras were making short-sighted decisions and labor relations were turning sour. More than five years later and things haven’t seemed to change much as a new economic downturn threw philosophical gasoline on the remaining embers of panic driven decision making process from the post 9/11 state of mind.

If nothing else, one significant change made to the blog’s manifesto was to the change mantra, which used to read:

“Change is difficult, change is turbulent, and change is painful. But change is necessary for survival.”

Although all of that is just as true now as it was then, the particularly gloom ridden outlook of today’s orchestra environment warrants the following updated version:

“Change can be difficult. Change can be turbulent. Change can be painful.
Change brings success. Change brings order. Change brings comfort.
Most importantly, change is necessary for survival.”

In addition to Adaptistration’s new “About” page, you can find a heavily revised “About-Me” page.

About Adaptistration

About Drew McManus

View from the Pritzker Choral Terrace

The flash based feature provides a pictorial slideshow of concert events selected from the organization’s entire history. It’s easy to forget just how much impact an orchestras can have on its respective community so having something like online historical resources is always a good idea; think of it as a sort of on-demand economic and cultural impact resource (although you really should have those up on your site as well).

I had the pleasure of attending the GPMF 75^th Anniversary concert on Wednesday, 7/1/09 which recreated the very first Grant Park orchestral concert from 1935 (click for the program). Although unusually cool for Chicago in July, the concert was a real delight due to the fact that I had the opportunity to sit in the choral terrace directly behind the orchestra. Although I had been on the Pritzker Pavilion stage a number of times, it was the first opportunity to be there during a live concert. Needless to say, although the views from the fixed seats and lawn are fantastic, the view from the stage is even better.

You don't want to know what happens if you break the rules.

Based on how much my fellow patrons were enjoying the experience, I hope the GPMF folks plan on allowing patrons in the choral terrace from time to time. Granted, with crowds in the neighborhood of 10,000+ per concert, you want to make certain everyone knows how to behave and based on the “Rules of the Choral Terrace” sheets liberally posted throughout the seating area, it seems that was something the GPMF folks thought of well in advance.

Overall, the stage’s view was matched only by the acoustics (thanks to the fastidious acoustic design efforts from the folks at Talaske). From my seat (center, second row from the bottom) balance was very good. I didn’t have to strain to pick up any section or player and everything came through clearly which was a bit surprising as I expected my proximity to the percussion would cause that section to bury the orchestra from time to time, but that didn’t transpire.

Here’s a small taste of what it’s like to sit in on a Grant Park Music Festival concert event:

A view to the left...

A view to the right...

A view at night...

Another choral terrace patron capturing the moment

The GPMF horn and (most of the) bass sections

We’ve been examining these very same issues since the onset of the economic downturn last fall (here, here, here, and here to name a few) but they all contain the same basic message: don’t make long term plans based on incomplete information. Kaiser’s article goes on to expand on another critical point we’ve been discussing: revenue over expense.

“These approaches to dealing with the current recession all assume that cost is the underlying problem of the arts; conventional wisdom suggests that an arts organization can “save its way to health.”

But this is wrong, dangerously wrong.

Arts organizations across the world have a revenue problem, not a cost problem. We are a remarkably efficient industry, doing more with less. But we do not yet know how to create the revenue streams we need to do our work in a consistent manner.”

Kaiser points out that in order to enhance revenue performance, arts organizations need to remain true to core artistic values while simultaneously focusing on building your market. I simply can’t count the number of times I’ve written about how this business needs to focus more on creating the market instead of allowing the market to define itself based on nothing more than current ticket buying trends.

If you haven’t read Kaiser’s article, head over and give it a read. If you’re curious about exactly what Kaiser means when talking about creating “good art,” look no further than Matthew Guerrieri’s 2009 Take A Friend To Orchestra month contribution. If this doesn’t spell it out beyond a shadow of a doubt then you might want to look for a job in a different industry.

Frankly, we should all be tired of watching groups hobble themselves artistically and institutionally for years to come via panic driven decision making processes. It is time to stand up and push back.

Although the Calatrava design may have been in the casket before the economy took a turn for the worse, those events almost certainly served as the nails sealing it shut. On one hand, Russell acknowledges these realities in his article.

“Spectacle, in great boulevards and grand buildings, is one of the great pleasures of city living. Still ASO’s leadership looks wise for recognizing that the times are simply not right for Calatrava’s design.”

Yet, the majority of the article focuses on the overall value of a landmark city project implemented using an efficient process. In due course, Russell sums up the value of quality projects in a simple sentence.

“Orchestra halls are expensive, but they don’t wear out, and the good ones only increase in stature over time.”

Russell goes on to point out that although fiscal prudence certainly has its place, it can also lead to decisions that can hobble an orchestra for decades.

“On the other hand, a new site and a new architect should not be a license to lowball. That’s how Atlanta got the characterless Woodruff Center and the lifeless Symphony Hall.”

The ASO has been flirting with the notion of becoming the latest member of the Big Boys Club (AKA Big Seven) for years and if Calatrava’s design were successfully implemented, it would have undoubtedly been one of the last benchmarks confirming the ASO as an artistic force to be reasoned with. Instead, the group will take a few steps back, reassess their situation, and ultimately move forward in a different direction.

Perhaps the decision to move away from the Calatrava design is for the best since the capital campaign has more than its fair share of troubles, but it is good to see Russell provide some much needed perspective on the issue. If nothing else, at least the Greater Atlanta Metropolitain community is in a better position to understand the gravity of their decisions.

Note to the city of Chicago: now that the ASO has passed on Calatrava’s design, perhaps he’ll be willing to sell it at a discount. After all, you can lump it into the other building projects planned for when (if?) the city wins the 2016 Olympics.

Create a slick Flash-driven site that takes more than a minute to load.
Yes, Flash looks cool but it won’t do you any good if it takes forever to load or locks up a browser because the user doesn’t have the latest update.

Fail to include a ticket purchase link on respective concert event pages.
OK, this is an oldie but goodie and I’m sorry to say that I still encounter sites that make users dig around for a link to purchase a ticket. Really, do people need to have this one pointed out?

Make users register before they can peruse ticket information.
User email addresses are rapidly becoming more important than addresses or phone numbers but you shouldn’t force website visitors to provide an email address before than can discover whether or not tickets are available and if so, which seats and how much they cost.

Set music to play automatically.
I might get some flak over this one, after all, orchestras are all about the music but forcing music on users visiting your site from a work computer or in an otherwise quiet location only trains them to stay away. Closely related to this annoyance is locating the play/stop and volume controls for your embedded music player in a hard to find location.

Make the font color for links nearly indistinguishable from the regular font color.
Nothing makes me leave a website faster than making it next to impossible to identify links. There’s a reason link colors have contrast so why ignore years of proven practice by intentionally making link colors indistinguishable from non-link text? A similar annoyance is not only making link colors indistinguishable but also failing to make the mouseover font color different – this one seems to be employed by web designers that are particularly sadomasochistic.

Littering copy with in-text advertising.
This is the particularly odious practice where text associated with an advertisement is identified by a double-underline and triggers an in-page window containing advertising content when the cursor is positioned over the corresponding text. The real annoyance here is the pop boxes are difficult to close and appear on a mouseover as opposed to a physical mouse click.

Fail to include a search box.
If you need me to elaborate on this annoyance than you have bigger problems to deal with. Nonetheless, a closely related annoyance is when sites fail to include a search box but place a subscribe box in the location traditionally reserved for search boxes. The result is users enter a search term in what appears to be a search box only to get an error message. More often than not, they’ll simply get frustrated and leave before they figure out what they thought was a search box is some sort of subscription box.

Use widgets that don’t fit within margins or frequently fail to load.
Widgets can be wonderful third party tools when used properly but one common annoyance is using a widget that extends past the margins of a column. At best, it makes the page look sloppy and at worst, if screws up the entire page design. A closely related annoyance is widgets that fail to load more often than not and cause the entire page to freeze (or worse, the browser). I ditched Amazon.com’s affiliate widget years ago for this very reason and I don’t care if they ever fix it, I’m not going through that again and neither should you.

Fail to list hours of operation alongside administrative and box office contact phone numbers.
It doesn’t matter that your office hours have been 9-4 for the past fourteen years and pretty much anyone calling probably knows that from previous experience. Listing office hours is even more important if your hours of operation change between seasons or you have special weekend hours on the day of concert events.

Underlining text that isn’t a link.
Another oldie but goodie, this one seems to be back in fashion. In short, if users have to use trial and error to differentiate links from emphasized text, then you have a problem. The formatting of choice for emphasis is italic or bold, leave underlines for word documents.

So what sorts of website quirks have been annoying you in recent months?

To avoid these mistakes and more when designing your orchestra website, pick up an Orchestra Website Review subscription at Adaptistration Premium.