21st Century Conductor

Russell Jones, director of the ABO, invited me to this year's conference in The Sage, Gateshead (below). Afterwards, he asked if I would write my views on the experience.  This I did with some trepidation, as orchestras in Britain are easily among the most innovative in the world, but there were so many questions burning in me after the event, I felt I had to write something. The impetus came from three teenagers in Cologne.

31/1/06

Another ABO conference is over and we're back home, but hopefully not where we started. Let me paint two scenes for you.

Saturday pm - the final session of the conference: things to do on Monday morning, assuming we haven't given ourselves the day off for attending on Saturday.  An empty green folder about health in the workplace, the Music Manifesto, a prize for giving a second performance. We all sit there quietly, nobody wanting to “share“ with the competition.

Monday lunchtime - sitting in my favourite Italian restaurant in Cologne nursing a glass of wine whilst reading Dvorak 8. Three teenagers ask to share my  table. No problem. As I continue reading, the oldest, a girl of 18, tells the two boys, 16 and 13, to keep quiet. Having 3 teens stand on ceremony for me is really making me feel uncomfortable, so I put the score down and continue nursing. The girl asks me what I do. “I'm a conductor“,  beginning a fascinating conversation between us. The older boy plays violin, but has never played in an ensemble. He's going on exchange to a US high school next year and will only then be able to join a school orchestra.  The younger boy, plugged into his ipod,  has just started playing electric guitar in a rock band organised by his teacher. Although he cannot name a single piece of classical music, he loves the sound of the orchestra. The girl asks me when my next performance in Cologne is. We exchange e-mail addresses and I give her my website. I ask if the Guerzenicher Orchester, led by Marcus Stenz here in Cologne, has a youth forum. They've never even heard of them.

What splits us up between ourselves and the public? Who or what are we trying to protect?

- Is it our market value?   Sitting next to a subscriber in the Northern Sinfonia concert on Saturday night, we had a chat at the interval. She said they've been declared Britain's happiest orchestra in the press recently. This has resulted in the players deciding to look serious about music making from now on in case they appeared, in her words „light-weight“. What strange assumption is in place that tells players they cannot enjoy making music? Where's the market research that says audiences prefer po-faced performances? This has got to be a fabrication from us, the industry. Sure, some works aren't always going to inspire a smile - a few Shostakovich symphonies come to mind - but whenever I'm assessing a new score, no matter how complex, dour or obscure it seems, I need to sense the deep underlying passion of the composer, that obsessive, joyful desire to put pencil to paper - or mouse to midi - which drove Shostakovich, Beethoven, and Mozart through their darkest hours. The good stuff always connects us to that joy.

- Is it our identity? One thing we do well, with the same repertoire over and over again, is provide people with a sense of stability in a rapidly changing world. We know where we're at with Mahler. 

Looking at the globalised business world for a moment,  intercultural communication is big news because its easy to mess up an international merger - 70% fail and lose their buyers millions.  The key to success is businesspeople's ability to live in a negotiable „third space“, a place where they are neither simply British, because that only works in Britain nor, for example, Chinese, because they're not.  The orchestra is our third space, constantly mediating between different cultures. We're not French, but we love Debussy, not German ,but love Bach, and so on.

So, how can we further develop the role of local and global cultures in our programming?  All minorities have a track record of giving  disproportionately more to society than their population  size, but only if the mainstream culture has structures in place  to give them that chance. Jewish asylum seekers from the last century  enhanced, and in many cases rescued classical music in the  UK  and US because our mainstream cultures were already compatible  with their experience.  The new EU countries are precisely there to reinvigorate  the economies, thinking and cultures of the founder members. What do we stand to lose by adapting our programming to bring in a new culture, or simply consolidating the identity of our town?

 The biggest fear we face when dealing with another culture is that we will in some way lose our own identity in the process.  The more secure we become in accepting who we are culturally, the easier and more rewarding it becomes to engage with other cultures. Is this the work we have to do with our subscribers and ourselves?  How can we develop the orchestra in its proper role as classical diaspora for today's world?

- Is it our leaders? Yes, its time to look at the flagship icon of the orchestra, the conductor, that mainly white, outwardly heterosexual, often exotic, seemingly middle class master, not mistress of the music.  Do our potential audiences see themselves in that archetype?  As people's daily communication becomes flatter, more fluid and more interested in ideas than status, should we be providing leadership to parallel this, or offering the traditional 19th century model to make us feel as if we're proudly walking out on the 21st century?  Or both?

The session on conductor appraisals was brilliant and eye opening, not least because the conductors in question never appeared to be shown the feedback. The issue of protecting conductor confidence was focal, but this is surely why professional,  objective, anonymous feedback was created  - to communicate problems to the conductor without knocking his/her confidence. If we can live with bad reviews, we can live with constructive criticism. Or maybe saying nothing protects the buyers' market? No investment, no return.

- Is it our audience? The clear message from Katy Raines of Dixon Raines  Associates was that the act of talking and listening proactively with the public, face to face, by phone and e-mail, brings them into the debate about the future of their local  orchestra: no gimmicks, just lashings of ongoing dialogue.

Keeping 2000 people silently listening to a whole concert that we've organised is a very powerful feeling. How do we gain by bringing youth forums, subscribers and communities deeper into that process? How is our management culture using technology to separate us from them, and them from each other?  When we, musicians and management, leave work, how open are we to meeting new people and listening to their musical passions? How far are we willing to persuade consumers to become stakeholders? And isn't combining visionary with democratic leadership styles part and parcel of being a good leader?

Visit The Sage in Gateshead and The Northern Sinfonia at:

http://www.thesagegateshead.org/

Dixon Raines Associates:

www.dixonraines.com

The Music Manifesto:

http://www.musicmanifesto.co.uk/

THe Association of British Orchestras:

www.abo.org.uk