<p>musica-
Yeah, they are doing something right, and you are correct, some of it has to do with the revitalization of downtown LA. I did a lot of wandering down there, it was fun to still see buildings over in the jewelry and garment district that looked like scenes from a Noir movie, though I suspect give it 10 years and those will be gone…but it isn’t just that, the area around Lincoln Center, the whole upper west side, is now very high end and gentrified, and they don’t attract much of a younger crowd. I knew it was LA, I kid you not, when at one of the bars in the concert hall, there were two young women, dressed very stylishly, who were, well,obviously into each other, something not likely to see at the NY Phil… Someone I know was relating a story about the NY Phil, apparently either their son or nephew or something conducted the NY Phil not long ago, and the person said that when he was growing up, the kid used to conduct his stuffed animals, and my acquiantance’s thought was the animals were probably a lot more alive to conduct…</p>
<p>The groups have to realize that the old models are not working, that serialist music is not going to draw young audiences in droves, and that they have to figure out how to make it relevant to them. The vision of going to the symphony or opera as this stuffy, elitist place to go, has always been out there, but one of the reasons governments in europe support the arts is because culturally they are still relevant; while pop music and dance music and such are hugely popular, they can attract younger people to the programs. I saw a video of the Berlin Philharmonic at their summer home, and they had a crowd of 25,000, and a lot of them were young/younger, not all geriatric.What amazes me is they don’t get it, I saw a concert marketed to young people (meaning kids in their 20s, 30’s), and they had an organ piece that was atonal and difficult to listen to as the lead piece…</p>
<p>I remember reading about Walter Damrosch, who late 19th/early 20th century, was conductor of the Philharmonic society in NYC (predecessor of the NY Phil). The orchestra would travel all over the country, playing small towns, you name it, and they would do things like in the performance do popular songs like “the Arkansas Traveller” or Stephen Forster tunes, along with Bach and Beethoven. Maybe that is the kind of spirit needed…while nights like playing live to “Lord of the Rings” is fun, or having a concert with someone like Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, it might be better to have regular concerts that mix the heavy with the light…</p>