Orchestras Must Adapt, Fogel Says

(first published in The Cincinnati Post May 31, 2005)
   American Symphony Orchestra League president Henry Fogel doesn't call himself a troubleshooter.
   But in his role as leader of the industry's service and advocacy organization, he has made it a mission to be in touch with his constituents.
   "When I took this job two years ago, I said to the board that my view would be different from my predecessors. I did not see how we could be an organization that represents American orchestras if I didn't go out and visit American orchestras."
   Former president of the Chicago Symphony and one of the nation's most respected arts leaders, Fogel, 62, travels all over the country lending his advice and expertise, not just to orchestra managers, but to musicians, board members, volunteers and "the whole group of constituents that comprise an orchestra."
   He comes to Cincinnati Wednesday to give the 2005 Joan Cochran Rieveschl Lecture at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
   Presented by the Fine Arts Fund and the arts administration program at CCM, Fogel will speak at 5 p.m. in Robert J. Werner Hall. His topic will be keeping the arts relevant in a changing society. Admission is free and open to the public. For reservations, call (513) 871-2787.
   On one issue Fogel is crystal clear: American orchestras must adapt.
   "The arts in general are in danger of being marginalized in contemporary culture. The orchestra field though it is now beginning is the last to adapt."
   Opera has adopted supertitles (English captions). Technological advances in stagecraft have revolutionized theater production. "And when I was young, you didn't have an audio guide to walk you through an art gallery."
   The way symphony concerts are presented must respect the art form, Fogel stressed.
"When you're looking at a painting, you can stop and press a button and get told more about it. I don't wish the conductor to stop in the middle of a symphony and tell me the oboe solo is coming. But should conductors or somebody talk for a few minutes before some pieces of music? Yes."
   In the broadest sense, every orchestra's mission is the same, he said "to perform music written for symphony orchestra at the highest level it can and be relevant to its own community."
   How that is interpreted may differ.
   "In my view, an orchestra in a city with a very large latino population cannot ignore that fact in making its programming decisions or in the choice of artists." The same goes for cities with large African-American populations.
   When it comes to enhancements -- free food, singles nights, multi-media -- "the devil is in the details," said Fogel. "In my opinion, experimentation is necessary and by definition, not all experiments will be successful."
   Marketing -- using hip images and tie-ins to popular culture -- involves similar risk. "However, if you experiment and have no failures, you're not experimenting enough. You're not pushing the envelope."
   The view that American orchestras are on the brink of a precipice is incorrect, Fogel said. "In the last five years, when the economy has been really down, we've had nine orchestra bankruptcies, but that's not a lot. There are over 350 professional orchestras in America. In what other industry is the percentage better?"
   Cincinnati has "a unique problem," said Fogel: "Your concert hall is too large. In a city the size of Cincinnati, my guess would be that the appropriate size would be around 2,000. If you have 2,000 people in your hall, it's about 60 percent full and 40 percent empty."
   The role of the music director, while "a key ingredient" in the success of an orchestra, is not the only one, he said. "I don't know that people always know what attracts them to concerts. The reputation and image of both the orchestra and the music director are very, very important. Other important factors include programming and the choice of guest artists, but of course the music director has a lot to say about those."
   An American music director doesn't necessarily have to live in the community and be there year round, "but they should have some connection with the community off the podium. It is not inappropriate to have the music director involved in some community programs and some educational programs. The community should see that person as one of the main faces of the orchestra, rather than just standing up and conducting."
   Having orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic, as many American music directors do, "is to be expected (CSO music director Paavo Järvi accepted the music directorship of the Frankfort Radio Orchestra earlier this month). The question is as much the quality of time as the quantity of time spent in the community."
   A crucial problem symphony orchestras must address, said Fogel, is the "culturally aware non-attender. This means a person who goes to the theater, to an art museum, maybe even to the opera or ballet, but doesn't come to the symphony. If you bring those people into a room and do a serious, professionally well designed focus group discussion, what comes up over and over again all over the country, in small cities and big cities, are the same kinds of words:
   'It's for the fur coat crowd. It's stuffy. It's too formal. I don't know enough about music. It's intellectual, not emotional. I might applaud at the wrong time.'
   "I'm, sorry to say that particularly in the first half to two-thirds of the 20th-century orchestras kind of cultivated that image.
   "Now it's biting them in the behind."