2/12/08

I'm Pretty Sure This Is Not How It's Done

You know Tom. He’s the seemingly automated friendly friend to everyone on MySpace, letting people know the newest news about the site. He’s also the only friend of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. How sad.

If the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has only one friend (Tom) on its MySpace.com profile, it’s not for a lack of trying.

It really isn’t, I suppose.

Programming, for example, has become quite progressive since Robert Spano took the helm.

Apparently, Spano’s programming a bunch of music by “new” American composers. (I prefer “living,” but, hey, that’s me.)

This article by Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer James Paulk, describes the lengths to which Spano strives to open up his orchestra’s repertoire, hoping to entice the younger crowd to visit the concert hall. He cites performances of works by John Adams and John Corigliano, as well as standards like Barber’s Adagio for Strings, which

Still,

Yes, still.

[...] has a power to connect directly with the soul.


Click here to see if he’s right. Did it connect directly with your soul?

Paulk says that, yes, these are relatively safe choices, but still, STILL, wonders why more youthful folk don’t jump aboard.

It was heartening to see a number of 20- and 30-somethings in the audience, though one in front of [Paulk] was busy with her text messages for most of the night, a behavior that apparently comes with the demographic.

I’m not exactly suggesting a corrective, but Paulk, and perhaps the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra too, sounds a little disconnected from reality. You know, the interwebs and the automatic mail and stuff.

Perhaps she’ll join Tom on the MySpace blog.

I bet she’s already friendly with Tom. I also bet that she will never become one of the ASO’s friends on MySpace. And I also, also bet that she doesn’t call it “the MySpace blog.”

2 comments:

Aaron said...

I wonder if Paulk gets cash from the ATM machine.

Anonymous said...

You know what needles my britches?

The conflation of the state of classical/new music with orchestra attendance.

If you did a sampling of audiences for new music ensembles, many of which perform in alternative venues, you'd find that demographic which is missed (I guess) in orchestra concerts. These newspaper folks never seem to grasp that maybe there is a paradigm shift going on -- that the concert music the younger generation is interested in isn't happening at a concert hall.

When you throw a 7 minute John Adams piece on a concert with the Victor Herbert cello concerto and Dvorak 7, it doesn't always (ever?) create a mad rush of Reagan babies to the hall.

But covering that would require these guys to go to crazy alternative venues.

AnthonyS (a Carter baby, thank the stars)