The Purple Cow and the Wind Band
During one of Thursday's Brown Bag seesions, Cindi Johnston-Turner, Director of Wind Ensembles at Cornell University, presented a follow-up to her 2003 session in Jönköping, Sweden. In her original presentation she offered the results of a study in which American band directors shared opinions concerning the wind ensemble's future: Where was our repertoire headed? How could we attract audiences and make our concerts relevant? As Dr. Johnson-Turner herself pointed out, more many questions than answers were raised, but it lead to very stimulating discussions.
In the sequel, Dr. Johnston-Turner has expanded the survey to directors from ten countries, and this time she came armed with a template for success. There are three threads running through the data from the survey: (1) careful, balanced repertoire; (2) outreach and education; (3) vibrant concert experiences. (One of the interesting things about the survey responses was that it would be difficult to match country to quote merely based on the philosophy. At least in a general sense, bands from across the world agree on their mandates.)
A "careful, balanced repertoire" sounds obvious enough, but there is some controversy here. Dr. Johnston-Turner reports that interest in theme concerts seems to have waned since the 2003 report. Though many still believe in them, others are wary of overloading a concert with one style, or of choosing second-rate music simply to satisfy the theme.
There was broader consensus on the "closer" to the concert. A Norwegian band director offered the following psychological rule-of-thumb: "If the end is good, everything is good."
Most directors have embraced the fact that program notes are not enough to educate their audiences. Survey respondents stressed the importance of talking before a piece, and playing excerpts when possible. Dr. Johnston-Turner related several other first-rate ideas. In no particular order: (1) Before a concerto, explaining and demonstrating challenges the soloist faced in preparing the work. (2) An Eastman School of Music commissioning project in which a new work was freely distributed to area schools, who then had the opportunity to work with the composer, and later attended a performance of the Eastman Wind Ensemble performing the work; (3) Using cue cards during a performance to educate audiences on-the-fly. (This strikes me as a pleasantly low-tech alternative to the Palm Pilot program notes utilized by the Kansas City Symphony.)
The third thread concerned providing a vibrant concert-going experience. Suggestions included creating a "spectacle" with opening fanfares, cultivating artistic crossover with dancers and lighting effects, providing entertainment during intermission, and offering concessions à la the orchestra model. The latter idea recognizes what every for-profit theatre and airline already knows: food makes people happy. (More on the orchestral model later.)
The crux of Dr. Johnston-Turner's session was a philosophy to tie these ideas together and apply them in a systematic way. In a word: Marketing. Dr. Johston-Turner admitted she initially found this term "distasteful." After all, aren't we artists? Do we really want to treat what we do the same way Proctor & Gamble treats toothpaste? Indeed, Dr. Johnston-Turner would be the first to admit that once can easily reject the marketing premise. Perhaps once of the advantages of academia is that there are no sales quotas to meet, no box office figures to live up to. Philosophy professors don't conduct focus groups; why should musicians?
But perhaps music is more like a commodity, or a consumer service. In fact, one of the most compelling aspects of Dr. Johnston-Turner's approach is that it encourages innovation, not homogenization. It suggests we stop mass marketing and determine exactly who we're trying to attract (or conversely, who we are trying to be).
Her ideas are based on Seth Godin's book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. In short, Mr. Godin suggests we "create remarkable products that the right people seek out;" that we "stop advertising and start innovating;" and that we establish our brand (i.e., ensemble) as an "ideavirus" that is spread by "sneezers."
I fear this brief summary will be dismissed as pure business-speak, the type of language one would hear at a Holiday Inn "get rich" seminar. It makes more sense, however, if we re-examine the orchestral model that wind bands often struggle to emulate. As Dr. Johnston-Turner commented upon repeatedly (and in fact it was echoed by at least one audience member), perhaps our jealousy of the orchestra's artistic legitimacy is misplaced. Their repertoire is stagnant, and their audiences and endowments are dwindling faster than ours.
Instead of fretting over what the critics think, Dr. Johnston-Turner suggests, we should innovate. As the Purple Cow asks: "What if we found things that are 'just not done' in our organization, and did them?" The real challenge would be to do this while protecting the artistic integrity bands have worked so hard to establish. Again, more questions than answers.
©2005 WASBE