Nashville: A Bright Spot in the Orchestral World

Last week I joined the Nashville Symphony Facebook fan page and today a post in the Sticks and Drones blog, “Nashville: (Classical) Music City!” also caught my attention. My first full time job was as Third Horn in the Nashville Symphony and my good experience there left me generally more optimistic than some seem to be about Classical music. The music director I performed under, Kenneth Schermerhorn, passed on in 2005. I’ll let Ron Spigelman of Sticks and Drones continue,

Fast forward and after what seems to be an incredible transitional period with Slatkin and the new hall, the NSO appointed Giancarlo Guerrero as music director completing their transition.  To say it has been a success is an understatement!  In this article about their new strategy, it states that their ticket sales for the last two seasons have reached $7 million a year!!!!!  Not only that, they estimate 21% of their single ticket buyers are between 21 and 34 years old.  Both those figures are extraordinary.  So a strategy to reach more people in this age range does not come off as desperation, but more as a logical audience development idea since they are already connecting.

What’s apparent to me with their strategy which includes the use of new media such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube, is that they are having fun, especially Giancarlo!   It also doesn’t come across to me that the target is only the young.  They are introducing a music director with a very different personality from their previous leader, and that is genuine and necessary.  I don’t think anyone would believe by watching the video clips that he is going to be directing traffic (well real traffic) or playing a honky tonk bar, but they will learn that he’s game for anything and enjoys what he’s doing, and will even take some risks.

The Facebook page has links to the four new advertisements, which are also on You Tube. I will agree with Ron Spigelman, this is also my favorite, check it out.