The Concert

peace & light
UBC University Singers & Choral Union
UBC Symphony Orchestra
Graeme Langager, conductor

December 3, 2011
The Chan Centre

I just got home from a UBC Music performance that featured the UBC University Singers, Choral Union, and UBC Symphony Orchestra, all under the direction of Graeme Langager. The concert at the Chan Centre was called peace & light and included Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna and Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem. It was an ambitious program that I thoroughly enjoyed.

This was the first time I’d heard the Lauridsen, althought I was familiar with the a cappella third movement, O nata lux de lumine, as the Cathedral Choir had sung it last week for the Advent Lessons and Carols service. The work as a whole has a gentle introspective quality to it and it was sung and played beautifully by the combined forces, with the University Singers singing the O nata lux on their own.

The Vaughn Williams is one of my favourite choral works. I’ve sung it a few times and always look forward to hearing it performed. Marrying as it does the Latin “Dona nobis pacem” (grant us peace) from the Agnus Dei of the mass setting with poetry by Walt Whitman and scriptural texts, the work is dramatically powerful. Langager and the choir of 200+ singers and 90-member orchestra were up for the challenge. I was particularly impressed with the clarity of the choir’s diction. Not an easy accomplishment with that many voices! Bravo!

I was very impressed by Langager’s conducting. Always expressive, muscular when necessary, and attentive to detail, he put me at ease as an audience member. Congratulations for scheduling an unusual program in this a season traditionally given over to yet another Christmas concert.

Reconciliation

Reconciliation, the third movement of the Vaughan Williams always moves me.

Vancouver AIDS Memorial

I don’t often “go” to the AIDS Memorial down by what is commonly known in the gaybourhood as “The Fruit Loop.” It’s a beautiful spot and I know it’s there since it’s within a very short city block from us and I skate by it all the time on the Seawall, but make it a destination? Not so much.

Prompted by this being World AIDS Day, I decided to deliver some flowers as a pilgrimage. It was cold, dry, and slightly overcast as I walked down the hill from Davie St, carnations in hand, and I found myself thinking of the friends that I’ve lost over the years to this terrible disease.

I was happy to see others had left flowers already, and even happier to find the names of two friends on the monument. (At times I can’t find them at all and I swear they decide to switch places in the middle of the night as some kind of Puckish joke upon the living.)

As I tucked flowers into their names I chose to remember a happy time each of us had shared.

Lloyd: Thanks for driving overnight from Calgary to be at my very first voice recital.

David: Thanks for your belief that choral music was an important way for the gay community to tell our stories.

And then for those not on the monument but written on my heart:

Carter: Thanks for taking my hand as I walked down Castro St for the very first time, and then reassuring me that it was perfectly safe to do so.

Roy: Thanks for showing me that a body can be a work of art.

flowers for my friends

Dwayne: Thanks for the epic walks that often included the entire Seawall and an excursion over a bridge or two, talking the entire time.

Mark: Thanks for endless phone calls, laughter amdist many beers at the Castle and Royal, and being my best friend for over a decade.

Then I went home and wrote an email to an old friend I haven’t seen in awhile and told him how much he meant to me. Who are you thankful for – and if they’re still with us – have you told them lately?

THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE

Crows are smart but I don't think they suffer from the Curse of Knowldege.

(In this example I’ve applied it to my work with Chor Leoni. Swap “Chor Leoni” out in the sentence and

replace it with the name of your own ensemble.)

I no longer know what it’s like to not know what I know about Chor Leoni.

It’s so easy to assume that because we live and breathe our work that our enthusiasm and knowledge are shared by those around us. The danger of course is that we write from that position of assumed knowledge and then wonder why the message hasn’t caused a rush at the box office, or a run of sales on iTunes.

Henry suggested we always run proposed marketing materials for a project by someone who isn’t involved and ask for their feedback. Hopefully that can save us from (dum dum DUM!) The Curse of Knowledge!

The former front of the Millenium Biltmore Hotel

First of all, I have to tell you about the setting. The Millenium Biltmore Hotel is one of the grand dames of LA. It’s full of Hollywood history, the Academy Awards were hosted there several times – it’s a grand old place.

Billed as “The premier choice for celebrities, presidents and dignitaries for over 85 years, the Millennium Biltmore Hotel offers historic grandeur and modern luxury in the heart of exciting downtown Los Angeles.” It is the kind of old hotel I love. That said, the “old” is apparent.

The photo above is taken from across the street, at Pershing Square, an unfortunate municipal park that is about to undergo yet another renovation in an attempt to turn it into an urban green space. Back in the ’60′s this same park was the setting for many of John Rechy’s escapades as a male hustler, which he chronicled in gloriously salacious detail in his City of Night. This is the former lobby which faces Fifth Avenue.

atmospheric former lobby

Just 1 of the many cherubs climbing the walls in the old lobby.

Eventually the city of Los Angeles made Fifth Avenue  a one way street and the “Powers that Be” at the hotel actually put in a new lobby (still pretty swank) that faced onto Grand Avenue. It was as if the Biltmore had turned away from Pershing Square in a huff.

Remember that bit about “old” ? Well here’s my major rant about the conference:

The Millenium Biltmore charges $9.95 PER DAY, PER DEVICE for Wifi that barely works. In fact, it was 90% absent from most of the conference meeting rooms! A marketing conference in 2010 that doesn’t have wifi? Hello, does anyone else see the irony of that last statement?

OK, now that I have that off my chest . . . . on to the actual conference!

What an amazing experience. From the first session I was being inundated with the very best of new ideas about marketing and audience development. What came across very clearly throughout the entire conference were the following points:

1. It’s not about “marketing”, it’s about “customer experience”. That customer experience begins when they decide they may be, possibly, just might want to attend your event. Then they factor in: babysitter, dinner beforehand, parking, and concert tickets. Suddenly your $30 concert ticket is costing this potential customer over $100 for a night out. Think about that for a bit. (at this point my mind was already spinning and it was only day 1.)
2. “Social Media” isn’t about selling, it’s about relationships. For every tweet you send out selling something, send out a dozen about other things, interact with people, retweet, etc.
3. It’s important to encourage your audience to cross post from your Facebook Page to their own by using the SHARE feature. It’s more powerful than just hitting the “Like” button.

Perhaps the most important session I attended was Catchy Doesn’t Sell, presented by Trevor O’Donnell. To quote from the ArtsReach guide:

“For decades the arts have been speaking a peculiar language characterized by clever puns, tired clichés and cloying insider references.”

That was the jumping off point for a very interesting session (and one of the few that didn’t use Power Point – kudos for that!) focused on how, as our audience ages, we are losing the ‘native speakers’ that understand the lingo arts folks sling around with abandon.

The intent of the session was to get us to avoid using arts marketing terms and begin to speak to new audiences in a clear, persuasive manner. Unfortunately the session was only an hour – it could easily have gone on for another and I’d have been very happy.

TAKE AWAY POINT: Younger people don’t have the expectations our parents did. An average 20-30 year old doesn’t differentiate between a night out at a club or a night out at the theatre. It’s all “entertainment” – not broken down into what us old-timers would refer to either as “arts – pronounced “aaaahts, daaaahling” or “entertainment.” Not only do we have to inform and entice, we have to tell people why our event will be a good choice. We have to add persuasion to the mix.

i.e. You like to laugh – we have funny shows

These are just a few of the points that struck me throughout ArtsReach LA. I could go on and on, but I won’t. Suffice to say I’m planning to attend again next year and hope to take a few other CL staffers with me!

I sing with Chor Leoni and the Cathedral Choir. All three choirs sell their music on iTunes, so yesterday when Steve Jobs announces iTunes 10 and  its music/social media arm, Ping, I immediately starting thinking about how to use Ping to help the sales of my choirs’ music.

I signed on and created my own personal profile (you can find my profile here) but hunted in vain for a way to create a profile for an artist. Apparently a lot of other choral people were doing the same thing, because my twitter feed was full of the same question this morning.

There is NO info to be found on how to do so.

Big Name Artists vs Aggregators?

So far the only Classical artist to make Apple’s “featured” list is Yo Yo Ma. Well, no choir I know of has that kind of international pull. The choirs I work with got onto iTunes by using aggregators (Tunecore and CDBaby).

My worry is that because we’re “small potatoes” and not at the artistic level of such luminaries (?) as Coldplay and Lady Ga-Ga, we may be unable to create and manage our Ping artist profiles ourselves.

Three Questions

1. Is it up to a “small” artist’s aggregator to create a Ping profile for them?

2. If not, how does said artist create their Ping profile?

3. How could Apple release something without providing some kind of support document that answers this basic question?

If you have any info on how to create an artist’s profile, please share it and I’ll pass it along.

UPDATE! Rec’d 2:45 pm Sept 2/10

After emailing everyone I could think of, I receive a response from Tunecore:

We were fortunate enough to speak with Apple today to begin working on getting the first TuneCore Artists Ping accounts set up.  We will be able to get more and more TuneCore Artists set up over the next weeks as Apple works to authenticate and set up Ping Artist accounts for the millions of artists within iTunes.

So we’ve answers to questions 1 and 2, above. No answer to question 3, though.

I don’t quite know what I was expecting when I sat down to listen to the MusicFest Vancouver 2010 concert, but the fact that I’m sitting down to write about it several hours later is testament to the fact that this performance by Ludus Modalis unsettled me.

According to the concert programme:  ”Ludus Modalis means The Mode Game, and is a professional ensemble of 5 to 12 singers.  It has devoted itself principally to restoring the sound palette of sacred and secular polyphonic repertoire of the Renaissance and pre-Baroque. The group tries to create a unique sound by concentrating on aspects of performance practice that are sometimes neglected, such as pronunciation, and intonation governed by the use of different modes, temperament, and a search for variety in vocal sonority, and – above all – a scrupulous respect for the original sources, reinforced by collaboration with musicologists.”

While the group has performed at several European festivals, this is their first visit to Vancouver, and tonight’s concert was the second of two performances for MusicFest Vancouver.

The programming consisted of works by Jan-Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Paschal de l’Estocart, Alfonso Ferrabosco, Guillaume Costelley, Claude Le Jeaune, and Paschal de l’Estocart. It seemed as if a particularly dusty chapter of Grout’s A History of Western Music had suddenly sprung to life in front of us.

This version of Ludul Modalis featured two sopranos, an alto, two tenors, and a bass. (You can watch a clip of them on YouTube here.) One has to note that the two tenors sang most of the concert in their upper registers and almost entirely without vibrato – no mean feat! The overall singing was splendid.

So why am I sitting here unsettled?

I heard unusual and technically demanding repertoire sung beautifully. That’s what a good choral concert is, right?

Well, actually, no.

While the music was beautiful, technically very difficult and unusual, it was also all very much the same. Indeed, most of it had almost the same tactus, or beat. The ensemble exhibited no interest in exploring choral dynamics, singing everything at a mezzo-forte or louder – a shame, really, when the Cathedral can and does support soft singing very well.

Add in the presentation of the programme, with both halves of the concert being given without interruption, and the audience being warned by an admonishing hand not to applaud at an inopportune time (between songs but within a set as determined by the conductor and tenor, Bruno Boterf) and a complete lack of connection between the singers and the audience, and it all became too much an academic exercise.

Choral music is the most visceral of music – it can’t get anymore personal that the voice – and the voice is about communicating. If you reread that verbatim quote from the ensemble’s printed programme that I began this post with, perhaps you’ll notice what’s missing: “Passion, interest, communication.” Make us, your audience, understand why we should care about something you’ve obviously spent hours being excited about. For that matter, this particular audience was full of choral singers! Make us want to SING it!

When you as an artist decide to only allow applause at certain times in a concert, then you’d better be very gracious upon the receipt of said applause. Smile widely and accept it. This ensemble wasn’t. Ludus Modalis rushed it, barely smiled (the women did better than the tenors, and the bass, who mailed in a note perfect and perfectly bored performance, didn’t smile once) then got back to the business of “serious music,” and always with the admonishing upraised hand between selections, lest anyone dare show they may have enjoyed themselves too much.

Frankly, I would have had a better time at home listening to a CD.

(If I had the CD I’d have the track that featured the 3 women singing unison verses in L’homme et son coeur by Gullaume Costelley on repeat. They were ravishing in it. The fact that I don’t have the CD is indicative of how unmoved I was by the overall concert.

A choir visiting Vancouver, the choral hot-bed of Canada, cannot afford to arrive and basically ignore their audience for most of their show, then turn on a bit of charm at the end to mention the availability of CDs. In a city that features groups like  Chor Leoni Men’s Choir, Elektra Women’s Choir, musica intima vocal ensemble, and many more, all of which know how to draw an audience into a performance, a beautifully sung academic treatise  just doesn’t cut it. It didn’t work, people, and I’m proud that only a few people jumped to their feet for a very anemic standing ovation.

And that’s why I’m unsettled.

Timelines

Effective PR is all about time lines, none moreso than when prepping an upcoming season. There are myriad details to work out, and thankfully I’m not responsible for all of them. Before I really get going, concert titles and themes have to be developed (usually 90% of this part is done by the artistic director), dates and venues chosen and booked (often handled by a production manager or business administrator).

Once those ducks are all lined up and quacking in time (easier said that done!) I get to writing. I start with a basic 50 word description that will appear in brochures and on web calendars. Once everyone involved is happy with them and they have been thoroughly proofed, we’re ready for the next step: images!

This is the fun part. One of my clients works with an amazing designer. He’s known

Slices of the images for Chor Leoni's 2010/11 seasons

about the themes of the upcoming season for awhile now, so for the past couple of weeks we’ve (artistic director, myself, and designer) been batting things back and forth by email. I’m happy to say that we’ve settled on imagery for Chor Leoni that is going to be stunning. (No, I won’t give you a preview.)

My other client, Elektra, goes another route, equally as much fun, but much more “hands on.” We cruise through istockphoto.com, looking for images that fit the concert themes. I usually choose half a dozen for each concert, then whittle that down to my top 3 picks before sending them off to the artistic director and manager for input. Here again, these decisions are made by 2 or 3 people, max.Keeping that initial committee involved with image choice down to a minimum is crucial, because the more a committee grows the slower it moves!

Elektra's teaser ad for next season

This year both promotional pieces will include mention of each client’s social media contacts, and tellingly, Chor Leoni will also use this piece to announce the end of the analog (snail mail) version of their twice-yearly hardcopy newsletter. I think this is a great move by the organization; It makes sense both economically and ecologically.

Due dates are June 6 for Elektra (to be handed out at their Romance concert and Simply Elektra fundraising dinner that happen the same day), and June 21 for Chor Leoni, which is the opening of CL’s insane and completely fun take on country & western: Chor Leoni Country.

UPDATE!

Elektra’s new season is now live! Check it out at the Elektra website.

AND Chor Leoni’s new season is live!