Saturday, November 17, 2007

Pacifica Quartet optimistic

During the conservations with the Pacifica Quartet on Tuesday, President Zorn steered toward some questions about the future of classical music, like what did the members think of the "graying" of audiences. Their answer was that they did not feel that characterizing audiences as gray was actually true. They felt that each audience was very different from others depending on where they were playing and who the presenter of the concert was. When the presenter was creative, and excited, and tried hard, many different groups of people came to the concerts. They qualified that this was for chamber music series though, and that the situation for orchestras might be different. They also felt that the gradual thinning of boundaries between classical music and other types of music actually encouraged more people to explore classical music. In all, they felt that there was never a time when they were more optimistic about the future of classical music.

1 comment:

I'm thinking said...

That's really optimistic of them. I also know that the Quartet is also doing a lot of outreach programs at various venue. In that perspective they always get a lot of age groups. However, what I've seen is that the intellects, students, musicians, teachers do share a vareity of interests for orchestra concerts. I've been to the Jordan Hall concert just three weeks ago. They were introducing Roger Session piano sonata I (played by David Holzamn (his new CD of Ives sonatas will release in DEc. 2007), features works by Rober Cogan and Pozzi Escot etc. what was really interesting was the fact that the audience age group ranged from 20s to 80+ years old. And they were there for "new music." It gives me an optimism that music will never die, as long as composers have good taste on writing music. Hence, audience will always be there.