Diving In

There is a push to update the concert experience for audiences of classical music. We see a gradual shift toward valuing people’s experiences more than the rituals of a perceived stuffy tradition. The majority of Americans feel some anxiety around knowing when to clap, what to wear, and whether their presence would be welcomed, or if instead they’d feel incompetent and uncomfortable. The root of that reaction to an unpleasant collective experience is deep; it connects to feeling both rejected and humiliated. These are existential risks to a species that has evolved around finding safety in family and community groups. So classical music organizations really needed to embrace outreach, proactively promising a warm and friendly acceptance to people who felt wary, as well as delivering a joyful, deeply human and satisfying encounter when people had been led to expect ivory tower loftiness.

Marketing from operas and orchestras shows these groups are taking cues from the larger world of entertainment, using splashier colors and slogans, finding ways to make performances look fun and enticing, even relatable. The literal entry points into these events are undergoing changes, too, with an emphasis on friendly, welcoming guidance from the staff that interacts with audience members. Some groups even encourage use of phones and posting from the concerts on social media. Venues are slowly beginning to consider how to encourage enthusiasm in first-time concert attendees, instead of creating a sense of foreboding that blocks people who haven’t been part of the classical music club from feeling safe, much less welcome.

It’s a slow moving ship, but momentum is building.

This seems to get at another deeply human paradox. We want to share good things with our group, but we want to draw lines around our group and determine who gets to be inside it and who we will keep out. We want to share, but not too much.

The history of humanity is the constant contending with this problem. It’s part of why belonging is currently such a divisive issue. If we stop drawing boundaries around who belongs in our group, what if there’s not enough to go around eventually? If there is only so much food, so many acres of land, so much respect and dignity and love…

The classical music world has been an accidental laboratory for running an experiment in abundance. As best operating practices lean in towards inviting more people to belong, the orchestras, their business staff, audiences and artistic offerings, blossom. When we choose to believe everyone belongs, there turns out to be enough.

This outward-facing work has begun and is showing signs of success, though it has a long way to go. But what about the community of musicians on the stage? Who gets to belong there, and what is that experience like?

I know the pain of being barred from acceptance. Probably most of us come up against a velvet rope experience in our lives, where we are forced to grapple with being rejected by a group. It has made me conscious of how to welcome newcomers into the spaces where I make music. And it’s made me sensitive to the fact that one person’s relationship to music is going to look different from another’s, and that all of these expressions are welcome and needed. Some will be extroverted with their communication about music, some introverted. Some will dance as they play, others will find focus in their stillness. Some will be young and eager to seize hold of each new piece of music, while some will have a vault of experience with all the repertoire. There is an array of depth, eagerness, knowledge and joy that all of this brings. If we can find the patience to truly see each other and extend a trusting welcome. And I’m not saying that is an easy thing to do; community is relationship, and relationships take work. There are going to be moments that are jarring or sad. In those moments, I hope we can resist the urge to draw lines around our groups, claim what we think is ours, and judge those we don’t easily understand. Those are the moments to be strong in our tenderness and our welcome.

Music is like the ocean, to me. It’s bigger than all the places we land-dwellers walk. Waves surge up and drench us, overwhelm us with beauty, and that experience sort of disintegrates the boundaries that keep us from each other. It’s a uniting force by nature.

I refuse to shrink, to believe there won’t be enough. I’m going to keep diving into that ocean, and asking you all to come with me.