Saturday Matinee

Random musings about summer, looking ahead to fall, and blogging

Happy Labor Day, everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend – I had a total of 12 people in the space of 3 days stay long enough to take showers at my place so it kept this weekend really hoppin’.

The cutest houseguest – four month old Olivia, like the children’s book character

It’s hard to believe that summer is over – theater (and this blog) has been a little slow, but I really took this time to put in a lot of time at work and my non blogging life. It’s slowly but surely starting to pay off, and theater withdrawals weren’t too bad. It’s been a really productive summer overall, and now I’m ready to slack off again and get sidetracked with my favorite hobby! Now currently looking forward to all the exciting things coming up ahead. Even though it feels like the San Francisco Symphony summer season just ended, it’s picking right back up again with a really outrageous gala (as all galas should be) on Wednesday September 3, with a powerhouse program. I’m looking forward to a substantial program, especially after the summer which tends to be SFS Lite. Like a summer cologne or an eau fraiche, it’s simply refreshing for the summer months (even though it stays in the 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit in downtown SF), but I’m itching for a change to go with the change of season. And, it’s my first real gala! I’ll be moblogging from the event taking pictures where I can, assuming everything works properly, from inside the reception in the green room to the post-concert party inside of City Hall.

A few words about an event that I’ve been meaning to blog about – as I’ve mentioned before, I was kindly asked by the San Francisco Symphony to be on a panel at the Association of California Symphony Orchestra conference in Walnut Creek about a month ago on a panel titled, “Changing Media Lanscapes” (I blogged about it, here). It was a great opportunity for me to talk about blogging, and even more fascinating to hear about it from the administration’s point of view. Before my panel, I got to sit in on a presentation by a marketing group who was doing a presentation on using nontraditional media for marketing purposes for symphony orchestras. I felt like an enemy infiltrate eavesdropping in the back, especially when the speaker encouraged everyone to utilize bloggers, because “they will be your best resource” in getting the word out. It struck me how I don’t specifically have a practical purpose for my blog, yet administrations such as symphonies can utilize my blog for their purpose. He also mentioned not to be afraid of negative PR, which I quickly realized is the fear of many arts organizations, because people do read blogs with a grain of salt that one person’s view is not the same as another, which is true.

During the panel that I was on, it was fascinating to see that there is a lot of resistance in the way that things are moving in the PR field, which is moving out of traditional media outlets (in particular, paper newspapers) to nontraditional outlets (online newspapers, blogs, discussion/message boards). Granted, many people in the room were of a different generation than mine, but it almost became antagonistic as audience members (made up mostly of people who work for symphony orchestras) questioned me on why they should try to get a blogger to come to their shows, rather than a classical music critic. In a way though, I didn’t feel like I had to defend myself because it’s so obvious that things are moving more to online sources, with paper newspaper readerships dropping precipitously and arts critics being fired left and right. Newspapers are incorporating blogs in their online newspapers, and even the critics are blogging. Change is always hard to accept, especially in a world that is as foreign as the internet to some people. I expected a certain level of puzzlement over the world of blogging, yet it was still more than I expected. I think the view looks very different from inside an arts organization, than from the outside. From the inside, even I understand that things have improved, a lot! Younger people are coming to concerts, and new music is being made, while still keeping the classics. Yet from the outside, the world of classical music can look as accessible as the top of Mount Everest, especially in the viewpoint of some of my friends that I’ve taken to the theater. Some even have a desire to go about to see them, but feel like it is an exclusive club where they’re not welcome. There is a disconnect that needs to be addressed, a translator perhaps, to demystify and to introduce the worlds of classical music and blogging/internet to each other.

Another thing – some audience members were highly concerned about negative PR. There is a fear of inappropriate chatter that becomes an “uncontrollable fire hydrant”. But my point is, let’s get people talking about classical music, which is better than no discussion at all. We should be able to talk about classical music (or ballet, or theater) as we talk about pop culture – it’s not this sacred object on a pedestal that can’t be touched nor accessed, but it can be observed, analyzed, even criticized, which gets people involved in thinking about music. It engages people, which gets people to come out to buy tickets.

Anyways, it was very enlightening, and it had me excited about the future. Great works are still being made, and there’s lots to read about online in regards to these works, thanks to really great vigilant bloggers and experts like the critics. A fun moment for me was to meet Joshua Kosman, classical music critic at the SF Chronicle, and to talk about his, um, preferences. I was amused that a good few minutes of the panel discussion was spent where the PR people in the audience were grilling him on how they could get him to come to more of their concerts.

Is anyone else going to the SF Symphony gala??

San Francisco Symphony Opening Gala

Foggia PR - links regarding the ACSO Conference