Orchestral pops programs tend to bring in big audience numbers, with film nights that include big-screen projection having special appeal: the “broad audience” shows up when John Williams conducts
At the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California, Larry Rachleff conducts the Academy Chamber Players in Hahn Hall, 2011.
J u n e 2 2 - J u ly 2 7, 2 0 1 2
film-music nights at Tanglewood. This year, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra will play three nights of “Pixar in Concert” and a celebration of Paramount’s 100th anniversary, and the LA Phil will play Frozen Planet Live, accompanying the BBC and Discovery Channel nature film. (Frozen Planet will also make an appearance at Grant Park.) At Ravinia, last year’s biggest hit was the first Lord of the Rings movie, with the CSO playing the Howard Shore score, bringing in 14,000 to 15,000 people each night. Ravinia also has a soundproof 450-seat theater, so it can program a violin recital on the same night that Steely Dan plays the 3,400seat Pavilion. Kauffman is responsible for all of Ravinia’s programming, which this summer will be about 60 percent classical and 40 percent non-classical. “Ravinia had gotten into a rut with the non-classical programming—something that was just there to pay the bills,” he says. “I love popular
W W W. R I V E R C O N C E RT S E R I E S . O R G
46
programming, and I’m trying to bring the non-classical side of what we do up to the standard of Plácido Domingo and the CSO.” Kauffman says that artists like Diana Krall, Maroon 5, and Wyclef Jean
David Bazemore
million festival receives half its budget—what would otherwise be ticket revenue—from the Chicago Parks Department and raises the rest through sponsorships, donations, grants, and memberships. “Because the concerts are all free, it opened up the possibility of doing more non-traditional repertoire,” says Executive Director Paul Winberg. This year, the 50th anniversary of the Grant Park Chorus is being celebrated with a pair of 20-minute commissioned works by Sebastian Currier and Michael Gandolfi; also planned is Dvořák’s rarely heard dramatic cantata Spectre’s Bride. The festival has surveyed its audience, and “We find that they like variety; we get a response if we tip too heavily in any direction,” says Winberg. Grant Park attracts a relatively young crowd, with 10,000 to 12,000 people a night. The move from the Petrillo Bandshell to the new Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park has been a “game changer” for the festival. “Physically, it puts us closer to the Loop,” says Winberg, “so it’s more convenient for audience members to pop over after work.” In general, it is a different crowd from the Grant Park audience that heads north along Lake Michigan to the Ravinia Festival, where the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has its summer home. Still, Welz Kauffman, president and CEO of Ravinia, who programs that festival with its music director, James Conlon, consults with Grant Park to be sure that there are no major programming overlaps, in order to avoid occurrences like the year that the Verdi Requiem was performed by the Grant Park, Ravinia, and the CSO in downtown Chicago in the space of four weeks.
Orchestral pops programs tend to bring in big audience numbers, with film nights that include big-screen projection having special appeal. have been “huge for us. Our biggest pop act has been two nights of Sting. There are very few in our audience who only buy one genre. They love the venue, and they want to be here.” Home, Sweet Home
A venue can also be the heart of a smaller summer festival. The OK Mozart Festival, now in its 28th year, was born when the flutist and conductor Ransom Wilson and his Solisti New York orchestra played a community concert in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in 1983. “We had no idea that Bartlesville had a wonderful concert hall,” says violist Adria Benjamin, “and we thought we had died and gone to heaven! After our performance, Nan Buhlinger, whose dream was to found a summer festival, asked us to become resident orchestra of that festival.” Since 1985, the group, now called Amici New York, has made the trip each summer for the weeklong festival, as has a complement of New York-based chamber music players. Benjamin is now responsible for programming the festival’s orchestra concerts. “We are driven by budget: I work with Shane Jewell, OK Mozart’s executive director, and the board, and see what is possible,” she says. For many years, the symphony
spring 2012