festival was organized around Mozart repertoire, but when Wilson left in 2006, it began to change a bit, she says. Budget constraints have also reduced the orchestra’s participation, and jazz and blue-
grass groups, like the Carolina Chocolate Drops, have been worked into the festival’s schedule. At Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California, programmers have yet another element to consider. As a summer institute for young musicians, its programs are devised with education in mind.
“Our major goal is to give our Fellows the most performance opportunities possible so they can get onstage and communicate,” says Scott Reed, the Music Academy’s president. The Academy needs audiences for that communication, and works to build relationships between the Fellows and the public. For the five orchestra programs, the artistic department selects pieces that the Fellows are likely to encounter in their professional lives. One program, for example, includes John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. Over eight weeks, 200 performances are given on campus and in downtown Santa Barbara, with half the concerts offered free of charge. The orchestra concerts were recently moved from a 680-seat hall to one that holds 1,500 people. “Filling 1,500 seats is a challenge for us,” Reed says. After sellouts for Don Giovanni and The Barber of Seville in the last two years, Music Academy’s The Rake’s Progress this summer could mean a bit of tension between the Academy’s educational and sales goals.
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“It’s more risky from a ticket-sales perspective, but it will provide a great training experience,” Reed says. Even without that training concern, summer festival programmers recognize that freshness matters. “We can’t repeat too much, or we become stagnant,” the LA Phil’s Manocha says. Regular fireworks displays and productions of musicals therefore exist in tandem with the occasional novelty, such as Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Glass’s Koyaanisqatsi. “We need new pieces, and new performers,” Manocha says. In a sense, such elements can even translate into broad appeal. “I think people like discovering new things at the Bowl. There’s so much trust in the venue that we are able to introduce new pieces, concepts, and performers.” It may not be the core of the programming, but a judicious helping of the new can spice up that popular mandate. HEIDI WALESON writes about the performing arts and is the opera critic for The Wall Street Journal.
Helen M. Thompson (1908 –1974), a passionate advocate for symphonic music and American orchestras, was the League’s first executive director.
To learn more, call 646 822 4066 or visit americanorchestras.org.
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