Sound Circuit Symposium

'Contemporary Music and its Audiences'
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, 26 November '04

Symposium Summary

Morning Session, 10.00-12.30, Town Hall

Introduction and welcome
Susanna Eastburn, Artistic Director, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Ed McKeon, Development Manager, London Sinfonietta, and Chair, Sound Circuit

Selena Virrels, Classical Music Marketing Manager, South Bank Centre

Selena introduced Sound Circuit as a network of contemporary music promoters and producers that aims to support contemporary music touring in England, using different forms of market research to reach a better understanding of current and potential audiences.

Most promoters have little detailed information about their audiences, lack expertise to interpret findings from existing studies and need to understand their markets and define priority target audiences. Sound Circuit's research therefore involves profiling and segmenting existing audiences, identifying potential attenders and how to reach them, understanding best potential cross-over with other arts audiences and identifying potential for collaborative audience development.

Sound Circuit's research plan includes a range of methodologies, including data profiling using box office sales information, questionnaire surveys for five specific tours, and action research projects with direct relevance for the individual promoters.

Selena went on to demonstrate some of Sound Circuit's provisional findings to date, commenting in particular on the relatively high proportion of young people amongst first-time attenders (almost 50% under 35), and the critical role of word of mouth for new audiences (45% of respondents to tour questionnaires). Using Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and the Royal Northern College of Music as case studies, she also highlighted the importance of venue loyalty, the impact of direct mail and the opportunities to build relationships with audiences by opening up links between composers, audience and performance through innovative schemes. Selena also emphasised the fundamental importance of the relationship between touring company and promoter as a joint effort to build audiences, and described how the Circuit is supporting these links through preview events, ambassador schemes and other audience development initiatives.

Janice White, Director, The Cogency

Janice introduced the Contemporary Music Network and explained how CMN had contributed to building audiences for contemporary music in England by providing venues and promoters with programmes of consistently high quality work, by organising regular tours to the same network of venues and promotes, by acting as a brand that audiences trust, and by embracing generic opportunities with other organisations such as record labels, embassies and other national cultural organisations, funding bodies and media partners.

Janice also described the challenges in finding and developing audiences for contemporary music, in particular when working with unknown artists or a style of music unfamiliar to the audience, when marketing a "mixed bill of work" featuring artists from different genres, and lastly, when marketing a work which doesn't exist as it has been newly commissioned. She concluded by pointing out that some people still believed that they had to have a certain level of knowledge before attending a contemporary music event and that venues and promoters had to find ways to tackle these preconceptions in order to build audiences for the future.

Stephen Newbould, Artistic Director, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Stephen talked about BCMG's touring experience, in particular the ensemble's Rural Tours as a means of developing audiences. Every year BCMG takes some of their most successful projects to very small venues, such as village halls, in rural Shropshire. Stephen stressed in particular the intimate atmosphere created at the concerts, and the importance of making personal connections between composer, musicians and local audiences that has helped the ensemble to build up a dedicated and loyal audience who will attend any event presented by the group whether or not they are familiar with the music to be played. The tours usually feature meet-the-composer events to make the concert experience more rounded. No ticket fee is charged to attenders; all events are funded entirely through various grants.

Alan Davey, Director of Arts and Culture, Department for Culture, Media & Sport

Alan explained the background to Tessa Jowell's pamphlet Government and the Value of Culture, published in the summer. The Secretary of State had gone to Berlin to meet her German counterpart to ask how the Government there has been able to raise the profile of culture and cultural support within public life. The British problem was illustrated by the ensuing media coverage, with the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph criticising the initiative. In separate meetings, composer Julian Anderson and Simon Rattle both urged the Government to take a more high profile stand in backing the value of the arts as a means of encouraging a wider public debate.

Alan said he believed the public was more switched on to the arts and culture than the media think, though they may not use the same 'arts language' to describe their interests. The challenges, then, are to find ways to connect with this interest and to demonstrate the continuing relevance of the arts.

Afternoon Session, 14.30-16.30, The Festival Hub
Presentations and Q&A forum - Bells & Whistles

Pete Martin, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Manchester University, author of Sounds and Society

Peter opened the session by explaining that he was participating as an interested 'outsider', as his background is in jazz rather than contemporary music. He suggested a key issue, shown from evidence reported in the US, is the 'greying' of the audience and the consequent need to connect with younger generations. The other big shift in recent decades has been from a very hierarchical arts scene dominated by 'cultural snobs' to a more diverse provision reflected in broad tastes of 'cultural omnivores'.

Tom Service, broadcaster (Music Matters), journalist (The Guardian and many others), musicologist and Guest Artistic Director, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Tom argued that whilst the histories of C20th music emphasise developments in harmony, pitch relationships, rhythm and other technical details, perhaps the biggest revolution has been in aspects of performance. He said that multimedia may be a fashionable way into contemporary music for audiences, but that it shouldn't be forgotten that contemporary music is already 'multimedia' - at least, that its performance is also a visual and social experience, and that listening in a live context is never 'pure'. Tom argued that the multimedia aspect of productions often feels as though it's been introduced the wrong way round, as a bolt-on to attract audiences. The real challenge is to find a language to describe contemporary performance in more dynamic terms, to make audiences aware of how exciting new music already is..

Heather Maitland, marketing consultant, specialising in contemporary arts, and author of Is it time for Plan B? produced for the Arts Council of England

Heather raised the question whether promoters of contemporary music really wants a bigger audience. She explained that many venues and promoters were unable to get high quality product because of small box office income for contemporary music and they were therefore reliant on getting enough funding. This made it difficult to put on regular contemporary music concerts and therefore to build up contemporary music audiences. To break this vicious circle a strong commitment to contemporary music would have to be made.

Heather pointed out that a range of research shows that for every one member of the current audience for contemporary music, there are five more potential attenders. Potential audience members as well as most existing attenders are often put off by the jargon used when marketing contemporary music events. Promoters should avoid using jargon marketing to promote concerts, while additional material including more specialist information should be sent to those looking for more detail. Heather pointed out that for the majority of readers of promotional material words like 'challenging' and 'cutting edge' translated as 'difficult', 'innovative' as 'weird', 'experimental' as 'weirder', and so on.

When trying to attract a broader, non-specialist audience promoters should keep in mind that the expectations of a significant proportion of the existing audience and most of the potential audience are about presentation. They want to see the performers and they want to see some production values, which often means something quite simple such as some lighting and the performers talking to the audience about each piece.
To conclude Heather pointed out that in order to attract larger audiences you didn't need 'bells and whistles', what's needed was effective communication.

Glenn Max, Head of Contemporary Culture, South Bank Centre
Glenn formerly ran the programme at the Knitting Factory, New York, and is highly experienced in producing contemporary music events to reach large audiences. The programme he runs at the South Bank Centre focuses on music as part of contemporary culture, including rock, pop and electronic music.

Glenn argued that this younger audience, which has grown up with video, MTV, computer games, etc, expect some kind of high quality visuals as part of a concert experience. He went on to describe the collaboration between London Sinfonietta and Warp records that he co-produced as part of the Ether festival in March 2003, and which sold out the 3,000-seat hall. He wanted to avoid the traditional 'problems' of concerts, of the audience being trapped in the seats, with no drinks available, giving polite applause. Instead, the audience could come and go during the performance, there was no interval as such with rare Warp videos being screened with music instead, drinks were allowed in the auditorium, and the response was instinctive applause and loud approval. This audience has a sophisticated awareness of visual culture, and you need to respond to this if you want them to come to your events.

Gillian Moore, Artistic Director, London Sinfonietta and Project Manager for Audience Development, South Bank Centre
Gillian is one of the most experienced programmers of contemporary music in the UK, and set up the first education programme attached to an ensemble, at the London Sinfonietta, in 1983.

Gillian argued that the London Sinfonietta is increasingly attracting an audience interested in contemporary culture, as a shift away from trying to convert traditional classical music attenders. She suggested that we should spend more time and effort trying to reach the wider public with a demonstrable interest in contemporary work across the arts. Rather than apologising for contemporary music by burying it within programmes of popular classical repertoire, this is an agenda to be bold - this audience actively appreciates the 'shock of the new' as a key selling point.

Christopher Fox, composer, academic and writer on music
Christopher picked up on points made by earlier speakers, and argued strongly that challenging work is undervalued within our culture, and that Huddersfield Festival is one of very few to embrace it in all its diversity. He said that promoters are not brave enough and need to be encouraged to be bolder in their commitment to musicians' visions for new work. He cited a number of recent concert presentations where the lighting design had had little apparent relationship with the music being performed and as a result had lessened the impact of the music. Likewise, artists will only make innovative, ambitious work if they are confident that it can be realised; many composers play safe, reckoning that yet another 15-minute piece for more-or-less standard instrumentation is a better bet than anything more imaginative.

Questions from the floor

· Following Heather's presentation about the value of composers / performers introducing work from the stage, an audience member pointed out that despite the popularity of such introductions amongst audiences, very few ensembles actually incorporated them into their performances.

· In response to a point made from the platform that the Arts Council had funded only two contemporary music tours, the Arts Council would like to point out that the correct numbers of tours funded through Grants for the Arts in 2003/4 are as follows: Grants for the Arts made 61 awards for music touring in 2003/4 of which 51 awards were for contemporary music tours. Of those, 14 awards were for 'contemporary classical music' tours, supporting 18 tours (some grants supported more than one tour). A 15th (by the European Union Chamber Orchestra) included a new piece, specifically commissioned for the tour from a UK composer. These numbers exclude all Contemporary Music Network tours which, by definition, are all contemporary.

· A member of the public asked how best to attract black audiences. Glenn Max replied saying that the lesson he learned from putting on Lee 'Scratch' Perry's Meltdown was that if you want to reach black audiences, you've got to take the work to them; don't expect them to come to formal concert venues like the South Bank Centre.

· Susanna Eastburn pointed out the importance of the quality of work, and the need to pay for rehearsal time. Gillian Moore agreed, noting that the commitment to quality of performance with adequate rehearsal time is something for which the London Sinfonietta is well known.

· A member of the public said that for anyone familiar with postmodernism in art, new music wasn't frightening at all and could be easily approached.