By Brian Wise

As growing numbers of classical presenting organizations are expanding the menu of performing arts options they offer to their communities, balance becomes a hotly debated question. Promoters, concert producers, and artist managers say that bringing popular and folk styles into a classical concert hall is one of the biggest challenges they face, especially if the music is to be something more than tokenism. Not only do presenters face more complex programming decisions but they also must develop new funding sources, juggle different booking timetables for different genres, and deal with the inevitable visa issues for foreign artists.

At the same time, many arts executives and musicians see the diversification of programming as a growing threat to classical music, particularly at a time when orchestra tours have become prohibitively expensive, solo vocal recitals are languishing, and subscription sales—the lifeblood of classical ticket buying—are a faltering means of sustaining a series.

Mark Maluso, a senior vice president at IMG Artists and manager of world music attractions like the Kodo drummers of Japan, says that classical music is an increasingly difficult sell for presenters. "We've seen a reduction in the amount of slots available to recitals and a tremendous reduction in the amount of vocal recitals available," he says. "The visiting orchestra touring circuit hasn't vanished, but it's boiled down to what has to be an irreducible minimum. It becomes harder and harder to make those kinds of tours work."

Mike Ross, executive director of the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign agrees that classical music is being reduced as university presenters face being weaned off their parent institutions and are in search of new funding sources. "Of the major presenting organizations at the university level, the trend has been to present less and less classical music over the years, and more of the hybrid forms that have been developing," he says. "While I do feel there's been a retreat from classical music programming, I have a strong feeling that it isn't a nonreversible trend."

Ross says that this is not a clear case of classical music being pushed aside in favor of more commercially viable fare. Rather, he says that conventional ideas of musical quality have broadened, and composers are incorporating more popular elements and non-Western traditions into their music. This trend also mirrors the wider tastes of many arts executives who grew up on rock 'n' roll of the 1960s and '70s and see classical music as one part of a large continuum.

"A lot of people whose musical interests came of age in the late '60s had a broader view of music," says Robert Hurwitz, president of Nonesuch records. "We were interested in a lot of other things as well as classical. There's no distinction between John Adams or Youssou N'Dour or Wilco. On a basic level, they all have a deep impact."

Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, says the expansion in programming is driven by several factors, "from idealistic, all-inclusive philosophies to outright desperation." He points to the opening of Zankel Hall, the eclectically programmed third space at Carnegie Hall, as an example of how a concert hall can welcome audiences through different means. "What they're doing at Zankel Hall is more idealistic. It's saying that for the future of classical music itself, it's good to try to attract different audiences to the hall. It's showing people that classical music isn't a distant, irrelevant, musty world but a living art that can have vital connection to other forms of contemporary culture."

Asked why programming is expanding, many arts executives say there is a growing sense that presenting organizations must find new ways to relate to the community around them. In 2003, for instance, the 35-year old La Jolla Chamber Music Society dropped the "chamber" from its name in order to reflect the addition of world music, jazz, and dance.

"The name change publicly acknowledges that we're doing something broader," says Mary Lou Aleskie, who became executive director in 2001. "Even before I got here, the board was looking at how San Diego was changing and how to reflect those changes in our programs. San Diego is a fast-growing market. We're close to the Mexican border, and the technology industry has attracted so many people from around the world. San Diego is also a young community—it's no longer the navy retirement community it once was."

Aleskie says the Society is targeting the region's large Asian population with appearances this season by the China Philharmonic, Chinese pianists Lang Lang and Yundi Li, and the Ying Quartet, whose program includes excerpts from short works by Chinese-American composers that they have dubbed "Musical Dim Sum." La Jolla's annual SummerFest, led by artistic director and violinist Cho-Liang Lin has also focused on Chinese composers like Bright Sheng and Chen Yi, as well as Mexican composers like Silvestre Revueltas and Carlos Chávez in past seasons.

Kenneth Fischer, president of the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, Michigan, emphasizes that varied programming is most successful when presenters are proactive in learning about different ethnic groups and regions of the world. He points to the five-part Arab World Music Festival planned for the Society's 2004-05 season. "Michigan is home to the largest concentration of Arabs outside the Middle East," he says. "In this day and age we have a tremendous opportunity to learn about each other through the arts. The Arab music festival represents a 10-year process of working with the community."

Among the artists tapped for the Arab music series are the Whirling Dervishes of Damascus from Syria, the Lebanese oud player Marcel Khalifé, and multi-instrumentalist Osama "Sam" Shalabi's "The Osama Project." Fischer is aware of the perceived downsides to diversification. "We actually doubled presentation of classical music at the same time as we were diversifying other presentations," he explains. "As our classical music audiences began to see other kinds of music coming, we didn't want them saying 'what's happening, are we being relegated as second-class citizens?'"

Across the country, university presenters like UCLA Live in Los Angeles, the Wisconsin Union Theater at the University of Wisconsin, and the Miller Theater at Columbia University are presenting fewer classical "celebrity" series and more cross-disciplinary, festival-style programming driven by themes and local tie-ins. Of the various non-classical offerings, world music and jazz are the most prevalent. In a recent survey of performing arts series by Musical America, 49 percent of the respondents said they present jazz, 42 percent present world music, 37 percent present dance, and roughly one-third of respondents put on theater, folk music, or pops as part of their series.

Still, not everyone agrees that presenting dance or world music is a catchall strategy for attracting new audiences. The husband and wife duo Wu Han and David Finckel ran the La Jolla SummerFest for three seasons before moving on to start their own summer series, Music@Menlo, in the Silicon Valley. They are also the new artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
 
"I realize that Wu Han and I might be in the minority if we question whether bringing people to classical music through other art forms is going to work," says Finckel. "If it really is working I can't say we have seen it yet. Put it this way, we would rather do a lecture-performance about Beethoven's love of coffee and what his schedule was like and how he composed and what kind of human being he was. We would instinctively go there rather than to dance, theater, or world music."

"The trend seems to be that you should mirror the population," adds Wu Han. "Because our specialty is really in chamber music, we feel we can serve the best from a very specialized area. For us, I would never dream of presenting any other art form because I don't believe I'm qualified."

Rob Robbins, vice-president for attractions at Herbert Barrett management, believes that classical audiences are still growing but it is ultimately a question of scale. "I think the audience for classical music has grown—maybe not relative to all the other choices people have, but it is bringing in bigger numbers," he says. However, "a big university series isn't likely to pick up on those things. When you've got a multi-million dollar budget and you've got Broadway musicals, big dance companies, world music, and jazz, all mixed in together, you don't have too much time to pay attention to chamber music," he says. "It becomes a very low priority. They still may be committed to it, but they can't give it the kind of care and attention that we know it requires."

To a large degree, economics are driving programming diversification. Subscription sales are declining as arts enthusiasts face growing demands on their leisure time and an inability to commit their calendars far in advance. At the same time, classical music has always been driven by subscription sales. Ultimately, presenters are determining that they must offer more single-ticket items like jazz, dance, and world music in order to attract these more impulsive audiences.

"There is no one answer to how to be successful at the box office anymore," says R. Douglas Sheldon, a vice-president at Columbia  Artists Management. "The real problem is the process of raising money—it's become more time consuming, more costly, more short term. You've got to learn a new technique of selling. You're not going to know until seven days before if you're going to be successful or not."

"Sending out a direct mail piece and expecting two-thirds of your contributions to come from that doesn't work anymore," says Aleskie. "How do we manage this shift in buying patterns? We're all still grappling with this."

Adding another layer of complexity is the fact that while pop music pays for itself, and jazz straggles along with occasional subsidy, classical music, ballet, and modern dance still attract the bulk of foundation and private support. Corporations and wealthy donors tend to gravitate towards these "blue chip" art forms while world music and jazz have not had such a galvanizing effect on the elite.

"The most generous donors are the classical music audiences," says Robert Cole, director of Cal Performances at the University of California at Berkeley. "World and jazz don't have a history of being supported by contributed income." He notes that presenters are increasingly relying on bankable classical stars like soprano Ren¨¦e Fleming, pianist Lang Lang, or conductor Valery Gergiev that they know will sell out a subscription series. "We have two classical artists who account for 10 percent of our total income," he says. "They'll be sold out by Sunday."

Other presenters witness similar trends. Fischer notes that UMS earned one-third of the overall income for the 2004-05 season by the end of June 2004. "We're still hanging in with series," he notes. "We've seen declining numbers, but that's happening everywhere."

Some arts executives say the combination of loyalty and deep pockets found in classical music subscribers are harder to come by in pop and world music fans because they are a more fragmented group. "There are those audiences who will attend an unknown Cuban act but wouldn't touch the Tibetan Monks," says Robbins. "Other people may come out for anything Tibetan but will have no interest in Indian music. There's no real way to cultivate an audience for world music the same way you do for classical music. The repertoire just doesn't fit into any category."

Still, it is undeniable that enthusiasts of jazz, world music, and dance are happy to have their music heard and seen in established institutions. They believe it gives their music the respect it deserves, and it presents their music as vital with rigorous standards. At the same time, however, they find that the proscenium stages of such institutions tend to put a distance between audience and performer and that concert rituals remain best suited for European styles of music. Nearly every new concert hall or renovation project in the last decade has sought to address this fact.

For instance, when the Detroit Symphony Orchestra opened the Max M. Fisher Music Center in October 2003, it sought to connect with the surrounding community by positioning itself as a populist entertainment and educational hub, complete with a 450-seat black-box theater outfitted with removable seats. The space can be configured for chamber music, cabaret, poetry slams, world music, hip-hop, and dance. "The music box becomes a second front door, an entry for those uninterested in classical music or uncomfortable in a European-style concert hall," writes Mark Stryker, classical music critic of the Detroit Free Press.

But while many presenters are putting out the welcome mat to world music, they find that when it comes to securing visas for performers, the infrastructure is more complicated. Over the last year, tougher security-related U.S. visa rules have caused costly cancellations and bred uncertainty for arts presenters around the country. Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club, Pakistani singer Faiz Ali Faiz, and Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden are among those who have been denied entry into the U.S. Performer visa costs can also be a burden for musicians, troupes, and festivals, and some agents say they are aren't signing any more foreign artists because it's too difficult to persuade presenters to take the risk in booking them.

"It's a terrible shame," says David Sefton, director of UCLA Live, who created controversy upon his arrival by eliminating the early-music, cabaret, and folk series. "We are all very cautious about booking any Arabic artists or Middle Eastern artists because there's a very good chance they won't be allowed into the country at all. It's a terrible state of affairs. The irony is, it's so bloody difficult to get an artist visa. The idea that terrorists would use artist visas to get into the country, they'd have to be mad."

Maluso of IMG Artists agrees. "It gets more complex and challenging logistically and financially because of the department of Homeland Security and all those restrictions on visas," he says. "There was a significant tightening of the budget among the presenters in this area, which made things even more difficult for the groups that had never been here before. When you're trying to launch something for the first time it's pretty difficult to try and get it done."

Despite these hurdles, there are plenty of reasons why presenters have jazz and world audiences in their crosshairs. Mervon Mehta, vice president of programming at the Kimmel Center sees a noticeable change in audience demographics. "Jazz brings in the most diverse audience of all different races and economic backgrounds," he says. "One of the biggest things we've been doing is breaking down the perception that the Kimmel Center is only for white, Euro-centric audiences."

Alex Ross believes there is a strong crossover potential between audiences. He finds that pop-culture aficionados—particularly for high-minded pop artists like Radiohead or Bjork—tend to practice the connoisseurship that "highbrow" listeners apply to classical music. "All of them are potential classical  listeners because of the way they connect to these artists," he says. "They don't see them as the flavor of the month. They're wrapped up not only in the personalities of the artist but also in the music itself. They follow it, they think about it, and they study it in the same way that classical listeners have a relationship to composers. I feel like they're very ready to make the leap to classical listening that concert music thrives on."

Still, a larger question emerges: Will jazz, world, and popular audiences make the leap over to classical music—and should they? Some believe that the classical industry grew too fast over time by trying to compete with mass entertainment on its own terms. "I think classical music got caught up in the numbers game," says Jane Moss, vice-president of programming at Lincoln Center. "It's ridiculous. The classical music superstructure got too dependent on big audiences."

Moss adds that niche forms of popular culture like pay cable TV or independent films can offer a powerful model for classical music. With their modest budgets, strong identities, and vast range of options targeted at specific interests, they are attracting the younger, educated, and affluent viewers that major networks and movie studios have neglected. "What is working are niche media like HBO and Showtime," she says. "So are independent films. In that sense, popular culture can lead the way for classical music."

Brian Wise is a producer at WNYC radio and writes about music for The New York Times, Time Out New York, Opera News and other publications.