Presenting in the New Millennium: Creativity, Courage, and Lots of Cash

By Susan Elliott

Once upon a time, when Bill Gates was still in knickers and Ted Turner was playing high school football, people would leave their homes and go to concerts-or plays, or movies, or even the bowling alley. Nowadays, with competition for the entertainment dollar somewhere between fierce and dangerous, audiences are splintered and elusive. "There is just so much going on," says Jane Moss, vice president for programming at Lincoln Center, "in every imaginable category of life. Every single form of expression in this country-movies, TV, books, newspapers-is dealing with the same issues: declining audiences and too much product."

As the millennium approaches, street smarts and marketing savvy are crucial to survival. And for presenters of classical music, that means get hip or get out. Hip to your audience, hip to your bottom line, hip to what's available-not only in classical music, but in world music, new music, early music, jazz, Latin, theater, dance, and any number of other categories. A dozen non-profit presenters, most of them multidisciplinary, said in interviews that they are no longer mere bookers of attractions that happen to be on tour in their communities.

Larry Wilker, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, offers a solid textbook definition. "A presenter is a person who finds an existing performance, one that already has been assembled and rehearsed, and markets it in his or her community. The person is at risk; they purchase the presentation for an agreed-upon price; they must do all the advertising, make arrangements for the hall, whatever requirements are necessary to ensure the audience has a high-quality experience.

"Now, when I first started presenting, there was a Sol Hurok, and you could in fact make money on the kinds of attractions he made available. But now, the economics have gotten so difficult that's an impossibility. Audiences are much tougher to reach; there's more competition for their time; they are less educated and aware of the arts than audiences of Hurok's day."

On the eve of the 21st Century, the key elements of successful presenting, in addition to marketing, are imagination, good taste, an entrepreneurial spirit, a willingness to collaborate, and a thorough knowledge of your community. "You have to be creative, set very high standards, and not underestimate your audience but rather respect their intelligence," says Robert Cole, director of the University of California at Berkeley's Cal Performances.

 "You need imagination, courage, and an ability to balance the art/visionary side with the financial, administrative, directorial, political, and fund-raising side," says John Rockwell, former head of the Lincoln Center Festival and currently editor of the Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times. "You need first and foremost a sense of quality, and an ability to excite the public about the artistic product," says Wilker.
 
The Presenter as Producer

The presenters canvassed for this article are among the most adventuresome in the country, leading the pack in presenting and/or commissioning new works or finding new contexts for traditional ones. They are a relatively new breed, defined by Rockwell as "the presenter-slash-producer." Berkeley, for example, co-produced and premiered John Adams and Peter Sellars' I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky; Kennedy Center co-produced such Broadway hits as Titanic, Les Miserables (which it also premiered in this country), and The King and I, along with any number of new dance works; and Lincoln Center's Great Performers series is co-producing and premiering this season's Bach Cantatas, directed by Sellars with Lorraine Hunt, and How! Do! We! Do!, directed and performed by Bill T. Jones and Jessye Norman.

"The line between being a presenter and being a producer is getting very fuzzy, which is good," offers Cole. "It's the difference between being passive-where you wait for an agent to call you up and tell you that XYZ dance company is touring next season and that you can have October 24 and 25, which is the way it used to be-and being aggressive." The latter may mean going out and seeking new projects that originated elsewhere or it may mean commissioning new ones. "We're much more involved in the process," he continues, "which brings us more interesting and individualistic kinds of programs for the audiences."

Those who commission work generally partner with other presenters, which not only helps defray costs but guarantees some life after the premiere. Berkeley collaborated with Lincoln Center, Paris' MC 93 Bobigny, and Hamburg's Thalia Theater on Looking; Kennedy Center with Dodger Productions on Titanic and The King and I and Cameron MacIntosh on Les Miz; and Lincoln Center with the Barbican Center and Cité de la Musique on the Sellars project and the Châtelet Theater and the Barbican on the Jones/Norman work.

Broadened Horizons

For most presenters, and to some extent even the more innovative ones, the prepackaged, preprogrammed artists and attractions still provide the bread and butter of their seasons. But virtually all of them are expanding the parameters of what and how they present. Says Ken Fischer, president of the University Musical Society of the University of Michigan, "If you had looked at us ten years ago, after you yawned, you would have seen an organization that had three classical series-choral, chamber, and everything else. We've diversified our programs tremendously. We've added jazz, African-American, contemporary, you name it.

"Of course, when classical people hear that, their knee-jerk reaction is, `Well, gosh, if you guys have diversified and you're into jazz, gospel, and all that, then classical music is going down the tubes.' On the contrary, we're doing almost twice the number of classical performances that we did ten years ago. We're presenting them differently and we're presenting them better." (The 1991 Musical America Directory listed the Choral Union series, Chamber Arts series, and the Choice Series; 1998 lists the first two of those, plus 14 more series; of the 16 total, ten offer classical music.)

 Lincoln Center's Great Performers series is another example of expanded horizons, even within the strictly classical realm. Who could have ever predicted that this golden oldie would offer such renegade programming as the Bang on a Can All-Stars, or that it would metamorphose into 16 distinct series offering string trios on Sunday mornings in the Walter Reade Theater, opera choruses in Upper East Side churches, or musicalized "playful nonsense" at City Center? (A press release from Edgar Vincent Associates announcing the inaugural, 1965-66 Great Performers season in Philharmonic Hall described only four series. Series A included Birgit Nilsson and Duke Ellington; Series B, Joan Baez and José Iturbi; Series C, Yehudi Menuhin and Cesare Siepi; and Series D, Claudio Arrau and the Dave Brubeck Quartet.)

"We're becoming a major innovative force in the world of music presentation," says Moss. "We're developing an interdisciplinary component to what we do. We are in eight different sites all over the city, above and beyond Lincoln Center. Part of this is dictated by the way the programming is changing-though we're still rooted in music, we're moving into more theatrical presentations of it."

The Balancing Act

Is this Moss' personal artistic vision at work? What does her marketing department say about all this? And at what point does she draw the line between leading the audience and following it? "Ah," she says, "that, of course, is the $64,000 question."

Explaining that Lincoln Center's marketers are knowledgeable about programming and the programmers sensitive to marketing, she says "we work hand-in-glove with the marketing people. The only time it gets bad," she says, speaking generally, "is when the marketing drives the programming.

"The key issue is time. The classical world has functioned in pretty much the same way for about a zillion years. So, to change that, you need to make the investment of time."

By and large, presenters who have taken the long view toward audience development-or whose Boards of Directors have trusted them enough to do so-have reaped rewards in the end. Harvey Lichtenstein, president and executive director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is a sterling example of that. "When Harvey brought in Pina Bausch, unknown weirdo German dancer, for the first time," says Rockwell, "nobody had heard of her. When he brings her in for the tenth time, she's an institution and people show up."

Edna Landau, senior vice president and managing director of IMG Artists, points out that good presenters know how to build artists in their communities, even if they lose money initially. She cites Doug Wheeler, president of the Washington Performing Arts Society (which presents in the Kennedy Center), as an example. "He's introduced so many young artists at the [513-seat] Terrace Theater. And then the moment comes when he calls and says, `I'm ready to put [pianist] Leif Ove Andnes in the bigger hall. Not only that but I'd like to commission a new work for him.' That's thrilling, because he took a chance on him when nobody knew him."

"It's tough," says Doug Evans, executive director of the Bushnell Memorial Hall in Hartford, Connecticut. "You really have to be in communication with your audience. At the same time you ask them to try new things, you also have to bring them things they want to see," such as blockbuster musicals. At the Bushnell, the annual surplus from the Broadway series ($15 million gross) offsets the six-figure losses generated by the World Symphony series and other classical offerings.

"A good presenter ought to be able to reflect the tastes of the local audience," concurs ICM president and CEO David Foster, "but he also needs to be able to lead them to some extent, and that requires trust."

"It's a constant tightrope," says Rockwell. "What I did was pick two or three personal favorites that I would commit my budget to and then other things with more calculation toward the box office." Last summer's ill-fated Peony Pavilion was a project for which Rockwell went way out on a limb, with the goal of having director Chen Shi-Zheng revive the 400-year-old epic Chinese opera and bring it to the United States to open the Lincoln Center Festival. "Nobody, nobody thought that anybody would come to that thing," he continues. "I mean, 22 hours of opera-come on. But I went ahead and committed the Lincoln Center Festival to the largest projected deficit of any event. Whether I was a visionary or a twit we never got a chance to see, but even before all the controversy hit, it was selling amazingly well."

In Search of New Audiences

If introducing new artists and new work means enlightening your existing audience, it also means finding new audiences-a key aspect of today's highly competitive presenting world. Contemporary music might be a harder sell than the superstar vocalist, but it tends to attract the audiences of tomorrow. "It's a challenge, we all know that," says Cole. "But if you're talking about audience development, it's one place where young people show up. Particularly the high-tech types, who are more apt to hear about a concert on the Internet than in the newspaper."

One especially interesting example of audience-building through new work is the Harlem Nutcracker, which the University of Michigan, in collaboration with a number of other presenters, commissioned of Donald Byrd and premiered last season. "Byrd choreographed a version of the story to the Ellington arrangement of the score," recalls Fischer. "This represented a way for us to diversify our programming as well as our audience, to invite people from all over southeast Michigan, which has a large African-American population.

"We had top jazzers from Detroit in the pit. We went to a dozen African-American churches in Detroit and formed a city-wide gospel chorus, which of course brought in people from those churches as well. Then we recruited 36 elementary-junior high school kids to be the youth dancers-the equivalent of the little girls in their tutus. So we were able to involve over 100 local artists in these performances (we rehearsed them for months), plus Donald's 22 professional dancers.

"And every performance had a youth choir from an African-American church singing in the lobby ahead of time. We even used the event as a fund-raiser for the local United Negro College Fund."

Asked if the project made money, or at least broke even, Fischer responds, "We've done tremendously well with it. It exceeded our expectations such that this year we're partnering with the Detroit Opera House and the Arts League of Michigan to bring 13 performances to downtown Detroit with an entirely new sponsorship."

Education and Outreach

In the nonprofit world, "education" and "outreach," buzzwords of the '90s, are key ingredients to income, both earned and contributed. (Some contributors are more interested in education and outreach than they are in programming.) At the University of Michigan, outreach includes casting local talent and watching their friends and relatives show up at the box office, while the education program has mushroomed from three pre-concert lectures a decade ago to "200 discrete educational events," says Fischer. At the Bushnell, outreach is defined as renting the hall to the Hartford Symphony and Connecticut Opera at half the commercial rate. And education comprises a weekly radio broadcast by Evans, pre-concert lectures on everything from Showboat to Symphony No. 9, and a curriculum-based arts program in the surrounding public schools. Cole reports a "large program of educational activities, both on and off campus," including bussing children in for performances and taking artists to the schools, and Wilker estimates that the Kennedy Center is "probably the largest provider of arts and education services products and materials in the country. We need to get serious as a profession about bringing along the next generation, or in ten years or so there won't be anybody sitting in our seats."

If arts education is helping to build audiences for the year 2010, artist residencies help build one for the concert next Saturday. "The really good presenters will have the artist come in a little early," says Landau, "to create some interaction in the community, some build-up, so that by concert time everybody wants to be there."

The Artist-Presenter Relationship

The better a presenter understands the nature of the beast he has booked, the better he can position it, both in the marketplace and in the concert hall. "You don't put on an ice show and present it as if it were a tennis tournament," chuckles Foster, who says enthusiasm and an understanding of the artist are the two most important aspects of good presenting. To the artist, understanding is key. "What scares me most," says soprano Dawn Upshaw, "is when I get feedback from a program I've sent in that says `Can't you do some opera arias?' I guess those presenters are looking out for their audiences, which is of course important. On the other hand I feel like they're just looking for entertainment," rather than an intimate recital of, in Upshaw's case, usually contemporary work.

"The further along I get in the business and the more particular I am about what I want to do, the more I appreciate a presenter who allows a certain amount of freedom and individuality in an artist," she continues. For the artist, good presenting can mean everything from the right program notes to the right acoustics, from the right dressing rooms to a proper rehearsal schedule to having enough restrooms so the second half of the program starts on time.

"A good presenter makes the artist feel well looked after," says Landau. "It's not just about collecting money at the box office."

In communities where there are multiple presenters, she says, artists will return to the one who "really understood and cared about them." Cole-named frequently by artists, presenters, and managers alike as one of the best presenters in the country-says the fact that he was once a performer himself has allowed him to anticipate artists' needs. "This is a very, very difficult business, and it takes a lot to go onstage. I appreciate the incredible stress and pressure the artists are under. When something goes wrong, I'm in the hall."

Violinist Robert McDuffie says it's the "personal touch" that makes all the difference, particularly on a solo recital tour. "Many of us play orchestra dates as a major part of our career. But in a recital, you're baring your soul. In many ways it's a truer picture of the artist. So you want to feel good, to feel comfortable enough to play great."

He cites among his favorites Cole ("I always wanted to work with him because I knew he had good taste; he's a thinker") and, at the opposite end of the spectrum in size and budget, Leila Getz, artistic director and general manager of the Vancouver Recital Society. "Recital presenters are becoming few and far between," he says. "They all work on a shoestring budget. It's their true passion for the art form that keeps them going. So you want to play well for them.

"The artists who play on Leila's series do it out of love for her, not because she pays big fees. She's very close with [Evgeny] Kissin and [Cecilia] Bartoli. They love her. You leave Vancouver, you know why you do what you do."

Asked to reveal her secret, Getz describes a combination of good taste, good manners, and common sense. "I treat them like they're friends coming to visit," she says. "I and my small staff knock ourselves out to make sure their every little need is taken care of. This is Vancouver. It's not Boston, New York, or Washington, so it's not an `A' city on the classical-music circuit. If I want them to come back, I have to create a good time for them."

She greets the artists personally at the airport; she cooks for them; but, she says, she doesn't kowtow. "I'm very cheeky. No matter how famous they are, I'm not in awe-I'm always myself."

The presenter who treats the artist like a colleague is apparently preferable to the one who bows and scrapes. Dawn Upshaw says it makes her feel uncomfortable when someone "steps on tiptoes around me. It's much more important that I feel like the presenter and I are in it together-that we are trying to bring something meaningful to the audience."

A winning personality, a killer-instinct in the marketplace, a knack for numbers, a knowledge of the field, a sense of daring-do, and a nose for the Next Big Thing-that's all it takes. "You can't say that a presenter should be innovative or traditional or whatever," says Moss. "I think these jobs are all about the people who are in them. The best thing you can do is be true to your own vision." u

A former critic for the New York Post, Susan Elliott reports on the arts for a number of publications. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Connoisseur, Southern Living, Gramophone, and Opera News, among others.