Community Collaboration Builds the Audience
The Springfield Symphony Orchestra wanted to find a new way to connect to their community, enlarge the orchestra’s audience base, and cultivate a younger demographic. They put together a program of American music and invited community members and professional photographers to provide photos of farm life to accompany the music. The photos were compiled by James Westwater.
The first half of the program included Steven Heitzeg’s Symphony to the Prairie Farm, and Virgil Thomson’s The Plow that Broke the Plains. James Westwater's photos, collectively titled "Love of Our Land,” were projected with Copland’s Appalachian Spring. The second half of the program began with excerpts from Henry Cowell’s Old American Country Set, accompanied by photos taken by 4H and FFA students from area schools. The program concluded with a “musical collage”— Westwater compiled photos by amateur and professional photographers, and set them to selections by Copland.
The concert was made possible in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, through the Agriculture Department at Ohio State University.
This highly collaborative concert idea brought together farmers, who “got to see their daily tasks in an artistic light,” and photographers in the community, who gained a heightened artistic experience seeing their photos set to music. Observations from the concert suggest the community involvement attracted whole farm families – often three generations – to the performances. It was a visibly different audience than the older demographic normally present.
The orchestra usually performs single concerts (with an average attendance of 780), but performed this program twice. The pair of concerts sold extremely well and achieved its goal of reaching new ticket buyers. A random survey was distributed to audience members before each concert. From the responses collected on Saturday night, figures state that the audience numbered more than 1000, 40% of whom had never been to a Springfield Symphony concert. Moreover, 85% of the new attendees said they would consider returning for future performances.
To read more:
http://agarts.ag.ohio-state.edu
http://www.springfieldsym.org/c2.html
For further information contact David Deitrick at:
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937 - 325 - 8100