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WE'RE NUMBER 99! Well, not really. We (and by "we," I mean the Eugene Symphony) are the 99th orchestra to be graced by the presence of Henry Fogel in his three and a half years of tenure as the president of the American Symphony Orchestra League. But the Symphony isn't far down on his list. "I have for years held the Eugene Symphony as a model," Fogel said in a Dec. 8 meeting with local classical music media types. Why? "It's not instinctive for most orchestras to go about a music director search with the idea that if the person is here 10 years from now, then it's been a mistake," he said, pointing out that former music directors Marin Alsop and Miguel Harth-Bedoya both moved on to larger city orchestras (Alsop soon begins her tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony, and Harth-Bedoya has been in Fort Worth since 2000). As for current music director Giancarlo Guerrero, Fogel seemed impressed. "This guy," he said, "is extremely gifted."
The ASOL has nearly a thousand member orchestras, including around 400 professional orchestras and a lot of youth, college and community groups. Fogel has his fingers firmly on the pulse of orchestra success in the U.S., and he doesn't buy dire predictions about the aging of the audience. Yes, he said, there are two main problems. One is that "in the last 25 years, schools have cut back on music education, particularly performance in the schools." That means "this is the first generation of 35-45 year olds who came out of schools that didn't teach music." And secondly, he cited the fact that many 35-45 year olds grew up with television on most of the time. As the only person below that age group in the room, your intrepid EW reporter felt compelled to ask about using YouTube and podcasts to draw in new audiences and accomplish some amusing music education (the Symphony could easily create a YouTube-perfect voiceover clip with Guerrero miming a gallop to spur on his orchestra during the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth). Fogel said, "I haven't looked into that yet." But Fogel explained that many orchestras are financially stable this year, perhaps because of a recovering economy. And the Eugene Symphony almost always operates in the black. Fogel does think that orchestras need to adapt to the changing theatrical world, however: "You go in, and nothing happens that would surprise Mendelssohn." He suggested theatrical lighting that changed during each movement and fixed cameras to show musicians' faces, hands and (in piano concertos) footwork. The symphony used two stageside screens and several cameras during the Dec. 9 performance. At intermission, the audience filled out surveys about the screens. Marketing Director Raychel Kolen notes survey results showed that "we've got a very musically literate bunch in our audience" since both those who hated the innovation (more than half) and those who loved it noted that the camera folks didn't often enough show featured soloists as they played. Fogel was not impressed with the approach of using several cameras, but he added that it is time "to change the stuffy, snobbish attitude" and "create an atmosphere that's not alien to younger people." Fogel, in an internet-savvy move, now has a blog (www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord), where we hope he will soon post about Eugene.
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