Author: Professor Specs

I play sax. I write. I run. I speak a dozen languages. I have friends in every town from here to the Sudan. With any luck I've got the grail already.

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About Culture

Audience Development

Artists and arts organizations interested in understanding “THE AUDIENCE” talk endlessly about programs and outreach and cultivation, always asking who is the audience? How do we reach them? What do they think? What would draw them into our sphere?

To us the question is, “who are you?”

Who do you know? Are you not also part of “the audience?” In reality, every institution, every person is part of the audience, or at least an audience. It seems that we are conditioned to only look “out there” for answers about human nature and human behavior. Without questions, rational observed analytical approaches to understanding the audience are important. But where have they led us? Are we missing out on intuitive input to this important issue? We think that’s the case.

We feel the public can be loosely arranged into four categories of audience, the activated, the willing, the indifferent, and the unwilling/disinterested. Understanding the audience this way ignores class, education, race, age and other such demographic distinctions that surveys and traditional methods of analysis can’t measure.

With regards to the activated audience we need not say much. Only that it seems there aren’t enough of them and we tend to take them for granted.

The unwilling are similarly simple. There is little you can do to engage them. The best hope is some sort of confrontational “come to Jesus” moment – the kind that they can’t anticipate and then avoid – that propels them up the ladder.

The real substance lies in the understanding of the remaining two segments.

But what is the best way understand those kinds of audience members? And it’s also important to identify our goals with regards to the audience. Simply put, it is to get people to climb the ladder one rung at a time.

The goal cannot be to only count heads. Turnout is great. Grassroots popularity for one show or two is nice, but like the grass it is here today and gone tomorrow. Growth in breadth is key but simply drawing more indifferent or willing people on the ladder will only make more work later on as you find ways, each and every time, to help those groups overcome the barrier to engagement for every event. They must be encouraged and helped up the ladder. We need them to eventually become part of the activated audience.

So what can begin to help us understand the groups at the heart of audience development – the indifferent and the willing. The institutional response would be to do a survey. And the value of the survey cannot be denied, but we think there is a briefer and somewhat more human – and possibly better – solution.

Ask yourself, what cultural things are you disinterested in or unwilling to engage? What things are you indifferent towards? What things are you willing to engage with but don’t and why?

Now think about what ways the purveyors in each category might grab your attention and what strategies might work to take you up a rung of the ladder. Then, realize that everyone you come across falls on that scale somewhere with regard to your work or mission.

Much more can be said about this, and will be, as we unpack ways to better understand people in those two critical demographics. Until we’ve time to flesh it out think about how to position art and activity in a way that can be a catalyst toward building, not a larger audience, but an activated one.

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News & Happenings

Austin, Austin, Austin

We like going to Texas. And we’d like to think that Texas likes us coming there. But as Northeasterners, mentioning to our neighbors that we’re headed to the Lone Star State usually ends with a derogatory, “WHY?”

It would be long and difficult conversation to help that person understand why, in spite of its reputation, Texas is a nice to place to visit. So, in lieu of that, we just say, “It’s OK. We’re going to Austin.” Which illicits a universally positive response from even the most seasoned skeptic.

If you’re in Austin this May, check out the calendar and see if we’ll be anywhere you’d also want to be at the same time as us.

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About Movies

Blockbuster Idea: Pirates of the Caribbean XIV

So here’s an idea for a new blockbuster Hollywood picture.

I have recently been tetering at the edge of the world location scouting for Gore Verbinski and Jerry Bruckheimer’s new historical dramatization, Pirates of the Caribbean XIV, Capt. Jack and the Bay of Pigs.

It’s a very interesting story that gives us the real info about what happened during the botched CIA mission to Cuba. What they didn’t tell us was what that the CIA found an aged, and somehow still living, band of pirates from the 19th century. The missile cirsis and ensuing embargo on Cuba has nothing to do with Castro supposed Communism, but the need to protect the truth that the fountain of youth is real and still active on the island of Cuba. Castro was acutally in cahoots with Kennedy to keep the secret from falling into the hands of the Soviets.

The whole “Bermuda Triangle” thing is a red herring to draw adventure and consipiracy seekers away from Cuba on a wild goose chase and into a desctructive trap that both eliminates the potential enemy and also keeps the “myth” alive.

The film ends with the assasination of Kennedy at the hands of rogue British agents, desendants of the British fleet captains who lost track of the pirates 100 years earlier and are still smarting over having lost control of the Carribbean. It sets up nicely for another trilogy within the bloated franchise.

The only bad part about the gig was that they could only pay me in Spanish Dubloons. It’s hard to just take those to the ATM and make a deposit.

Categories
News & Happenings

Baylor University

In 2011 we spent a few days at Baylor University in Waco, TX working with the honors college.

Going back to campuses like Baylor’s is always a refreshing experience. It takes us back to our youth (which we’d like to think is still somewhat active) with the sites of ultimate frisbee, the sounds of students complaining about schoolwork, and the smells of academia. Most notably of which are the handful of kids who may or may not have showered since the first week of class.

While there we had the fantastic opportunity to both lecture and perform. We also sat down with a select group of students and faculty all interested in exploring where music is going and how we see our work in light of these trends.

After our first full day we sampled some savory Thai food that reminded us – a little at least – of our time in Thailand, and spent the evening talking about art and life with some new friends on a cozy porch in the cool Texas night.

The highlight, though, may have been stopping in to the local coffee shop the next morning only to be recognized by the barista who promptly gave us our beverages on the house. A hearty Northeastern thanks goes out to you friend.

Here’s hoping we’ll have a chance to make it back down by y’all.

Categories
About Music Featured

What’s That Music Called?

Asking us what we call our music is a little like asking a chef “what kind of food is this?” We imagine that most chefs are highly tempted to respond with something like, “the kind that is delicious.” We understand their quandary.

Categories matter, even if they are at times stifling and fragmenting. The question for us since we began has been, “how do we best invite people into the space our music occupies while retaining some the freshness and distinctiveness of our sound?”

When you don’t have a easily identifiable genre, you might just be up a creek with paddle full of holes.

Thus far we’ve called it roots chamber music. (Though we’ll clue you into a little secret. We’re probably changing our made-up-genre designation.)

Roots Chamber Music, like any descriptor of music, hardly communicates the fullness of the experience of the music itself. But, by looking at the component parts of the term, perhaps something can be gleaned from these limited words after all.

Roots: Strictly speaking, “roots” music is music that has it’s origins in the bygone era of sounds particularity American. In other words, the sounds you hear have their “roots” here. Perhaps the phrase “going back to my roots” is a helpful calibrator. For us, Roots includes bluegrass and jazz. Two forms distinctly American.

Chamber Music: According to Chamber Music America (the national service organization for the chamber music profession), Chamber Music for two or more players performed without a conductor. So, we certainly qualify. But there’s more to be learned from the connotation of the term. Chamber Music is intimate. It is dynamic. It is flexible. It is serious. It is enjoyable.

 

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About Music

The Thingness Of Music

Together we’ve been playing music for a total of 50 years. Well, not together, but cumulatively. Both of us have lived and breathed it since we were children. Both of our fathers were musicians. I,  Professor Specs, have studied music academically for nearly 20 years earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in the subject. Yet, when I lay awake in bed at night and think about that thing to which I have dedicated most of my efforts in this life, I cannot define it.

Granted, definitions for “music” do exist. But those categories rarely can hold in all that we experience, feel, and think of when we think of “music.” Intuitively, we all know what music is, but at the same time we don’t.

Why does this matter?

Well, it matters a great deal right now because the turmoil which surrounds the artform is not simply manifesting as the result of technological advancement – though there is that. The confusion arises, first and foremost, because we don’t know what music IS. And not knowing what it IS makes it hard to know what to do with it.

It was at a conference that I spearheaded in 2011 that some direction to wresting with this problem was brought forth. In his plenary lecture, painter Bruce Herman quoted the poet William Carlos Williams.

No ideas but in things.

That’s where the notion occurred to us to stop treating music as an “idea” but as a “thing.” Much of what FP has done since then is a way to begin to work through that process. The goal is to ask important questions about music at the dawn of the 21st century to hopefully develop a more meaningful understanding of this meaningful art form, in order to know how to talk about it better, how to advocate for it better, and ultimately how to make it better.