“Music Academy of the West—the summer training program for young musicians on an elegant campus nestled among Montecito mansions … held a two-day conference this week called ‘Classical Evolution/Revolution,’ ” writes Mark Swed in Friday’s (6/23) Los Angeles Times. “Eighteen movers and shakers, young and seasoned, working in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York and London, took part in six panels surveying the state of the field. … How can we develop new audiences without teaching music in schools? Can classical music, that sliver of a sliver of the modern zeitgeist, possibly matter? Where, everyone in the business desperately wants to know, will the next dollar come from?” After expressing concerns, Graham Parker, president of the U.S. division of Universal Music Classics, “ended the conference raising eyebrows with the claim that in any given month an extraordinary 30% of the U.S. population listens to classical music on some device. … Of course, how you best reach these millions is another matter. There are also millions more who don’t know what they are missing. … The news from picture-perfect Montecito is that however great the challenges may be for classical music, the possibilities are greater. And there are a lot of people who care.”
Posted June 26, 2017
