“Three concerts for $99, to be chosen from a list of 65. Not a bad deal,” writes William Littler in Saturday’s (1/5) Toronto Star (Canada). “The Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s Boxing Week special has expired now, but you can expect more deals in the months and years ahead. And not just from the orchestra heard regularly at Roy Thomson Hall…. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra incorporates pop artists and popular films into its program schedule. It also enables patrons to create their own subscription series and those series can now be much shorter.… Young people today are reluctant to commit themselves in advance…. Old people are far likelier … to favor predictable patterns in their lives. So they are likelier to subscribe…. Orchestras are learning to diversify. In Atlanta, diversification has led to increased single-ticket sales to compensate for declining subscriptions as well as to an increased concentration on audience-seeding student concerts. ‘We have had to commit to sellable programming,’ acknowledges Tammy Hawk, senior director of marketing and communications. ‘Orchestras would still rather be playing Beethoven and Brahms. But when they see all those people out there loving it when we do other kinds of music, they begin to understand.’ ”
Posted January 8, 2019
