I went to a fantastic concert last week with my 16 year old daughter; we heard the Icelandic group ‘Sigur Ros’. I observed a number of things at the concert that could seemed pertinent to the orchestra business.

The concert started and ended very simply- only two words in English- ‘Thank You’, no lectures or spiels, yet the music was new, fresh and original and the audience loved it. (Do we really need to ‘explain’ our contemporary pieces before we play them? Maybe less talk would be more?)

A very diverse group of audience members were at hand- before the concert. I spotted my fifty something dermatologist as well as twenty something geeky types; the emo teen crowd, the obligatory aging hippies; quite a gathering.

The music was fascinating- a(n) (all female) string quartet opened the concert with a first half set of works, all varied, using electric instruments and a wide array of toy pianos, Orff-like mallet instruments, an iMac looping device, a dulcimer, etc. etc. The musicians filed onto the stage wordlessly, played and at the end, bowed. No muss, no fuss.

The second half was even better- Sigur Ros is definitely where the future of rock is headed- they seem to have made a wonderful fusion of new-age trance/electronica with rock in a way that only Radiohead has done as successfully. (Sigur Ros opened for Radiohead a few years ago on tour).

The second half started with a gauzy scrim lowered over the stage in front of the musicians with strong lighting behind, creating the effect of shadow puppets. The lead guitarist was seen in silhouette, bowing his guitar with a bass bow. (Later, he sang into the guitar pickups, creating a ghostly effect.). Eventually the scrim was raised, to be lowered for the final piece of the evening, two hours later, creating a nice frame. The whole concert was three hours long! Even though my daughter kept glancing at her cell phone to check the time, I totally lost track of the time and thought the concert ended an hour earlier than it actually did.

Other than noticing how -well, Brucknerian in feel the music seemed, this music is quite orchestral in nature, especially with the addition of the string quartet- even though they were mostly ‘rolling eggs’ (i. e. whole notes) with some notable exceptions. No doubt there will be composers of orchestral music who will use some of this material, and to have Sigur Ros with a full orchestra would be really something to hear.

I don’t get to too many concerts what with working so many nights, so I’m always struck by how different the experience is for the audience than for the performers. The concert was in the same theater where I had been working all week with a production of Menotti’s ‘the Medium’ (another blog entry about that is in the works) First thing I notice is the extreme perfume smell emanating from another audience member. As the concert progresses, it becomes obvious why the perfume is needed- to mask an unpleasant sweaty odor.

I notice the audience who arrived long after the starting time - and the ushers frantically seating them - and loudly directing them to their seats during the music! Annoying! I notice the Willie Nelson look-alike in front of me who leaned forward on the balcony railing and blocked the view.

And I start to think- is the verb for going to a concert ‘seeing’ a concert or ‘hearing’ a concert? I think the common vernacular is seeing- and that got me thinking for how that applies to the orchestra business.

Back when I first came to Honolulu, the conductor was fond of ‘corny’ touches like lowering the stage lights while bathing the concertmaster in a blue spotlight during her Scheherazade solos. Corny, but visually striking. I remember a wealthy man, diagnosed with a terminal illness, who hired the Honolulu Symphony to play the Faure Requiem with hula dancing telling the story- and two nearly naked male hula dancers literally ascending to heaven at the end courtesy of theater magic (i. e. hoisting cables)- corny, but visually striking.

I just turned on the TV to PBS and there is André Rieuw- the violinist, with the orchestra in period costume, ladies in billowing dresses- a bit over the top to my taste- but he really brings in the audience, and sells the records.

If we really are having a problem bringing in the audience, why shouldn’t we be looking at alternative ways to visually bring the orchestra to the audience? Syracuse Symphony ‘cellist Lindsay Groves writes to me (she “likes my blog”!) a thought along those lines- what a shame it is that the audience only sees the conductor’s back, she says, they miss the look of concentration (or panic!) on the face of a musician about to play a difficult passage (or is that because the conductor has thrown him a curve ball? Never mind.) I believe that Vancouver, Philadelphia and LA- maybe more- have experimented with this kind of TV projection notion. It would be interesting to know how that has affected attendance numbers. Perhaps this kind of thing is something that more orchestras should try. My mother, who lives in the DC area, really enjoys going to the new choral seats at the Kennedy Center, precisely because she can see the conductor and watch the musicians. Many of the new halls, Disney Hall in LA for example, also have the same architectural innovation.

And after all, we do go to ‘see’ a concert. It’s feels strange to say- ‘I heard a concert last night’ if you actually went to the concert- it sounds like you were listening to the radio. Let’s pay attention to that, orchestra leaders. There is the future- look at how popular Opera has become- it has visuals! The Sigur Ros concert demonstrates how visual theater can be done with dignity and a sense of organic unity with the music.