Rehearsals and work-in-progress as previews (trailers)

Watching a rehearsal of a choir or the behind-the-scenes of a film production makes me want to go see the real thing (when it’s ready). Like watching a chef prepare a meal, I start to get hungry.

Not the concert itself, Utrecht Conservatory June 2008. Photo: F. vd Meer

Twitter led me to watch the work-in-progress of The Hobbit which will come out next here. The youtube video is not short by any means, but you grow to love the people working on the set and film.

On Facebook, I played a video of the rehearsal of the 88-member student choir of the New England Conservatory. So much goes on in a rehearsal that is not obvious. For the bystander like myself, I see beauty that is being created. I am reminded of my days as a conservatory student, singing in two choirs per year to improve my solfege. For others, it’s the awe of the director — how he manages to get the choir to produce an impressive sound.

The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam offers free lunch concerts each Wednesday. I remember queuing 45 minutes before one such event, shoulder to shoulder in the reception area, standing like sardines in anticipation of a 45 minute concert. When the doors finally opened about 10 minutes before the concert, we rushed in and exclaimed a unison “wow!”  It was the stendhalismo effect of arriving at a historically important place, feeling the special feng shui and grandiose atmosphere, and all of that we normally don’t get to experience in daily life. Once we sat down, I realized that it was just a rehearsal. Not even a dress rehearsal. But it was the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. They were rehearsing a Brahms violin concerto. All musicians were informally dressed, despite being on stage and in front of a full-house of eager listeners. We fell silent when the conductor raised his stick. I closed my eyes. This could easily be the concert itself. The conductor brought the violinist into his solo. After leading the orchestra to join him in a mesmerizing passage, he stopped at a beautiful chord. I opened my eyes to another unison sigh from the audience — an “Ah!”

The free lunch rehearsal concert ended 15 minutes earlier than I had expected. Yet we all felt satisfied — as though we’ve had our lunch.

That was a live trailer of the concert that evening.

All in all, I’d say that rehearsals, work in progress, behind the scenes and pre-production all lead us to anticipate. When we anticipate, we expect. It makes us look forward to the real thing.

Concerts for free or nearly free

Search for “classical concert etiquette” and you will get guides like this one and numerous others. These articles are well-written. It would be superfluous to write more about this subject. In thinking about advice for first-time concert goers, I recall how I became an avid concert goer. It began with the word FREE.

When I lived in London and learned of the free concerts at the local music college, I was curious if I could or should attend. I would show up for a lunch concert. Sometimes there were more people on stage than in the audience. I would make eye contact and feel somewhat uncomfortable because I had seen them before. Perhaps elsewhere in town or at a previous concert, I was not sure. The discomfort could also be described as a kind of guilt. It was a free concert. What did I do to deserve a free concert? It was sheer indulgence for me —- I had the time and interest and desire. The discomfort could also be described as a kind of trespass. I was neither a student nor an employee. I merely lived in the neighbourhood.

After I became a “regular,” someone from the college introduced himself to me and talked to me.  I gasped. I was not invisible after all. Somebody noticed that I had been faithfully attending these free concerts. Was it time to cough up and pay? [It's so English not to say anything unless you are introduced. Self-introductions are an American phenomenon.]

It wasn’t until I enrolled as a full-time conservatory student in the Netherlands, that I saw the concerts from the other side. The concerts were always free. There was no budget to administer tickets. There was hardly a budget for publicity. The free concerts were never full unless it was someone’s final exam, opera, orchestra, or composition concert.  There could easily be more people on stage than in the audience. There were regulars from the community. I would give them a nod and sometimes a grin. We acknowledged each other as conspiring in the same indulgence of classical music.

As a composer and performer, I wanted to see more people in the audience. Yet as a student, it was not for me to change the policy of the school. The doors were wide open for anyone to come to concerts. But the concerts were not actively promoted. The shops around the school did not have posters of the concerts. The shop keepers and assistants didn’t know about the concerts. The conservatory once welcomed Mozart, Schumann, and Brahms. That was history. The teachers were busy teaching. The students were busy studying.

And that’s how I clocked up thousands of free concerts. Every conservatory and music school seemed to have the same policy or lack of a policy when it came to concerts. Free.

Audience at final exam concert in Utrecht Conservatory, 2008. Photo: F. vd Meer

University of Hawaii Maui College (UHMC) is situated directly across from Maui’s equivalent of Carnegie Hall (New York) and Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) and the Royal Albert Hall (London). Its largest concert hall seats 1,200. The smaller hall seats 250. There’s also an outdoor stage. When I first arrived on the island, I assumed there was a connection between the two. Just as Amsterdam Conservatory gets to use the Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ  and the Royal College of Music has access to the Royal Albert Hall, I thought UHMC had access to the Maui Arts and Cultural Center (MACC).

Well, it doesn’t work that way. UHMC is not a conservatory. Yet the MACC is very much a world-class facility with state-of-the-art acoustics and instruments. Perhaps the association is not about sending students to perform on stage but to fill the seats with last-minute discount tickets, as is offered elsewhere. While students cannot afford higher priced tickets, they can tolerate the uncertainty of not having a ticket well in advance.

In England, there are always last-minute standby tickets (lowest price for whatever is available) about 30 minutes to 1 hour before the show. These are offered to students, unwaged, low-income, and pensioners. One of the perks of studying in London was attending concerts at the South Bank, Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall, and countless other venues, on a last-minute standby student discount. Could such a perk be offered to the 4,000 students at Maui College? If they know of this discount, they can look out for it.

** From the point of economics, one could argue that those that can afford to pay for a ticket will not necessarily buy the most expensive ticket. Thus the best seats risk being unsold. To avoid such front-row seats being empty, offer these to those who are flexible with time and tolerant of uncertainty yet can’t afford the high prices. The rationale is that these seats would otherwise not get sold at all.