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Changing demographics offer new opportunities for Cleveland Orchestra
By Elaine Guregian
Beacon Journal arts and culture writer
Published on Sunday, Mar 23, 2008
American audiences love the sensuous, Latin-infused writing of Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. Crowds at Carnegie Hall this winter reportedly went crazy when they heard the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.
Then there's the Bolivar Orchestra's young conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, wild-haired and grinning in his photos. This unbuttoned new star has generated enthusiastic buzz before even beginning his appointment as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Demographers tell us that by 2050, white Americans will no longer be the majority. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the Latino population, which is already the largest minority group in the U.S., will lead in growth. If trends continue, the Hispanic population will increase from 14 percent of the U.S. population in 2005 to 29 percent in 2050.
For symphony orchestras looking to grow attendance beyond their gray-haired, largely white audiences, could this be an opportunity? And for Hispanics, could this mean newfound attention?
In Northeast Ohio, Hispanics are a minority group. But in Miami, where the Cleveland Orchestra will perform this week, it's another story.
Hispanics account for more than 60 percent of the population of Miami-Dade County. Last season, Hispanics made up 20 percent of the Cleveland Orchestra's subscribers and 25 percent of its single ticket-
buyers at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.
This week, Costa Rican conductor Giancarlo Guerrero will lead the orchestra's program of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with Midori as soloist, and a recent work called Fandangos by the Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra.
Repertoire like Fandangos gives listeners a snapshot of a different culture, said Guerrero in an interview after rehearsing the orchestra at Severance Hall.
''I remember dancing fandangos when I was a little kid. Dancing and music is a big part of who we are,'' said Guerrero, who moved with his family from Nicaragua to Costa Rica when he was 10.
This is the Cleveland Orchestra's second year in Miami, where it has a 10-year contract. Balancing a standard, familiar work like Pictures, a star violinist like Midori and a new piece by a living composer, a Puerto Rican at that, sounds like a winning combination to Guerrero.
''I know that my culture loves and adores music. Sometimes they feel that they don't belong in the concert hall, which is really wrong,'' he said. ''It is great art, it is high art, there is no question about it. But great art can speak to everybody, regardless of their background.''
Turning point
Guerrero, 39, knows more than most about how music can be at the heart of life. After finishing an undergraduate degree at Baylor University and a master's in conducting at Northwestern, he went back to Costa Rica. Taking part in a conducting symposium in Venezuela was a turning point.
There, he was discovered by Jose Antonio Abreu, the man who in 1975 spearheaded El Sistema (The System), Venezuela's music-for-everyone program. As soon as a child can hold an instrument, he is provided one by the government.
''Then you grow up in The System, from kindergarten orchestra to children's orchestra to youth orchestra to the professional orchestra in your city. Everybody plays,'' Guerrero said.
Music may be photocopies of photocopies of photocopies. The instruments may be missing strings. Still, everybody plays in this free, government-funded program. El Sistema was founded as a social program, not a musical one, Guerrero said, noting that in Venezuela, there's a motto: ''fight and play.''
The result has been ''a gazillion orchestras,'' the effervescent conductor said. The most famous one, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in Caracas, has lifted children out of dirt-floor houses and futures of working in the fields to touring the world, said Guerrero, who began guest-conducting the Bolivar ensemble in 1996.
Venezuelan orchestras rotate their players — say, having them play one week, then go into the country to teach for two weeks. ''So, you're going to have a professional bassoonist spending two weeks in the Amazon teaching,'' Guerrero said.
Short of a complete makeover of our school programs, what can orchestras in the U.S. do to attract more Hispanic listeners?
The conductor's answer is somewhat surprising.
It's not necessarily the repertoire or the performers, Guerrero said, although he does do a Peter and the Wolf in Spanish as well as English for youth concerts.
Getting the word out to potential listeners in their preferred language is the most important thing, he said. They need to hear about the concerts, either on Hispanic radio stations or Spanish-language newspapers.
For the Cleveland Orchestra, that has meant advertising both in The Miami Herald and in El Nuevo Herald, its sister Spanish-language newspaper. Also important: While Guerrero is in town, he'll give interviews to both English and Spanish media.
''For us, the advantage of having a great conductor down here who speaks Spanish, who is from a Latin country, is that he offers the opportunity for us to be able to speak directly about music to a very large population, in a language other than English,'' said Sandi Macdonald, who moved from Cleveland to head the orchestra's marketing and fundraising efforts in Miami.
The Cleveland Orchestra is steadfast about keeping to its mission of playing great music in Miami. But it also has been savvy about including a variety of Spanish-influenced pieces, from familiar hundred-year-old works by Debussy and Manuel de Falla up through Sierra's Fandangos, written in 2000. All of its Miami concerts have sold out.
''Our Hispanic audience has told us anecdotally that they are interested in hearing great music from the classical repertoire — which could mean music that is written by people who have been influenced by Hispanic experience or not been influenced by it,'' Macdonald said.
Changing demographics
Sierra grew up with classical Western music along with pop and traditional music in Puerto Rico. He has seen the audience for orchestra music become far more diverse since going to his first concert at Avery Fisher Hall in New York in the mid-'80s. Then, he looked around the hall and wondered where the other Hispanic people were, he recently said by phone.
Since then, orchestras have responded to changing demographics, said Sierra, whose Fandangos has been performed by orchestras from Eugene, Ore., to Nashville, Tenn.
One prime barrier to attendance that he sees is the high price of tickets. As Latinos become more affluent and more integrated into the middle class, they will go to more orchestra concerts, he predicted.
Not everyone will like classical music, he said. Then again, some first-time listeners will be forever changed, as Sierra was when he heard The Nutcracker in elementary school.
''Let the people know the doors are open,'' Sierra suggested.
In five years, there's no telling who the big names will be in classical music. But it'll be interesting to see if more of their fans speak Spanish.
Elaine Guregian can be reached at 330-996-3574 or eguregian@thebeaconjournal.com
American audiences love the sensuous, Latin-infused writing of Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. Crowds at Carnegie Hall this winter reportedly went crazy when they heard the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.
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