Making a Difference

Polly Kahn, who wrote the following article, is leaving the League after fourteen years of incredible service to orchestras as the League’s Vice President for Learning and Leadership Development. As you will read, she is an optimist and a champion of orchestras of the highest order! What she modestly omits in this rich and beautifully illustrated survey of the increasing breadth and depth of orchestras’ engagement with their communities is her own role in facilitating this remarkable change. Among her many efforts to help orchestras do better work in their communities are the MetLife Awards for Excellence in Community Engagement; the Your Orchestra, Your Community assessment tool; and the Getty Education and Community Investment Grants Program. She has also woven her commitment to the highest-quality community engagement work into dozens of seminars, meetings, and conferences. This article stands as yet another example of Polly’s extraordinary impact on America’s orchestras. We are grateful, Polly, for the many gifts you have shared with our community.

—Jesse Rosen, President and CEO,
League of American Orchestras

Do these snapshots of American orchestras seem familiar? Increasingly, the answer is yes.

This article shines a light on American orchestras that have transcended the traditional role of orchestras in community life. These institutions, of course, stay true to their core purpose of sharing a great body of musical literature. But they are driven simultaneously by a growing sense of connectivity and responsibility to community, along with a desire to engage authentically with an ever-more-diverse populace. They contribute to civil dialogue and healthy communities, make a difference in the education of children, use music to ease suffering, and address the pressing issues that confront our communities.

For many of us, the joyous image of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic in its Young People’s Concerts may be the image we carry when thinking of American orchestras in their community role. Indeed, that annual field trip to a concert may represent our strongest primary association with orchestras, much as it did with museums and with dance, opera, and theater companies. For most, these events were built on the quixotic hope that a single encounter with a powerful artistic experience would provide the thunderbolt that would predispose us toward an interest in the art form.

But today, the context is dramatically different. We have experienced waves of economic upheaval and the diminution of in-school arts instruction, particularly in high-poverty areas. We have seen the pressures of a test-driven education system marginalize arts education. Despite these challenges, there are signs of hope. Changing demographics are prompting orchestras to consider fresh programs for populations, from newborns to seniors, who could benefit from arts participation. Although younger generations seem to be less attracted to traditional concerts, they have expressed a desire for symphonic music in other ways: increased online consumption; a hunger to engage with all kinds of music in new, less formal settings; a desire to compose and to play instruments; and an overall interest in new music, including orchestral music, that speaks to our multi-cultural national profile.

Fresh approaches to community involvement in the musical offerings of orchestras and in their in- and after-school work have paved the way as orchestras grow in their civic and social roles, increasing access and opportunity for all in the community, including those traditionally underserved. These areas set the stage for exploring the richly varied ways that orchestras are innovating and making a difference for their communities, and suggest ways that multiple approaches—artistic, educational, technological, and audience-centric—are beginning to blend and overlay to create new pathways to relevance and public value for our orchestras.

Fresh approaches to community involvement have paved the way as orchestras grow in their civic and social roles, increasing access and opportunity for all.

Engaging Community in New Ways

Experimentation is breaking out all over in the form of novel program formats, new concert venues, and the use of social media and digital platforms to meet the needs of people who want to explore symphonic music, but on their own terms. People are coming together in ways that cut across differences in demographics, economic strata, race, ethnicity, education, and musical background. Here are a few examples:

• The Tucson Symphony conducts an annual residency program on Arizona-based Native American reservations. In 2013, this residency involved the Tohono O’odham Nation.
• The Cincinnati’s Symphony’s 2012 celebration of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—based on the NEA’s “Big Read” model—reached more than 1.3 million people in ways that invited amateur performances, creative interpretations, digital remixing, and more.
• Composer Tod Machover used the entire city of Toronto to create a soundscape, “Concerto for Composer and City,” composed and performed by its citizens. The concerto put technology in the service of “a more democratic musical agenda,” as Machover put it.
• Musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, and other groups regularly play in bars and public squares, and share moments of humor and surprise on YouTube. The Cleveland Orchestra aims to have among the youngest audiences in the country for symphonic music, and it is adjusting time-honored practices to achieve this goal.

A multi-year study by the WolfBrown consulting group has tracked pilot programs at several orchestras as they reinvented their presentations and programming to provide resonant experiences to younger audiences. The WolfBrown study describes late-night musical and social events; short concerts based on contemporary themes; serendipitous mixes of composers and genres; and the use of animation, digital technology, and social media. And the study reveals that new approaches are connecting with younger audiences, just as hoped.

In 2013, WolfBrown’s research study, Engaging Next Generation Audiences, focused on the engagement of college students with classical music. And new, young, hip, entrepreneurial orchestral ensembles—including, but in no way limited to, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Alarm Will Sound, and The Knights—challenge traditional views of orchestras every day.

These examples may seem like audience development initiatives. But at their heart is a greater goal: to create environments in which more, and more diverse, people can engage with the music and musicians of our orchestras.

Education, Inside and Outside Our Schools

Orchestras have long been at the forefront of arts education, working alongside music teachers and providing the unique resources that can only be offered by symphonic musicians. Data supporting the value of arts education is provided through the Arts Education Partnership, the National Endowment for the Arts, Supportmusic.com, and national and local multi-arts coalitions.

Experimentation is breaking out with novel program formats, new concert venues, and social media and digital platforms.

In-School Partnerships: There was a time when “fly-by” arts education—the fourth-grade concert repeated multiple times for all the fourth-graders in a school system—was common practice. The result was minimal authentic engagement by the orchestra with its public school partners. Now this model is less frequently used, as orchestras increasingly focus more resources on fewer schools and children, where evidence shows that they can have greater impact. While not new, this trend toward sustained multi-year relationships as a critical dimension of orchestras’ commitment to their communities continues to grow. In a 2011-12 survey of 114 orchestras by the League of American Orchestras, 40 percent supported multi-year partnerships. And the work is centered for the most part in high-poverty Title I schools, which most need partnership and support.

Programs involving skilled teaching artists have become ever more common. In this body of practice, first developed at the Lincoln Center Institute in the 1970s, the artists partner with classroom and music teachers multiple times per year in academic as well as music curriculum. They share in customized lesson planning and co-teaching, and they use small-ensemble performances, orchestra rehearsals, and concerts as “living textbooks” for the ongoing exploration of music, rather than as ends in themselves. The practice of engaging students as composers, performers, active listeners, and critics is increasing. Aligning the work with the National Arts Standards and Common Core goals (and earlier iterations of educational standards) has supported schools struggling to meet required academic and musical outcomes.

While the in-school partnerships of the New York Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, and San Francisco Symphony have been in place for more than 20 years, they continue to grow and expand. The New York Philharmonic Young Composers Program, for example, grew into an afterschool option for children in the partnership program and now has an international dimension.

After-School Programs: At its 2008 National Conference, the League of American Orchestras introduced to our field José Antonio Abreu, the founder of the El Sistema movement in Venezuela. Abreu knew that the creation of free childcare would benefit parents in high-poverty environments, helping them to find work. His passion for music led him to a system of music instruction that invited the participation of children without regard to musical ability. These two drivers came together to become a national system of after-school music education that provides family support and academic help; it has proven to be a powerful tool for creating stability and opportunity for children of poverty for almost 40 years.

Almost concurrent with the League’s introduction of this work to our field, two major orchestras set programs in motion. Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, announced the start of “OrchKids,” an El Sistema-inspired program at the BSO, with startup funding from her 2005 MacArthur Award. In 2007, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced Gustavo Dudamel, an alumnus of the Venezuelan program, as its music director; shortly thereafter, the orchestra began its own El Sistema-inspired initiative, Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA). The orchestra describes the goal of El Sistema-type work in the U.S. as “to break the cycle of poverty and close the achievement gap, using music education as an agent of social change.”

Many of these programs (now in place at more than 60 orchestras) include year-round programs, and we see the power of the after-school experience translating into a greater presence for music and for licensed music teachers in schools where they had previously been eliminated.

Just as Guernica, Picasso’s massive painting from 1937, stands as a metaphor for the atrocity of war, so do contemporary musical works reflect the moral conscience of our time.

Most of the El Sistema-inspired programs are tracking progress against musical, academic, and social progress goals. The data show that participating children outperform their peers in math and reading, and make significant musical progress. They also show evidence of better school attendance, greater parental involvement, and other measures of progress. In the programs that report on math and reading scores, for example, 100 percent of program participants outperform peers not involved in the orchestra-based programs.

An Expanded Programmatic Landscape

The work of orchestras, as it aligns art with change and social impact, is evolving in exciting ways to meet the needs and opportunities of this changing context. Orchestras are crossing into other sectors such as health, juvenile justice, and the environment. Research confirms the benefits music can provide for the aging, those in healthcare settings, and other populations. In programs that report on health and wellness outcomes, 100 percent report positive patient outcomes.

Research from the medical community, as set forth in Music & Healthcare by Lea Wolf and Dr. Thomas Wolf, suggests the therapeutic benefits of live music for those experiencing physical or psychological stress. This research has inspired more than 30 orchestras to work in partnership with hospitals, rehabilitation centers, nursing and group homes, and special-needs programs, including with the autism community. Music therapists have been key to this work, training musicians, providing support for hospital practitioners, and ensuring solid tracking of results. Some of these activities involve established medical protocols for assessing patient responsiveness, such as physical response to musical cues, reduction in blood pressure, and impact on length of hospital stays.

With a baseline created by the pioneering work of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on this front, orchestras from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Madison, Wisconsin have adapted and created similar programs. In Knoxville, musicians play solo or in small ensembles in hospital wards, lobbies, and, at times, for the medical practitioners themselves. In the Madison Symphony’s “Heartstrings” program, a quartet of musicians performs in healthcare settings, including nursing homes and long-term medical care facilities. A typical comment came from a rehabilitation patient who said the experience “helped me forget where I was, and gave me hope.” The Madison Symphony published Heartstrings Toolkit, a workbook with guidelines for creating such a program.

Creative Aging: At the League’s 2007 National Conference, William Ivey, former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, and his colleague Steven Tepper of Vanderbilt University, presented a forum centered on their publication Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life. Their work made the case for the pro-am (professional-amateur) movement. They suggested ways in which Baby Boomers would remain engaged learners and active participants in civic life as they moved into retirement. Benefits of this activity include decreased social isolation, the opportunity to build new skills, and the gratification of meeting fellow community members through music making.

Today we see increasing opportunities in creative aging, where avocational musicians play side-by-side with professional orchestras in artistic opportunities that are more about participation and access than about high artistic quality. In the Baltimore Symphony’s annual “Rusty Musicians” program, community members bring out their instruments and revel in an intensive experience with musicians of the BSO. The San Francisco Symphony’s “Community of Music Makers” offers instrumental, choral, and chamber music workshops with coaching from orchestra members, and it partners with other local organizations to participate in community-wide musical celebrations. In the League’s 2011-12 survey, 40 percent of 114 responding orchestras reported support of creative-aging programs.

Juvenile Justice: An emerging area of practice lies in musical engagement with teens and young adults in the juvenile justice system. Experiments with drumming circles and songwriting, in particular, are showing good early results in helping incarcerated youth (particularly teens) meet their therapeutic and academic goals. At the Central Ohio Symphony, a drumming circle founded by its executive director (and principal percussionist) has led to a doubling of the program and a formal relationship with the local court system.

Carnegie Hall, through its “Musical Connections” program, has a contractual relationship with New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, and with the New York State and NYC Departments of Correction, to deliver musical resources to prisoners at the Rikers Island and Sing Sing correctional facilities, among others. The work involves the participants in songwriting with teaching artists over a multi-week period. The results are shared, in public performances and/or via the use of video-conferencing technology, with the teens and the teaching artists collaborating as performers. This work has had a cathartic impact for incarcerated young people, many of whom are separated from their own young children. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s “Citizen Musicians” program takes CSO musicians to the Illinois Youth Center and Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center

Community Healing: Many might remember Leonard Bernstein’s performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. That momentous musical event focused a global community in an exultant celebration of freedom. More recently, in the U.S., we can look to the role that hundreds of orchestras played in communities after September 11, or to the Nashville Symphony or Louisiana Philharmonic after the catastrophic flooding of their hometowns, or to the Pensacola Symphony’s efforts after the hurricane that hit its city. Often, in times of crisis, orchestras have been among the first to offer the community a place to gather and heal.

When the flood triggered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 forced a diaspora for New Orleans residents, the musicians of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra came back from wherever they had relocated to—and they not only played for the community right after the flood but brought music to schools, churches, parks, and other venues. They did this for four years, as the orchestra itself was homeless, having lost the use of the Mahalia Jackson Theater. In an article in the September-October 2009 Symphony, LPO Music Director Carlos Miguel Prieto recalls those days: “We needed to play music. The message we had to communicate was an essential one, and it was that the LPO is a vital part of this community and would be there for this community.”

And, in November 2013, when a tornado ripped through the Midwest, the Peoria Symphony (three of whose members had lost their homes) pulled together nearly 200 musicians from 23 area orchestras and choruses to provide a free concert to bring solace to Central Illinois.

Community Dialogue and Social Activism: The creation and presentation of music is, of course, the core of what orchestras are. It’s perhaps too easy to think of orchestras as solely inhabiting the world of Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, and Stravinsky. But just as these artists responded to and challenged the cultural and political assumptions of their times, orchestral music today increasingly crosses musical genres and addresses significant social issues of our time. Think of the powerful response to John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, a remembrance of the victims of September 11 that includes heart-wrenching cellphone messages of those trapped in the Twin Towers. Another Adams work, his opera The Death of Klinghoffer, powerfully challenges audiences to address the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Trumpeter/composer Hannibal’s tribute to Emmett Till, presented by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, brought together a huge cross-section of the community in discussions around racism and the progress our society has made in the decades that have followed the horrendous murder of this young teen in 1955. Michael Daugherty’s “Rosa Parks Boulevard,” from his 1999 orchestral work Motor City Triptych, is a powerful remembrance of the power and pain of the civil rights movement. Randall Wolff’s recent Blues for Black Hoodies, written in the aftermath of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, was performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic and singer/actresss Erykah Badu. The event brought together a broad swath of the diverse Brooklyn community in a concert that was performed twice to accommodate community demand.

And, most recently, nineteen-year-old Chinese-American composer Conrad Tao’s The World Is Very Different Now was commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. The premiere performance, in November 2013, was enfolded in the citywide dialogue reflecting on the tragedy of November 22, 1963, and explored how Dallas and the country have evolved since then. Tao’s provocative work invited listeners to think about memory—both through lived experience and through memories handed down—to wrestle with its impact on contemporary experience.

Just as Guernica, Picasso’s massive painting from 1937, stands as a metaphor for the atrocity of war, so do these contemporary musical works reflect the moral conscience of our time. The local partnerships that often accompany premieres, and the interest and dialogue that they trigger, are powerful contributors to raising awareness and understanding of issues—local, national, and global—in society.

Summing Up

In the range of work being done by orchestras, we can observe a number of trends:

• Creativity in symphonic life is expansive, crossing genres and often reflecting the ethos and issues of our time.
• Orchestras are developing partnerships with social service and health organizations with which they had no prior relationships.
• Most of the in-school and afterschool programs started with a focus on the children and have expanded to include opportunities for families.
• A number of orchestras have leveraged the accomplishments of their after-school programs into advocacy for the increased presence of licensed in-school music teachers.
• The number of orchestral musicians engaged in community programs is growing; these musicians are participating in more, and more rigorous, professional development.
• Orchestras are creating communities of practice with one another and with other organizations as they share research, teaching protocols, and programmatic experiences.
• There is growing discipline around evaluation and assessment, and a realization that data must support claims and be aligned with programmatic goals.

We challenge ourselves, today and as we look ahead, to address critical issues, including:

• What is our core mission, and how can we make it more expansive while maintaining the excellence that characterizes our primary work of making music?
• How do we better blend a dual focus on performance and community?
• How do we continue to build the capacity and skills of musicians to work in and with the community?
• How do we most effectively communicate about the work orchestras are doing to engage broad cross-sections of the community so that we can better align public perception with our actions?
• How do we accomplish all we must, given the constraints of limited staff and financial resources?
• What leadership must our boards provide to ensure the sustainability of this work, and its alignment with our core mission?
• How do we continue to build, and resource, solid assessment of our work?

The work described here matters for orchestras because it is the right thing to do. Every day, orchestras are doing more work, doing better work, and growing their relationships with multiple communities far beyond what once they might have imagined. What is a driving vision for orchestras in the 21st century? Perhaps it is to create the real and metaphoric public square where everyone has access to, benefits from, and shares in the joy of orchestral music in ways that contribute to the collective vitality and health of our communities.

This article was developed for Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts, as part of the Arts & Social Change Mapping Initiative. Copyright Americans for the Arts 2014. The full article may be found on Animating Democracy’s website.