Introducing Artists, New Audiences

The pessimist looks at empty seats and sees an auditorium half empty.

The optimist sees it half full.

Then there are the dreamers and schemers who look at the empty seats and try to do something to get them filled.

This is about the newest plan to seek and capture audiences, a game it seems almost everyone is playing.

If you study the small type in the advertisements in these high-culture pages you would see that certain of our nights out are sponsored increasingly by such corporate Medicis as American Airlines or Toyota or Countrywide Funding or Infiniti.

Tonight’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl also is sponsored, “in part” only, by that ultimate Medici, AT&T;, and its Premiere Artists Program. The “in part” in tonight’s case is pianist Richard Fields and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra offering William Grant Still’s “Kaintuck.”

What the sponsorship of the Premiere Artists Program represents is more than just the charitable doling of dollars and the good will engendered by it. It represents what would appear to be a new, strong relationship between the people who market and the people who program artists.

AT&T;’s series is a three-year, $150,000 program designed to introduce six “emerging” artists each year to audiences at the Hollywood Bowl and the Music Center. It is one of the largest music grants from the AT&T; Foundation this year.

It’s also designed to change (in part) how the Los Angeles Philharmonic goes about its box-office business as its audience grays and as the surrounding city changes demographically.

It is no coincidence that the three artists who will appear in this month’s pilot presentations at the Hollywood Bowl represent in various ways constituencies not often strongly present in American concert halls:

* Pianist Fields is an African-American.

* Evelyn Glennie, a percussionist from Great Britain who will be featured at next week’s “Fireworks Finale,” is hearing impaired.

* Enrique Diemecke, who will conduct the Philharmonic at the Sept. 29 “Fiesta Mexicana” fireworks concert, is Mexican, the music director of the National Orchestra of Mexico.

Diversity is the motivating force for this pilot series. Diversity in artists, audiences and even personnel. In certain planning rooms of the Music Center, talk of diversity is often heard more often than talk of Dvorak.

While the marketing of new and diverse audiences may be something new for some at the Philharmonic, diversity itself hasn’t been a total stranger to the programmers. Consider again tonight’s presentation of Still’s “Kaintuck.” Here the Philharmonic is renewing an old relationship.

In 1936, Still, then a Los Angeles resident, became the first black to conduct a major orchestra in the United States: the Los Angeles Philharmonic at a younger Hollywood Bowl.

He was also the first black American composer to have his works performed by a major symphony orchestra.

He was the first black to conduct a major orchestra in the South--the New Orleans Philharmonic in 1955.

He was the first black to have an opera produced by a major company, the first to conduct a national radio orchestra, the first to have his opera televised on a network.

Still, born in 1895 in Mississippi, lived in Los Angeles from the early ‘30s until his death in 1978.

At Los Angeles’ William Grant Still Art Center on W. View St., Fields will perform again Saturday evening at a free community concert. This is also part of the Premiere Artists Program--to work out a two-way relationship between future audiences and the Philharmonic, to get the performers into the various communities and hopefully the communities into the concert halls.

Fields plans on playing a number of Still’s works as well as talk about the man and his music. “I do that in many of my college performances,” the Juilliard graduate says. “I try to relate closer to the audiences and why they are there. I find Still’s work magnificent and have been performing such pieces as ‘Kaintuck’ since 1982 and have recorded some of his piano pieces. His work is wonderful, beautiful stuff.”

In similar style, Glennie is scheduled to meet with a group of deaf and hearing-impaired young people Sept. 13 at the Hollywood Bowl following morning rehearsal.

Again on the community level, the Premiere Artists Program also plans to provide tickets and entry to certain rehearsals to local groups and individuals.

Allison Sampson, the Philharmonic’s associate managing director and the person who earlier this year wrote the grant request for the AT&T; program, estimates that the value of the project may be at least three times the initial $150,000 grant.

“We could never buy the contacts we’re getting from AT&T; in this program,” she says. “They come into our offices and help out. They know their way around where it counts in Los Angeles. They’re almost like volunteers with special expertise. They give us advice on promoting the artists, on advertising, in making the contacts in the communities.

“They provide the strategies we need in our attempts to diversify our efforts. They help us in housing the artists, in making travel arrangements, in contacting the minority media. For a nonprofit operation to get this level of talent and help is almost unbelievable.

“They’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time. We are learning from them.”

The pessimist looks at this new partnership of marketers and programmers and sees a half-empty future of packaged performances.

The optimist sees a full future for the new artists.

And the dreamer-schemer? He/she sees new faces showing up at, of all places, the box office.