Symphonies tomorrow......

Last evening I went to another "Fusion" concert of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra. Over the past year they attempted to fuse music with art, cinema, dance, Shakespeare and pizza-flipping -- not really! Several friends agree that the evenings haven't been well received -- not exactly flops, but distractions to the music being performed. Next year, the Boulder Phil gives us an evening of Frank Sinatra style singing, one with the world premiere of a concerto for Tabla and orchestra, and a family concert "Alien encounter 2: Schnoodle meets Sch(n)ubert." Why?

The Colorado Music Festival, where I seldom miss any concert, has announced a season heavy with "World" music and extremes. How about a night of ukelele music; one of tap dance; the Brazilian Guitar Quartet and the stunt of performing all the Beethoven symphonies in one week? Is this intended to develop audience and generate donations? What is going on here? What happened to a balanced season of plain old classical and contemporary music? Chamber music? Piano soloists? Some new music? I give up. I can see the next CMF season: all 104 Haydn symphonies one long evening and a concerto for claves and washboard.

In the blog Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise Justin Davidson writing about the financing of symphony orchestras notes that "....this doesn't mean that the symphony orchestras are no longer viable, or that they're about to be extinct, only that they have to do everything right.". I have always supported my local orchestras, donating regularly (with a company matching grant) and buying a couple of full subscriptions. Now, looking at what I'm being offered I'm reluctantly deciding that I'll not subscribe but only selectively buy tickets. I'll let the ukelele fans in the area make the donations instead of me. The orchestras just aren't "doing everything right".

Am I being a stick in the mud? Am I failing to adapt? I look forward to contemporary classical music on the radio and love live concerts, but what's happening here?