The Purpose of Concerts

I recently spent two months in Riga, Latvia, where I attended as many choir concerts as possible.  As you may know, Latvian choirs are some of the best in the world, so the concerts I attended were done by fantastic choirs.  While I certainly enjoyed them, they also made me pause and reflect on the purpose of and the reason for giving concerts.

While I believe that concerts are done to highlight the achievements and the ability of a choir, I also believe very strongly that they should be done to entertain the audience.  The concerts I attended in Latvia did a great job of highlighting the hard work and the capability of the choirs.  Did they entertain?  I'm not sure.  I think that most of the people in the audience were musically educated and had attended many such choir concerts in the past.  Consequently, I believe that they were entertained by the music.  However, if I tried to perform the same kind of music with my community choir, I know that the audience would be frustrated and bored.  While I am sure that some of my audience is musically educated, I am pretty certain that the majority of them are not.  Such "high falutin' " music would not appeal to them.

I have a Doctor of Arts degree in choral conducting, so choral music like the ones the groups in Latvia performed greatly appeal to me.  Do I wish I could do music like that with my choirs?  You betcha.  Do I dare try it?  Nope.  I might be able to throw in a piece or two, but any more than that would cause the boredom level of the concert to rise off the charts.  It wouldn't be long and we wouldn't have much of an audience.

We do have one concert in the spring that is considered our "classical" concert.  This year we performed Rutter's Gloria.  With it being such a short work -- only 20 minutes in length -- I decided to also include some of Rutter's other music.  I chose five of his choir pieces, and I made sure that they would be some that the audience would enjoy.  We ended that segment of the concert with his arrangement of "When the Saints Go Marching In."  I made sure to get a trombone and a clarinet to play the instrumental parts to add to the Dixieland flavor of the song.  Boy, did the audience love that one.  They also enjoyed the Gloria.  Would that same audience enjoy our performance of a Requiem Mass?  While I think some of them would appreciate the hard work of the choir and would enjoy the music, I think a lot of them would not enjoy the overall concert.

In my mind, a successful concert is one in which the choir performs at their best but is also one that entertains the audience.  Would all choir conductors agree?  Most certainly not.  However, in my part of the country -- the Midwest -- and with my typical audience -- mostly blue collar -- entertainment value is high on the priority list.  This fall we performed a concert of country music.  Did I find some "high falutin' " music for that one?  Nope.  Did I have trouble selecting the music knowing what I do about quality music?  You betcha.  Was it a successful concert?  Definitely.  They're still talking about that one.