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SLSO launches casual series to grab audience
(by Kara Krekeler - May 14, 2008)
Going to the symphony is usually a high-class affair, but beginning on May 23, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra will be decidedly casual. On that evening, the symphony kicks off Casual Classics, a summertime series of light, familiar music presented in a relaxed format.
“People sometimes don’t think of a symphony orchestra as being fun, but it is,” said SLSO President and Executive Director Fred Bronstein. “This is presented in a way that’s relaxed and casual, with no barriers.”
The series begins May 23 with an evening of the music of George Gershwin, featuring piano soloist Stewart Goodyear performing “Rhapsody in Blue.” The next performance, on May 30, centers on Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, directed by concertmaster David Halen, who will also be featured as a soloist during the concert. Both concerts start at 7:30 p.m.
In June, the concerts switch to Sundays at 3 p.m. On June 22, the symphony will perform a concert titled An Afternoon in Vienna, which will feature waltzes and polkas by Johann Strauss and Franz Lehar. The final Casual Classics performance will take place on June 29 and will feature popular music by Duke Ellington, John Williams, Leroy Anderson and Aaron Copland, as well as marches by John Philip Sousa.
Bronstein said the series is based on a program of the same name that he initiated while serving as president and CEO of the Dallas Symphony Orche-stra, a position he left earlier this year in favor of heading up the SLSO. The series there was wildly popular and resulted in a “casual Fridays” series during the regular season.
While the SLSO doesn’t have any plans yet to create a casual series during the regular season — aside from the Classical Detours series, which is already established — Bronstein said that both the Dallas and the SLSO series serve the same purpose of reaching out to a new audience, a goal he plans to focus on during his tenure as president of the symphony here.
“I want this to be the place people are talking about,” he said.
He added that he plans on achieving that goal through broadening the symphony’s programming by adding more family concerts, presenting more movie-centered events like the annual Charlie Chaplin concerts each December and, of course, adding casual events like the Casual Classics series. “This is a great orchestra. It’s very valued, but I want it to be on the radar screens of more people.”
Another motivation for the push for increased audience is that Bronstein is also faced with helping the symphony recover from a $3.4 million budget deficit. Through increased fund-raising initiatives and successfully reaching out to a wider audience, Bronstein was able to eliminate the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s budget deficit over his five years there, although that symphony’s deficit was much smaller than that of the SLSO.
Despite, and perhaps because of, all the changes scheduled for the symphony, Bronstein said that it’s important to keep the artistic integrity of the institution intact by working closely with Musical Director David Robertson and the SLSO musicians. Also important, however, is listening to current symphony patrons and taking into consideration the things they most want to see.
“In a sense, we’re in the retail business. We’re competing against other types of entertainment,” Bronstein said. “It’s important to listen to our customers.”
For tickets or more information about the Casual Classics series, call 534-1700 or visit www.slso.org.
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