Surprise! 2020 vision shows classical music thriving
As we cast away from the second decade of the 21st century, are classical music and opera a listing and creaking galley on the verge of being swamped by a storm at sea, or a wide-body jet boldly flying over the turbulence below?
For the better part of this new millennium, those who think of themselves as wise have been heralding the end of the traditional concert- and opera-going experience. Yet the obvious signs say otherwise.
In this city, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Canadian Opera Company and Tafelmusik have grown their endowment funds — money collected from lovers of classical music, periodinstrument performance and opera — to total nearly $100 million collectively.
The Royal Conservatory of Music sells out pretty much every piano recital at Koerner Hall months before the performance date.
Toronto now has a half-dozen respectable miniopera companies run by people with creativity and drive, if not money.
The conservatory and the universities continue to graduate dozens of incredibly talented and capable young musicians and singers into the working world every spring.
Every music presenter has some sort of educational outreach program in place. Collectively, they have the potential to reach just about every primary and secondary student in the Greater Toronto Area each school year.
The Regent Park School of Music, El Sistema Toronto, the Hammer Band and other feisty non-profits provide free or extremely low-cost music lessons to children in our most at-risk communities.
And then there’s the relentless building and refurbishing of performing arts spaces in and around the GTA.
The latest was the mayor of Pickering announcing io Philharmonic a new will performing be one of arts its
ntre last summer, as part of a new “town centre” development. The Ontaac“r anchor users.
The more we talk about the end of classical music and opera as we know it, the more new shoots seem to spring up. So the future is bright, right?
Pretty much. We are living through a huge change not only in how people consume information, but in how we get our entertainment.
We no longer plan ahead the way we used to. The sources of information about upcoming concerts and operas are more specialized and fragmented. And there are more choices than ever before, including all the entertainment options that don’t involve leaving home during a flurry of lake-effect snow.
The baby boomers have been the core supporters of the performing arts over the past couple of decades. They have disposable income and now, in their retirement years, they have the time to devote to hobbies and passions. But retirees also start to worry about driving or going out at night.
People continue to buy concert and opera subscriptions, but the marketers have had to loosen the rules to make the dates and choices flexible.
It’s difficult for the bumper crop of young music-school graduates to find steady work. So many of them are starting new opera companies and organizing their own concerts.
Toronto violist Rory MacLeod and his wife, pianist Emily Rho, run something called Pocket Concerts, performed in people’s homes. We even have something like this for opera, traditionally the biggest and most expensive form of theatre. The Bicycle Opera Project has shown us how a 400-year-old art form can find new life in a backpack and on two wheels.
Both of these little companies were born in the past decade. And there will be many more to come in the next. Like our information networks, classical music is specializing, fragmenting and going new places.
Between our changing world and the handover of the baby boomers to younger generations of fans, I suspect we’re going to see a storm or two to shake up the big, old institutions before the next decade is out. The Toronto Symphony is not out of the financial woods. And the Canadian Opera Company is not selling as many tickets as it should.
But we have more and better-quality music and opera than ever before in our history, and there’s no apparent reason why this should change.
Classical music and opera are not an old wooded sailing ship about to break into pieces in a fierce storm. They are the thin, iridescent film of soap bubbles stretched and borne aloft by the breath of eager, expectant believers.
There continue to be fresh converts every year and every decade because the music is so irresistible.
Classical music writer John Terauds is a freelance contributor for the Star, based in Toronto. He is supported by the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @JohnTerauds