Annoyed by text-reading patrons at concerts? Well, Washington's National Symphony Orchestra is now actively encouraging it.
For an upcoming concert at Wolf Trap, it will be Tweeting live program notes to audience members on the lawn during a performance of Beethoven's "Pastoral." Read more about it here.
Obviously, this is a bid to attract a younger audience. But does such a move ultimately hurt or help? Would you subscribe to such a feed if the ISO were doing it at Conner Prairie? And, if not, would you be annoyed by those around you doing it?
Here's another news piece about a National Symphony Orchestra--not the U.S. version, but the one in Iraq. Seems like a story destined for a Heartland Film Festival documentary.
Your thoughts?
For an upcoming concert at Wolf Trap, it will be Tweeting live program notes to audience members on the lawn during a performance of Beethoven's "Pastoral." Read more about it here.
Obviously, this is a bid to attract a younger audience. But does such a move ultimately hurt or help? Would you subscribe to such a feed if the ISO were doing it at Conner Prairie? And, if not, would you be annoyed by those around you doing it?
Here's another news piece about a National Symphony Orchestra--not the U.S. version, but the one in Iraq. Seems like a story destined for a Heartland Film Festival documentary.
Your thoughts?
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There are so many people who perceive Twitter as this slew of unwanted information being hurled at them relentlessly. But it's just untrue. Those who would like to read the notes about the symphony as they listen--which sounds quite nice, actually--can turn on their twitter app and silently follow along. Those who do not wish to do so, won't. And those who liked it for the first movement but want to make out on their picnic blanket during the second can just, ya know, turn off their phone. There is absolutely no mandatory participation in such a feature. It's like going to a museum exhibit and opting out of the headphones with recorded tour.
I've also endured Dance Kaleidoscope concerts with the same problem. If your text life is that important, go to the lobby or stay home.
I am opposed to cell phone use or the illumination of them in any form during an arts performance. I hope theatres start enforcing no cell phones open and illuminated rules like they do no phone or pagers ringing ones. I go to arts performance to leave the outside world behind and immerse myself in the arts experience being created in front of me for a few hours, not to have lights all of a sudden come on in my peripheral vision from a few feet away. That's just plain rude.
I think that using this as a tactic to attract a younger audience is insulting. Do they think so little of the attention span of younger concertgoers that they believe they have to bombard them with constant electronic stimulation to keep them interested through a 45-minute symphony?