The previous entry on this website was a complete rundown of what happened: an attempt to paint a picture for anyone hoping to get an idea of what attending such an event would be. What follows next is a more concise deep dive into the psychological group consciousness that covers an event like this: what role does innovation play in this conference; to what extent are people here ready to engage with change, and how keen are they to really learn and evolve?
On several occasions during this conference, I found myself thinking of my 97-year old grandmother in Adelaide. Not necessarily because I’m a good grandson (but on that theme, shout out Nanna! Miss you!), but because of the parallel witnessed whilst watching moulded-on industry-incumbents trying to deal with new ideas; which reminded me of all the times my mother has tried to convince Nanna to use a tablet - no matter how many benefits (calling her great-grandkids, accessing news) an iPad would offer her, my Nanna knows that embracing new technology is both out of her interest level and capabilities.
Many of the people at this conference are no different: early on in the conference I was critical of the programming, with several sessions dedicated to exploring technology such as music streaming services that wouldn’t have been innovative at the 2012 edition of C:N. Most of these earlier sessions were so far behind the actual scope of innovation that it would have been more accurately termed a ‘Retrospective’. By the end of the week I’d been proven wrong, with several extremely up-to-date presentations given by professionals working at the cutting edge. The issue here? Session attendance paints the most accurate picture, with packed rooms full of industry professionals discussing how the CD might in fact have a redundancy shelf-life; to a nearly empty room only populated by the ideas that will most likely shape the future.
No one is expecting people who have focused on orchestral administration or conservatory curriculum to suddenly develop an interest and specialty in Web 3.0; but surely it behoves these people to educate themselves in what the latest movements are; at least in order to know what type of people their institutions should be looking to hire in the future?
At this juncture, some illustrations: actual quotes overheard during the conference that paint an amusing picture at the level of innovation represented here:
“I don’t ever envisage a time when the album will go away” from a record label executive, trying very hard to avoid fatalism (thankfully receiving the retort, “Hasn’t the playlist already supplanted the album?” by a representative from Idagio)
“We all know these problems, but who knows how to fix them?” Representative from the Royal College of Music, London, during a session on fixing College Curricula.
“We’ve been having these conversations for 20 years now, but I’m optimistic as we now have the internet” - Moderator on the Higher Level Music Education Meetup not realising the internet was a tool 20 years ago.
Overall, a consistent theme here is circular conversation: one gets the impression that several delegates here have been meeting over the past decade, recycling the same conversation about the need to change, without once taking the initiative or even knowing how to begin making changes. When the moderator of the music schooling challenges those in the talks to offer solutions to the problems they’ve posed, she is met with stunned silence: everyone knows the problems, nobody knows how to fix them - and several seem to be more comfortable in the role of apologist. One institution representative gives his school a pat on the back for the extremely innovative idea of encouraging their students to speak to the audience from the stage, and one gets the feeling the rest of the delegates think this is a fantastically novel idea.
An introduction by the director of the conference introduces the primary goal of the week: ‘Thinking about the future of classical and art music.’ And how does this manifest? A keynote speech which featured examples of innovative programming including a contemporary work sandwiched between Schumann and Beethoven, and daytime concerts for children; or the festival theme focusing on diversity which sees an elderly black composer shut down during a Q&A when he brings up the issue of white gatekeepers controlling the diversity; or the Showcase performance celebrating Black Lives in Music ensuring white musicians were well represented onstage; or the key speech during the performance given by by a white German composer (who proceeded to bumble through some extremely awkward attempts at diffusing this awkward misstep by making an awful joke tinged with racial insensitivity - German’s shouldn’t even be attempting humour, let alone racial humour).
The approach to diversity in both gender and racial representation in the CMI always seems to be a decade or two behind the times: only over the past few years has the CMI realised there is limited social currency in representing an art form populated solely by white men, and it has sincerely struggled to find a way out of this: yet as the composer above argued, diversity is a buzzword as long as the people in charge remain the same. A stage full of diverse looking people playing exotic esoteric music still runs the risk of coming across as the woke version of P.T. Barnum’s travelling circus of oddities, as opposed to a celebration of diverse cultural contributions. There’s no easy way to make up for four hundred years of ignorance, and so many people with good intentions are doing great work in this sphere - but it feels like we’re too close to a fetishisation of exoticism here, rather than exploring methods of empowering diverse voices.
Most of the delegates in attendance here represent the traditional industry, and these people are in attendance primarily to network and share business cards - fuelled by an intention to maintain the status quo, rather than learn about how they can level up. Independent organisations who are actually coming up with new ideas and concepts are in short supply (outside of the Project Pitch arena), and the exchange of ideas is neglected, in favour of the Pokemon-style ‘gotta catch em all’ exchange of business cards.
With the majority of the talks focusing on topics that wouldn’t have been deemed innovative a decade ago, one can be forgiven for questioning the legitimacy of the stated intention of this conference - until you consider the challenge they face in curating an event that caters for the wide spectrum of the classical music industry: with this industry audience, it’s only ever about playing catch-up. The conversations had here are the same ones I was having as an angry student in 2014; yet the schools, orchestras, and institutions represented here are only now cottoning on - and instead, a platform such as this that offers and opportunity to engage in really forward thinking ideas is instead required to fill in people on what they’ve been missing whilst their collective heads were buried in the Subscription Model sand. Record Label executives talk derisively about ‘Classical Music for Sleeping’ Playlists on Spotify as if they were a new phenomenon, forgetting that their labels were responsible for pushing out ‘Classical Music for Relaxing’ in the 1990s as a last-gasp marketing tool back then. These talks are seemingly more focused on a collective mocking of these potential customers for listening to said classical music playlists, rather than really exploring how to engage with this future listening base - and as I’m sure we’ll all agree, demeaning the purchase preferences of a customer is a brilliant marketing tool for connecting with new listeners.
Example: during the Global Orchestras Meetup session discussing recovery and resilience: listening in, it seems that pre-pandemic, large orchestras were a huge, lumbering beast with too many issues to be able to fix at any one stage - yet the pandemic offered a rare opportunity for a ‘Great Reset’. An opportunity to question antiquated concepts like grossly overpaying soloists, or embarking on international tours - instead this talk sheds a light on just how many ensembles went straight back to normal as soon as possible - all of the experiments with live-streaming and new concert formats were seemingly discarded quicker than they were initially explored. The overwhelming realisation here was that as much as everyone in the room enjoyed elements of change during the past two years, they were independently powerless against this huge beast that was merely wounded, and not defeated.
Across the delegates, it is clear that there are two types of people in each room: 1) those who just innovate and get on with it all, and are lightyears ahead of everyone else, and 2) those who sit around moaning about the need to change, and the issues they face - yet have no intention to change anything, even as they’re smacked in the face by the need for evolution.
The major dilemma here seems the inability of the contemporary classical music industry to understand their role in society: as an art form that evolved through centuries of support and sponsorship - from church to aristocracy to patronage to state funding - we are constantly being challenged to justify our position in the neoliberal and capitalist society that the majority of us function in. On one hand, we have the call to ‘art’ that ignores all extraneous financial elements; and on the other the very real need to appeal to customers and keep moving forward. The idealists in the room think that by educating, lecturing, and preaching to the masses, we can elevate ourselves beyond such petty needs as market segments, innovation, and entrepreneurship - whilst the pragmatists understand a need to balance artistic ideals and business realities by utilising our social context to create art (rather than push against it).
At the end of the day, wilful ignorance about an ever-changing world cannot be part of our collective mentality. The presentations showcasing the future of technology, communication, and social interaction should not be the least well-attended across the entire conference; nor should there be an expectation that an orchestral or conservatory administrator bear the burden of educating themselves completely about these new developments - but these people shouldn’t necessarily be representing their organisations at this event. Our mindset needs to shift from pushing against the never-ending thrust of innovation, in preference for an eagerness to integrate change into the heart of our organisations. If this mindset was present in attendees, could the empty talks have been full of delegates looking to learn about what is missing from their organisation, and therefore lead them to hire the necessary people that would fill these gaps?
A question that lies unanswered for me is this: what if we stopped being purely responsive to change, but instead we became responsible for it? So many conversations during this conference treated things such as live-streaming and cryptocurrency as an unavoidable and unpleasant addition to an institution’s already full to-do list, suggests that the majority of people within this industry would prefer to focus solely on putting concerts on stage still; but what if we stopped reacting to change, and started putting people and thinkers in charge of leading it? And what if we didn’t react to change as something to be feared - that is, that an evolution in society and technology isn’t out to make us redundant, but could actually help us? It took until 17:27 on the final day of the conference to hear the most simple yet salient statement across the entire week (from a content producer for a French virtual content agency), who said: ‘It [tech innovation] is not about replacing anything, it’s about adding something new.’