ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 22, 1996 TAG: 9601230030
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: AUDREY CHOI THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
David Alan Miller slicks back his hair and dons a black-leather vest and sleeveless T-shirt to show off his biceps. With 19 cohorts, known as the Dogs of Desire, Miller prepares to give a ``gutsy, raunchy, amplified'' concert of songs by Led Zepplin, Bruce Springsteen and others.
A new techno-rock band? Not quite.
Miller, conductor of the Albany (N.Y.) Symphony Orchestra, is performing the role of the modern American maestro.
Some evenings, Miller wears a tuxedo and conducts Beethoven and Bach. But other times, he gives concerts with his Dogs, a subset of the orchestra - or bounds onto the stage dressed as Superman or in a Mozart wig.
``Standing there in a dark suit simply isn't enough anymore,'' said the 34-year-old Miller, who admits he is ``a bit wacky'' and has even studied Madonna and former New York Mayor Ed Koch for tips on how to market oneself.
With the ranks of die-hard symphony-goers thinning in the U.S. and funding sources shrinking, ``we are fighting a hard battle just to stay alive,'' Miller says. ``Everything I do, unfortunately, has a marketing angle, because if you can't sell it, you can't do it.''
The elders of classical music may turn up their noses, but so far, the antics are working. Miller's recently were voted the ``best biceps on a conductor'' by a local magazine. And concert sales are up.
Once the secret of a conductor's success was emulating the staid virtuosity of Europe. Now, a new generation of American conductors is redefining what being a maestro means. More playful, publicity conscious and willing to pander to pop culture, they talk about concerts as ``product'' that should be tweaked to ``fit the market.'' Wearing costumes, flaunting sex appeal and plastering their faces on billboards and World Wide Web sites are all part of the job.
For Europe, on the other hand, analysts say the in-your-face style of marketing hasn't quite made it yet, although there are a few signs in Britain of loosening stays.
In September, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra touted a Beethoven concert series with ads picturing long-haired conductor Simon Rattle and a headline reading ``Rattle Meets Beethoven.'' The English National Opera, meantime, is famous for its sexy ads - aimed at both men and women - in the London subway.
But that's about as risque as it gets. James Jolly, editor of Gramophone, a monthly music magazine in London, says the era of conductor as pop-culture icon hasn't arrived in Europe - and isn't likely to.
``Maybe people feel they don't need to go that far,'' Jolly says.
Ginny MacBeth, a London publicist who represents conductor Leonard Slatkin, among others, says the Old World clubbiness of European classical music would look down on some of the new-wave hucksterism.
``If someone thinks you have compromised yourself, they won't book you,'' MacBeth said.
In the U.S., too, purists say the rigamarole distracts from the music and debases an art form.
``These people are degrading music and insulting the audience - it's like going to a church and instead of a service, you get MTV,'' says Leon Botstein, music director of the American Symphony Orchestra in New York.
Of course, playing to the masses isn't new. Leopold Stokowski shook hands with Mickey Mouse in Walt Disney's ``Fantasia.'' Leonard Bernstein, a gifted composer and inveterate ham, was regarded as the first quintessentially U.S. conductor. He gave ``rug concerts,'' where the audience sat on the floor.
But today's wand-wielders are more aggressive.
``We in the classical music industry have always been too highfalutin to market ourselves and compete,'' said Keith Lockhart, the Boston Pops' new conductor. ``If we're on stage looking like we're playing a funeral, how can we expect the audience to have fun?''
Lockhart, who counts P.T. Barnum among his role models, has made concert entrances on Rollerblades, in a Batman suit, on an elephant and from a Dracula coffin. Introducing Beethoven at casual concerts, he says he invokes ``everything from Jack Kerouac to Beavis and Butt-head'' to convey the composer's rebellious side.
Beethoven may be rolling over in his grave, but audiences love it. At the Pops July 4 concert, teen-age girls screamed and waved ``We Love You Keith'' signs, thronging the stage afterward for autographs. When he conducted the Naples, Fla., Philharmonic on Halloween, Melba Goliszeski, 41, said, ``I came because of the conductor: He's 36, single, and has no children.'' Never mind that Lockhart couldn't hear through his Batman mask whether the musicians were with him; the crowd left the concert humming.
Stephen Stein, 37-year-old assistant conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra and a finalist for the conducting job with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, uses magicians, dancers and lasers to enhance his shows - and has been splashed across the fashion pages of the Houston Chronicle as ``Maestro of Mens wear'' because the tails he wears are tailor-made so the shoulders and tails don't flap around when he is conducting.
When Eiji Oue was named music director of the Minnesota Orchestra this summer, the symphony persuaded Minneapolis-based General Mills to put his face on promotional boxes of Wheaties as part of a local public-relations campaign.
The conductor of the Berkeley, Calif., Symphony, Kent Nagano, is a virtuoso in the music of contemporary American composers - and well known for his thick, shoulder-length hair and passion for surfing. Nagano has recorded Stravinsky's ``L'Histoire du Soldat'' with rock star Sting, and he led a symphonic concert of Frank Zappa's music.
Some think the novel approaches won't last. Jay K. Hoffman, New York-based co-founder of the Mostly Mozart Festival, compares the trend to a bad experiment with nouvelle cuisine.
``It's as if you went to a restaurant and a plate of food is set down in front of you and you say, `God that looks beautiful,' and then you realize it's a ball of vanilla fudge ice cream on top of a striped bass. Well, you'll remember it, but you probably won't go back.''The American Symphony's Leon Botstein especially hates when conductors dress up like a dead composer.
``This is so horrendous, it bears no description. It turns the symphony into a freak show. If they say they're trying to recreate Mozart's world - what, should they smell like Mozart, too?''
But lacking the generous subsidies that European orchestras receive, modern American maestros are under increasing pressure to do whatever it takes to get more warm bodies into the seats. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Arts gave $10.2 million in grants to orchestras. This year, because of budget cuts, less than $4 million will be available.
Corporate sponsors also have become more particular, demanding specific programs for their money, says David Wax, executive director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. Exxon Corp. sponsors the ``Exxon Pop Series'' and Texaco Inc. supports the ``Texaco Community Concert Series,'' but few give money for the general support of the orchestra.
In this environment, even eminent orchestras are loosening up. ``We needed to change the impression that the orchestra is a bunch of stuffed shirts playing dead white European composers for almost dead white American audiences,'' said Joe Kluger, executive director of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. Subscription rates slid to 78 percent in 1994 from over 90 percent in the 1980s, ``but I couldn't ask Wolfgang Sawallisch to dress up in costume,'' said Kluger, referring to the orchestra's distinguished German music director. ``We need conductors who are willing to do wild and crazy things. That's where Andre comes in.''
Assistant conductor Andre Raphel Smith, a dashing 33-year-old with a penchant for designer suits, helped launch a ``ClassiX Live'' series in 1994, geared to younger audiences and featuring post-concert parties and free munchies. For Halloween concerts, Smith has dressed up as the Grim Reaper, Mozart and a large bird.
Purists may protest, but a popular following can pay off. Shortly after Lockhart's appointment to the Boston Pops, a shopping-center developer and his wife endowed the Pops conductorship with $5 million ``to welcome Keith.''
With that kind of endorsement behind him, Lockhart said, the purists who say the classics are art, not entertainment, should face the music.
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