Go to a Concert

Requisite Knowledge Level for Understanding (* being beginner, ***** being expert): *

Why should you go to a concert?

If you've never been a fan of classical music, or if you've got some CDs that you like to listen to and don't want to shell out the money, what reason do you have for going to a concert?  Going to a concert is a complete experience, very different from sitting at home and listening to a CD.  Part of what music offers is the ability to spark your imagination, to lead you places that you've never been before.  This is a complete and interactive experience, and you cannot fully get it from a recording (and if you could see the number of recordings that I've got, it would definitely appear that I have tried).

These days, access to recorded music is incredibly easy.  Almost ridiculously simple.  Heck, depending on how you want to access it, it can be completely free.  We have spotify, et al. for online listening and you can find songs posted on Youtube, both of those with no monetary damage whatsoever.  For $.99, you can get most songs from iTunes or Amazon.com as digital downloads, and put them on your iPod and listen to then whenever and wherever you want.  That's not to mention those weirdos who still buy the physical CDs and then load them onto their computer (cards on the table, that's me), or the older generations who still maintain that nothing will ever replace their LPs, as well as the radio, from XM satellite to the regular stations of 97.5 or whatever it is in your area that you listen to.  Point being, access to music is easy.

Now, that all being the case, here is the problem:  Music was never intended to be a background tool.  I'm betting that most of you use your iPod to listen to music while you're working out at the gym, or while you're in the car on the way to work.  Maybe you put it on while you're cooking dinner or doing the laundry (though I usually use the TV for laundry).  The point is that while you're listening to the music, you're more focused on something else.  Driving safely, not running into someone else on the track, not burning the chicken, whatever.

Music was meant for much more.  It was performed in front of a crowd so that they might dance.  It was an interactive part of a religious service.  It was a collection of songs brought together with action to tell a full story about two people in love.  We lose some of this emotion and the full breadth of the music when we do not experience it as it is meant to be experienced.  I'm not saying don't listen to your iPod while you're working out.  Please do.  I do, and I don't plan to stop.  But know that you're missing part of the music, even while that steady beat is keeping your feet from running too slowly.

Now, this all could apply to more than classical music, and it does.  If you've never been to any concert, go see a concert of a pop musician if that's what you like.  That too is a good thing.  Focusing on the classical, though (see this blog's title), I think that this is a thought that doesn't occur to people as often.  You hear when your favourite bands or singers are in town, and you might go to a few of them.  But for most places in this country, there is a very talented orchestra within an hour's driving distance (something you'd easily do for one of your favourites), and yet the thought never even occurs.

It's not that expensive.  In fact, when you go to that concert of your favourite group, you're generally paying upwards of $50 for a seat at the very top tier of the local basketball stadium, and you're probably bringing a date, meaning you're paying twice that.  Most professional orchestras have seats available at a fairly cheap rate.  I live just north of Indianapolis, and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (ISO) has seats available for every concert starting at $20  (the New York Philharmonic has seats starting at $41, sure that's more, but it's New York, $41 there is like $15 out in the country).  Are they the best seats in the hall?  No.  But the halls where orchestras perform generally seat 1,250 - 2,500 people.  The basketball arena probably seats like 18,000 - 20,000.  That means you are sitting in a hall One-Tenth the size.  The worst seat there is as close as a box seat in the basketball stadium.

You will get a quality performance.  If you're going to a professional orchestra performance, you WILL get a quality performance.  Sure, if you're in St. Louis, your orchestra is not probably talked about as being the single best orchestra in the world; most orchestras aren't.  But these are musicians who have spent their lifetime perfecting their craft.  They've spent just as much time practicing, if not more, than any other rock or pop group you've gone to see.  They are quite excellent, and you can tell simply by listening that they are not fighting to make sure they get the right notes out, but instead are trying to shape the notes that they've been given into the most accurate representation of the music that they want to communicate as they possibly can.  Most people wouldn't consider the ISO the best orchestra in the world, but I have left every performance thinking that I had heard good music.

Sitting in the seats at a concert, actually seeing and hearing musicians live and on stage producing the music is a far greater experience than hearing it over your headphones while you're cooking dinner.  You can feel the excitement in the people around you, and you can concentrate 100% on the music in a way that you would never do while it's just background noise.  Watching the violin player attack those really loud notes, seeing the trumpet player take a big breath before playing a passage, or seeing the arc of the mallet before it makes contact with the drum; these are things not to be found on an iPod.