Empty house

State budget cuts over the past two years have affected nearly
every inch of the UCLA campus in some way or another. But these
cuts have hit the university’s performing arts departments
especially hard and, in turn, have forced department chairs to
devise innovative ways to raise additional funds and support for
their programs, especially for student and faculty concerts.

“My decision was to become essentially more
entrepreneurial, more privatized, and to look for new revenue
streams to offset the cuts so that we would actually be able to
maintain our current level of programs, even in the face of
diminished state support,” said Ian Krouse, chair of the UCLA
Department of Music.

In response to reduced funding, Krouse has dramatically stepped
up efforts to increase donor contributions and scholarship funding,
and to rent music department facilities to outside agencies. In
spite of these tactics, the department was still compelled to
authorize a modest increase in student fees.

The UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology has responded in a
similar fashion, teaming up with additional organizations such as
the Student Committee for the Arts and the Hammer Museum to fund
their traditional spring concert series.

“What looked like a potential crisis was solved thanks to
the willingness of other organizations in UCLA to help out,”
said Tim Rice, chair of the ethnomusicology department.
“Their help benefited us and furthered their own goals at the
same time. And we ended up in a better position than if we
hadn’t had to deal with a problem created by budget
cuts.”

While the ethnomusicology department’s production budget
has largely been restored this past year, the music department has
experienced several permanent cuts, all of which have made Krouse
reevaluate one of the department’s most costly undertakings
““ its student and faculty concerts, such as the “UCLA
Composers Past and Present” concert on May 12 in Schoenberg
Hall.

“We’ve tried to maintain all of our important
programs, but we have had to cut back on the number of concerts
we’ve offered,” Krouse said. “We’ve also
had to cut back on funding for publicity to get audience
participation in those concerts. So we’ve had to be really
creative this year about finding inexpensive, low-cost methods of
reaching our potential audiences.”

The music department has maintained its student admission prices
and only slightly increased the cost of general admission. Although
the ticket prices do help the department recuperate some of the
expenses involved in putting on a concert, they do not even come
close to paying for the full cost of many of the concerts
presented, which therefore must still be largely subsidized by the
department. Ticket revenue has also significantly been hampered by
the lack of funding for publicity to promote student and faculty
concerts.

“I don’t have adequate publicity funding to really
be able to market most of our concerts,” Krouse said.
“This is such a shame because our faculty and students are
doing really wonderful things. That’s really been one of my
major challenges this past and upcoming year.”

In her dissertation, as well as through her own nonprofit
organization, music graduate student Carter Dewberry has decided to
tackle this very topic ““ marketing classical music to
non-musicians.

“I’m out to redefine chamber music performance
because it’s always been perceived as very elitist,”
Dewberry said. “It’s not the actual music, but the
performance and the environment surrounding the performance that is
elitist.”

After conducting numerous interviews with UCLA students not
majoring in music, Dewberry concluded that to attract this
demographic to a classical music concert, she would need to
approach the performance from a non-traditional angle and even
offer some incentives for attendance. As a result, Dewberry decided
that for her May 17 concert at Schoenberg Auditorium, she would
offer a $100 raffle ticket to anyone who attends and fills out a
brief informational survey.

Dewberry also made an effort to cater to the movie-conscious
demographic in Los Angeles by including a visual or narrative
element, ranging from modern dance to a silent black and white
film, during half of her concert’s repertoire. She chose to
only showcase works written in the 20th century in order to connect
with listeners who do not usually listen to traditional classical
music.

“It’s very hard to connect with something that was
written 300 years ago, so I prefer to introduce people to classical
music through more modern repertoire because it’s closer to
what they’ve experienced in their lives,” Dewberry
said.

Yet like Krouse, Dewberry has found that the most difficult
aspect of her project is ensuring that she is reaching an audience.
She has decided to market her concert through an advertisement in
the Daily Bruin, as well as through passing out cards on Bruin Walk
and to friends and colleagues.

“The first thing is that you have to get people there, and
the second thing is that they have to actually like what they
experience,” Dewberry said. “I’m betting that
they’re going to like what they experience, so I’m
basically trying to figure out ways to get them there.”

If Dewberry’s experiment turns out to be successful, it
could potentially affect the future of classical music performance,
or at least pave the way for a viable alternative. As she has
discovered, the true challenge lies not in rekindling the
public’s love for classical music, but in motivating them to
actually come out to see a live performance of it.

“I’ve been very surprised because I’ve really
found that people do love classical music. They just don’t
like going to see it live,” said Dewberry.

“I thought I was going to have to struggle to bring
classical music back, (but) from what I’ve experienced in my
interviews, (it’s) more about giving them a reason to go see
it live and giving them a reason to care about it.”

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