Young people, concert attendance & music preference
February 13th, 2006 by etobias
The issue of young people and concert attendance was recently raised again by Greg Sandow on his blog. Coming at it from a music ed perspective, Jen previously posted on this topic and I posted on the other blog I write. The voices of young people, especially much younger people, are unfortunately left out in most conversations about the topic. Conversations over at the band, orchestra, chorus and general music MENC bulletin boards can possibly offer some insight. Conversations, like this one and this one, with younger people and their families should probably happen more often!
While discussing what might interest students in attending concerts why not also hold a discussion about what influences their tastes in music? Results of an interesting research study conducted by students at Columbia University are circulating around the web. The results show that there is more to the popularity of a piece of music than the sum of its parts, though that hasn’t stopped Pandora from recommending music based on those parts. Melissa recently posted about places online where students can share their own original music and listen to the creations of others. Students may enjoy sharing their perspectives on how the web has or has not played a role in what they listen to and enjoy. I’ll make a post soon on a project some of my students are currently working on that looks at how the music industry plays a role in these issues as well.
Right now i am an a general music class at Northern Illinois University. Each semester, we are assigned to attend up to four concerts throughout the semester that are held by the music students and or faculty. We then have to write a paper about it and explain in detail what and how it was performed. I actually like doing this because i was a former music education major, but i enjoy it. And i’ve talked to others from my class, and they do enjoy attending these concerts. If classes assigned things like this, i believe it would get children involved in the classical music scene, and they might find that they learned something.