Grab and Thrill Your Audience!

Some people know it intuitively.  You have to grab and thrill your audience.  It's not just about writing brilliant music or creating accurate paintings, it's about the audience.

Look at Bernstein conducting or Yo-Yo Ma playing the cello.

When Yo-Yo Ma plays, he is not just making great music, he is capturing the audience by adding gestures and facial expressions so the audience can believe he is feeling the music.  A friend of mine who played with him said he kept trying to make her exaggerate her gestures.  Is this bad?  No.  It's a show for the audience.

Joshua Bell is another musician who uses heavy gestures.  Maybe he partly learned this when he played in the Washington D.C. subway and only got a few coins and dollars.  Great music is part of the equation, the biggest part, but not all.

If you're famous already, people will imagine you are playing great.  If you are beautiful, (and aren't most of those successful female solo violinists quite stunning)?  People think you sound better if you look great.

And guess what, even your name makes a difference.  There was a study years ago where essays were graded by teachers.  I remember that the essays with David on them received the best marks, even when they switched names on the different essays.  Yo-Yo Ma has a wonderful name, simple with a familiarity to it that stands out.  You think his musician parents didn't think of this when they named him?  The didn't name him Chou Ming Ma.  Good move.

And who would hear the name Allen Konigsberg and imagine he's funny.  That's why he changed his name to Woody Allen.  And would millions of people pay tons of premium dollars for clothes with Ralph Lifshitz on the the label?   No wonder he changed his name to Ralph Lauren.  He said, "My given name has the word shit in it."  Another Jewish businessman, also from The Bronx, said that some people don't like the Jews, some don't like the Polish or Italians, but everybody like the Scandinavians.  So he called his ice cream Haagen-Dazs to make it sound like it was from somewhere like Copenhagen.

Everything adds up to grabbing and thrilling the Audience.  Bernstein grabbed them with his big, energetic conducting that emphasized rhythm.  You couldn't lean back and snooze.  He played for the audience.  And he conducted with giant gestures and shook his mane of hair.  Now, you have to realize that most of the conductor's work is done in rehearsal.   The professional orchestra knows how just how he wants it.  Hey, the Vienna Philharmonic does it usually without a conductor.

But. . . it's all for the audience and it should be.

Not all successful people know this right off.  But they learn it.  Aaron Copland started writing complicated, modernist music that the common man could never relate to.  He saw what was happening and changed.  That's why we have his simple, direct pieces that are super easy and fun to listen to -  he did it for the audience.  Even the names tell you what he was trying to do  - Fanfare for the Common Man, Hoedown, Tis' a Joy to Be Simple.

Even more surprisingly is a look at Van Gogh.  We all love his vivid, beautiful colors and his painting can sell for over 100 million dollars.  They are gorgeous.  Why did he paint like that?  Because his brother Theo told him that his brown, drab canvases were not what people wanted.  He changed for his audience.

I am going to say it again, even if you think I'm the village idiot,  "You have to grab and thrill your audience."  And you have to use every means possible.  It all counts.  Though it doesn't always have to be with the pyrotechnics of The Stones or Freddy Mercury to wow people.  The quiet image of George Winston walking across the Carnegie Hall stage in his socks had just the perfect resonance.