Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Music or Entertainment

Corporate Sponsorship for the Shreveport Symphony
Blame the financial woes of the Shreveport Symphony on American Idol and Amateur Night at the Apollo? It's right there in paragraph two of statement issued by the SSO. Or maybe it's the fault of Blue Man Group or Burning Man. Or maybe it's that an evening at the symphony is perceived as long, boring and expensive. Hey, even if you don't like hockey and someone drags to you a Mudbugs game there's always the chance of catching a t-shirt fired from a cannon. Trudeau's doing a good job of covering the unfolding events surrounding the symphony.

RRBJ loves live music. Even though we are guilty of not financially supporting any local group (it's a struggle to keep the lights on, gas in the van, food on the table and a kid in college). A big evening of entertainment for us is a DVD delivered by Netflix and store brand microwave popcorn. However during our formative years we were actively involved with the Oklahoma Arts Institute.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your caveat hit the nail on the head: your lack of interest/money for support of the local symphony is the reason that they are in this financial crisis. Either the citizens of NW Louisiana don't have the money or just don't care about live symphonic music ENOUGH to support a full-time core of musicians.

Shreveport--it is PUT UP OR SHUT UP time!

P.S. loved your little graphic on corporate support!

Robert E Trudeau said...

Grazie for mention and thanks for the graphic aid for the cause. Southern Humor always helps things go down and has been known to shed insight, too.

New summary of SSO stuff on SptBlog.

Pan's Pantry said...

Until local arts organizations learn that they have to work on cultivating (and educating) a new audience this will happen again and again, and not just to the symphony. The blue haired ladies that support these efforts die, and they're not being replaced.

Darrell said...

I will say that there were many young people in the audience last Saturday.
See here: http://rebouche.blogspot.com/2008/03/traversing-cultural-diameter.html

It was not long enough and it was far from boring.
I'm just saying, there's another point of view.
Great graphic.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Green must go !!!
The musicians do their part. Management must raise more money.