Where are you?

Submission by Anne

Where am I? In Indianapolis This was an accident.

Now that I'm here, I'm trying to make the best of it. There is a very small baroque scene with even smaller audiences. Most of the playing I do is somewhere else. I'm struck, in Indy, by the challenge of marketing early music to mainstream audiences. Sometimes I feel like early music is the ultimate self-indulgence: there are a whole lot of people who want to play it, and not very many people who want to listen. And sometimes I wonder if that's a load of self-loathing hooey, and I'd feel differently in a city with a healthier early music scene.

Still: My last concert -yesterday- was a Purcell program. We attracted an audience of about 45, all but a few eligible for AARP membership. In a few days, I'm flying to a different Midwestern city to play a multi-media project with a Celtic/Renaissance crossover band. That group routinely attracts 600-800 people of all ages.

The onus is on us to make a change. I believe our concerts need to be more accessible and less academic. We're performers, not historians -and entertainment, not pedagogy, should be the preeminent goal. I'm not saying informing and educating don't have a place, but I think early musicians sometimes assume that doing it "right" (i.e., in a historically-informed, thoughtful, well-documented, well-played manner) is enough. I submit that it is not.