I've been thinking about the concerts that Robin has recently been doing on board ship. Cruise liners these days are very big business. There are huge numbers of people all wanting to be entertained. This occurs at many levels, from background music while you eat and drink, to lectures from Oxford professors.
For Robin, this is an opportunity for large numbers of guests to hear him play. Last week the first concert was attended by a 900 strong audience, as was the second one. Even my maths can work out that 1800 people watched his concerts in just one week. I realise that many of them would have been to both performances, hence two separate programmes, but that can only mean they enjoyed the first one.
This brings me to the point. Many of those people are probably not regular classical music concert goers. So it must be a good thing to give them the opportunity to see and hear quality music and hopefully give them the courage to venture out to see other concerts when they are at home.
There's plenty of debate at the moment on classical music being in decline, but judging from these figures there's a lot that can be done to encourage people out. We just have to look at it from another perspective sometimes.
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I have to agree with you Anna... comments such as 'classical music is in decline' is another of the common beliefs perpectuated by the press, but that doesn't necessarily reflect the view of the wider public. If such internet sites as YouTube and MySpace are anything to go by then classical music is very popular, with over 9,000 videos related to classical music on YouTube and over 23,000 related entries on MySpace. The fact that these aren't the highest entries merely reflects that the internet has a very 'pop culture' bias. Robin's own video for his Virtuoso album can of course be found online on YouTube, here: Virtuoso on YouTube and I'd encourage all your readers to take a look.
Andre, thank you for your comments. I think that you are right, the internet has a huge following within 'pop' music. But as your figures show, classical music is fighting back!
I feel it has taken all those connected with classical music a little longer to realise the potential, but we are getting there.
I would also agree that all readers should take a look at 'Virtuoso'!
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