Ageing audience for jazz?

[BillF]

I recently went to a university concert hall gig in Liverpool by the Roger Beaujolais Quartet, a top flight British jazz group. Twenty-one people attended in a hall that seated two hundred. I discussed this with another (elderly) listener, who pointed out that there was nobody young in the audience, although Liverpool has two jazz courses for students. She told me she was the secretary of the Wigan Jazz Club and that the ageing audience for jazz was dying off and no one young was coming up to replace it.

Today I read that some say opera is going the same way:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jun/06/new-york-met-opera-house-edge-precipice

I also notice that when I'm on jazz sites I'm getting ads for maximising my pension or for mobility aids.

Any views on this state of affairs?

[sidewinder]

II also notice that when I'm on jazz sites I'm getting ads for maximising my pension or for mobility aids.

Viagra in my case.. I guess my google profile must be 'debauched super-annuated boomer hep-cat'.

It is true. The last few gigs I've been to I would say that there have been maybe 2 or 3 people younger than me. And I'm no spring chicken..

Edited June 7, 2014 by sidewinder

[David Ayers]

I'm not sure about the comparison with opera. Opera performances sell out every day of the week, usually at very high prices.

[A Lark Ascending]

I suspect people are growing up with very different expectations of a live event. I grew up in the first flowering of the rock (as opposed to rock'n roll!) era and even then the standard way of behaving was to sit politely (usually cross-legged on a student union floor) and listen (yes, something very different was happening in the T.Rex concert in town, but...). So you had an audience who went expecting to listen. Many of them crossed over into other musics that required more in the way of focussed listening.

When I talk with younger colleagues they have no patience with that. They want an interactive event, jumping up and down, physically involved with the excitement (maybe a return to the original use of popular music as an accompaniment to dancing). They only ones who actively seek out sit down concerts are those who have been schooled in that tradition through studying music, an instrument or coming from a home where that sort of concert environment is valued.

It's interesting but one of the sure ways to get an 'inadequate' judgement in an OFSTED inspection in the last few years is to talk too much while the students listen. Active learning has become the centre of everything - I was told a few years back by and inspector that all I needed to do was set up the activity and then let the kids get on with it while I had a cup of tea!. Certainly in the state sector children are rarely required to sit and listen; the emphasis is on doing. Which might explain why a classical or jazz concert might be unattractive. I'm not knocking active learning - I do lots of it - just speculating why what is (mistakenly to my mind) referred to as a passive activity might not appeal. [Nor am I suggesting there is anything deficient in 'young people today' who strike me as much the same as they've ever been, just with different experiences].

Jazz (like classical) doesn't help itself by presenting itself as a musical genre that emphasises revering the 'canon' over the excitement that comes from hearing new music. As a young listener what thrilled me was hearing the new music coming out rather than getting to know old Blue Notes or Dead Maestros. Every now and then jazz (and classical) gets its brief moment of revival...I suspect we're due for one. But I doubt it will be insiders who will make that happen.

Edited June 7, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[Steve Reynolds]

See Brotzmann tour thread - very young listeners are a large part of the more out/aggressive aspects of the free jazz

For a more mainstream concert yet skewed towards the margins(The Dolphy tribute even last weekend in Montclair, NJ), the audience was older but many in their 20's through my age(54)

The younger listeners, IMO, are looking for something else besides what has gone on before and even through free jazz/escastic jazz has been around for a while, it continues to morph and many have never heard anything like it.

When a young friend of mine heard Brotzmann a few years back, he didn't hear out, he heard exciting jazz/improvised music that was exciting and vibrant to him. He is not alone.

[A Lark Ascending]

But I bet they are very middle class (or above) younger listeners!

Used to make me laugh at Appleby. In the main tent there'd be a few hundred people (mainly greyhairs with a few younger people) with a line of beer barrels along the back.

In the Freezone venue there'd be around fifty greyhairs and a few younger people. At the break Evan Parker would serve wine.

[Steve Reynolds]

I will do a survey at the 2 or 3 Evan Parker shows I will attend in September @ The Stone. My recollection is that it is wide range of ages from last September and 2009.

The audience @ Cornelia Street has a nice percentage of young people

[Balladeer]

Jazz isn´t dead, it just smells funny.

(Zappa)

I don´t believe it.Modern jazz has almost always been a minority program. My experience in Germany: (Scandinavian) female singers draw the masses and soft pop fusion artists like our smart trumpet hero Til Brönner.

Sometimes you have a little more interest as with bands like during jazz rock age in the Seventies or with bands like EST.

But the real stuff will remain for aficionados and true believers. .

[mjzee]

Let me begin by saying I have no idea what the answer is. I will point out that jazz is not music for children; it is an adult music, and that is one of the things about it that appeals to me. When I was in my teens and twenties, I was drawn more to high-energy, free jazz, but with hindsight I can see its parallels with heavy metal rock - it seems more appropriate for someone of that age. (Remember the linkages that John Sinclair in Ann Arbor drew between the MC5 and Sun Ra?) But as you settle down, you want a music more deeply engaging and profound.

Personal reminiscence: When I was in college, I headed the jazz concert commission for a year, and we brought in Sonny Rollins. That night, the impression I had of his music was that it was corny and uninvolving, too reliant on show tunes; I wanted something more free-form and high-energy. I simply wasn't prepared to appreciate that music, because I was too young.

One of the things that jazz is facing is what a lot of the other arts and even movies are facing: people are less likely to go out these days. There are more entertainment choices inside the home.

It's also possible that the reason jazz audiences are older is that adults in their '30's and '40's have responsibilities raising their kids, and it's when they're in their '50's and '60's that they again have the freedom to go out at night.

If there's one piece of advice I'd give, it's that jazz musicians should include some standards in their live programs. People like a tune they recognize, and it helps appeal to the audience. A program of only originals can be cold and off-putting - it doesn't give a "handle" to the audience to grasp. Most great jazz musicians have a personal appeal to their audience.

Anyway, let's continue to get out there and spread the jazz message!

[A Lark Ascending]

I will point out that jazz is not music for children; it is an adult music... But as you settle down, you want a music more deeply engaging and profound.

I think that's something of a myth. Those of us who buy in to what is often described as middlebrow or high culture are conditioned to believe that as we get older we need something deeper. Another old chestnut in that vein is the idea that as we get older we pare down to the vital essentials, having no time for the merely good...out go the symphonies and we drift into the sunset communing with late Beethoven quartets.

The only difference between being young and old is that, if we're interested enough in music to keep listening to it, we've heard vastly more and therefore have much more of a context to hear it within.

I certainly understand what I'm hearing more than I did at 21 (though not nearly as well as I might have done if I'd studied music or learned an instrument). But do I need something more profound and engaging? I tend to find that sometimes I'm looking for music that will puzzle me, make me think a bit, not get for a long time but enjoy gnawing at; and at others I want music that grabs me instantly and makes me dance round the house.

Was Louis Armstrong making music for adults when he recorded the Hot Fives and Sevens in the late 20s? I suspect he was making music to excite a mainly young audience but also satisfying his own creativity and curiosity by shaping it in intriguing and novel ways. The reverence for those recordings today by adults who believe they are listening to something adult and profound is an historical projection placed onto that music, part of the way we deify the past and create canons of great 'art' (which is not to demean the quality of the music itself).

There's plenty of music satisfying for adults being made in genres outside those usually held to be respectable by the (mainly) adult, (frequently) self-appointed curators of the cultural world.

Anyway, most of the adults don't turn up for jazz, opera or classical concerts either.

Edited June 7, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[BillF]

Clearly, it's time I gave this another spin:

[A Lark Ascending]

"Get off my lawn".

[Steve Reynolds]

Another myth is that intense free jazz/improv cannot be deeply engaging and profound

Then again, I never heard it before that traditional more mainstream jazz is more engaging and profound than most of the music I listen to.

Then again I listen to Led Zeppelin, Evan Parker, Hank Mobley, Pavement, Can, Mat Maneri, Darius Jones, AEOC, Oliver Lake, Husker Du and much in between. Maybe some more profound than others - but firm mt experience from my personal perspective, intense concentrated free improvisation of all sorts is the most challenging and profound.

[Larry Kart]

Two things about getting older and my appreciation/taste for music: in jazz, I'm drawn in part to stuff from my youth (i.e. West Coast and non-hard bop East Coast things from '50s that I liked for a while back then and soon came to dismiss, a dismissal that lasted for a long time) and in part to avant-gardish stuff from today that I think works -- in both cases, a craving for "the new" applies, either stuff that's new in that I haven't encountered it in years or stuff that's new in the sense that new valid musical principles might be involved. In classical, likewise with my curiosity for what's up in the avant-garde or avant-gardes, and also in my curiosity about unfamiliar to me figures from the Baroque, pre-classical, and classical eras, and peripheral figures from the early modern era, like Egon Wellesz and Karl Weigl -- that's hit and miss, but I've found some real winners, e.g. Stoltzel and Graupner (superb harpsichord suites, superbly performed by Genevieve Joly), and some things, like the symphonies of J. Vanhal, that aren't genius-level music but have quality and individuality and throw interesting historical/contextual light on Mozart and Haydn, making it much more clear what in Mozart and Haydn was unique to each them, what was contextual, and what other interesting ways there were to work with that material and within those contexts. To use a jazz analogy, one of the reasons I find, say, tenor saxophonist Seldon Powell to be of interest, aside from the intrinsic quality of his music, is the light that it casts on that of other more major players of his era -- e.g. Rollins.

[A Lark Ascending]

Back before the 80s if you were at home there wasn't that much to stimulate you - TV, reading, listening to the radio or record player, teasing your siblings. So you developed ways of focussing on some of those activities quite intensely (hopefully not the teasing!).

Today there are so many forms of stimulation and visuals are usually a key part of them. Is it any wonder that watching a jazz quartet or an orchestra might not seem like a good night out to anyone who has not received some guidance with regard to how to listen or what to listen for?

Lots of young people do find their way to that music - but I'd think I could guess what the results would show if you were to quantify those who become engaged on a social class basis.

[uli]

This thread reminded me of an incident that happened somewhen in the 80ies. I was at a show at the red factory in Zurich. and this lady/girl asked me if she could ask me how old I was. She and her group had various guesses/bets outstanding on my age. and I was only in my late 30ies.

Edited June 7, 2014 by uli

[BFrank]

Another thing that I find interesting at most jazz shows that I see, is that the audiences are overwhelmingly white - whether it's artists as diverse as Randy Weston or Jason Moran or Wayne Shorter or Jack DeJohnette or the Cookers. Does anyone else see that, or could it be a Bay Area phenomenon?

[xybert]

Back before the 80s if you were at home there wasn't that much to stimulate you - TV, reading, listening to the radio or record player, teasing your siblings. So you developed ways of focussing on some of those activities quite intensely (hopefully not the teasing!).

Today there are so many forms of stimulation and visuals are usually a key part of them. Is it any wonder that watching a jazz quartet or an orchestra might not seem like a good night out to anyone who has not received some guidance with regard to how to listen or what to listen for?

Lots of young people do find their way to that music - but I'd think I could guess what the results would show if you were to quantify those who become engaged on a social class basis.

Yes, we are spread thinner than ever. Back in the day i'd guess most people would have a record collection, however small, even if they weren't all that in to music. Nowadays you don't need to be a music fan, let alone a jazz fan.

[BillF]

Another thing that I find interesting at most jazz shows that I see, is that the audiences are overwhelmingly white - whether it's artists as diverse as Randy Weston or Jason Moran or Wayne Shorter or Jack DeJohnette or the Cookers. Does anyone else see that, or could it be a Bay Area phenomenon?

Not just a Bay Area phenomenon. That's just what I find. The typical jazz fan at gigs in my experience is white, male, retired and middle class (has leisure time and adequate pension to fill it).

[erwbol]

II also notice that when I'm on jazz sites I'm getting ads for maximising my pension or for mobility aids.

Viagra in my case.. I guess my google profile must be 'debauched super-annuated boomer hep-cat'.

You browse the internet without using AdBlock? Those ads must be right on target.

Edited June 7, 2014 by erwbol

[Steve Reynolds]

The audience at the concert last week in Montclair, NJ was pretty much a microcosm of the community. Mixed races, ages, sexes, etc.

[Leeway]

A lot of older people are in the audience because there are a lot of older people in the general population, to with, Baby Boomers. However at least at the free jazz/avant music shows I've been going to, there are many younger people as well. A lot of them are coming over from Alt Rock/Noise/Electronica etc, especially now that people like Thurston Moore and Mats Gustafsson have led the cross-over. The future of this music is in aggressively experimental and avant modes of recording and performing; that creates the necessary energy ("buzz") to bring in new listeners.

The most encouraging thing for me to see are the many young musicians going into this area of music. We have an incredible new generation of musicians currently performing (no knock on the veterans!). As long as that is the case, I feel encouraged about the future of the music.

[Guy Berger]

1) Audiences at NYC clubs are generally not that old - I see lots of people in their 20s and 30s.

2) It's not surprising to me that audiences in concert halls are older, and I would guess if you live in a place where concert halls are the main jazz venue, the apparent jazz audience would be relatively old.

3) The youngest jazz audiences I've seen are at things like Medeski Martin & Wood concerts. If you want young audiences, you need to come to where young people view live music, not to stuffy concert halls.

4) Were audiences for jazz ever THAT young, especially after WW2? I mean, how old were the working class African Americans who listened to soul jazz and hard bop in the 50s and 60s? Or the middle-class whites that listened to west coast jazz during that period?

5) Like someone else said, the main identifying characteristic of audiences in NYC clubs seems to be "disposable income".

6) Related to all these points, one of the big changes in jazz (particularly straight ahead) since 197x is the complete disconnect from popular music. I would even say that a lot of discussion by current fans of pre-197x straight ahead jazz tends to retroactively divorce it from popular music of that time.

Edited June 7, 2014 by Guy

[AllenLowe]

1) I won't pretend that I don't worry about all of this, constantly.

2) the good news is that, given that I have a steady and scattered audience of about 100 people, I now know, after reading this, that my jazz audience share is about 25 percent.

3) there's pretty much nothing else that I am any good at, so I am stuck anyway.

Edited June 7, 2014 by AllenLowe

[A Lark Ascending]

6) Related to all these points, one of the big changes in jazz (particularly straight ahead) since 197x is the complete disconnect from popular music. I would even say that a lot of discussion by current fans of pre-197x straight ahead jazz tends to retroactively divorce it from popular music of that time.

I think that explains a great deal. Jazz tends to market itself as something that is not popular music [the music for grown ups thing]. Though when contemporary jazz musicians use currently popular material, they don't seem to attract a sizeable young audience and generally annoy their core audience! [i think that statement needs a smiley denoting a tongue in cheek comment]

Very difficult to work this out for sure as we are all talking anecdotally. I'd imagine you are going to get a very different audience in, say a vibrant and hip area like downtown New York, and a suburban arts centre in regional Britain. The last two free jazz events I went to - Keith Tippett at the Vortex and Evan Parker in London appeared to me to have a mix of audience in age terms but weighted in favour of the middle to older audience member (but my memory might be playing tricks). I'd imagine that places like The Vortex, Cafe Otto have a certain hipness about them in reputation terms and so might draw more widely than the Rochdale Jazz Club (not sure if that exists).

As for disposable income, I'm not sure that works in age terms. I earn appreciably more than my 20-something colleagues. But I know I spend far less on concert tickets than they do (some of those festival prices are eye-watering). Younger people may have less but they spend more of it (I know I did at that age).

It used to be said that the audience for folk music was mainly teachers and social workers. Might be worth plotting attendance at those clubs getting 20 people against the school holidays.

Edited June 8, 2014 by A Lark Ascending