Western Music in China: Fact vs. Fiction
The China National Center for the Performing Arts has been open now for a year and a half. While Henry Sanderson’s recent article in the Associated Press covered the basics, I feel compelled both to amplify and correct.
Despite the Center’s newness, it shut down the second half of March, ostensibly for maintenance. However, a reliable source within the organization told me it was really because the marketing staff had convinced themselves that it would be too difficult to attract audiences during the period between the end of Spring Festival and other spring holiday periods and would rather just shut down. Vertical and horizontal integration in arts administration has not yet arrived in China; hopefully such team spirit will develop soon.
Though Sanderson states correctly that the complex is never expected to be fully self-supporting, I disagree with his statement that it gets next to nothing from corporate sponsors. The CNCPA’s development department, lead by Pan Yong, a former Kennedy Center arts management fellow, last year raised 60 million renminbi (US$8.8 million) in cash and in-kind sponsorships. Notably, that amount came 50/50 from Chinese and international sources. As of April, Pan Yong projected the need to raise 75 million rmb more this year, 40 million of which had been already pledged.
The CNCPA is also pursuing arts education and audience development activities full tilt. When we met in March, Director Chen Ping proudly explained that of the almost 1000 public performances last year, a third were not-for-profit “for the public good” presentations. In addition, there were 800 all-ages educational performances, with 320,000 in attendance; tickets for these weekend educational concerts cost the equivalent of just US$1.50. There were also over 400 lectures on classical music, plus several hundred more on other performing arts topics. The CNCPA may have endured a prolonged gestation; now they are trying to make up for lost time.
The National Symphony Orchestra recently joined the growing list of major American and international orchestras appearing at the CNCPA. My colleague Anne Midgette, who accompanied the tour, observed that what she’d expected to find in China but didn’t seem to encounter were huge audiences eager to hear Western music. However, she did feel she’d found a more discriminating, more sophisticated audience, and I think the absence of a huge audience for the NSO is directly related. The Chinese are highly brand sensitive. During the CNCPA’s inaugural season and a half, Beijing audiences have already heard the top orchestras in the world. Audiences are now savvy enough to realize that there are status hierarchies between orchestras as well.
Midgette also wondered how the young audience members could afford concert tickets. In fact, many tickets are still sold to corporations or given to government entities or sponsors, who in turn give them away. The well-connected music-loving young and even not-so-young music lovers are expert in finding the freebies. As for those taped pre-concert announcements she describes, they hold a special place in my heart. Full disclosure: 11 years ago, my family and I visited the soon-to-open Shanghai Grand Theatre. Their artistic administrator, remembering my husband’s professional bass-baritone resonance, kidnapped him into the sound booth. His rich and amused-sounding voice welcomes audience members to this day.