Something altogether surprising occurred on the 2021 version of Mainly Mozart’s all-outdoors All-Star Orchestra Festival at Del Mar Surf Cup Sports Park, which was held within the second 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Attendance reached an all-time excessive of 1,500 to 1,600 per live performance, doubling the occasion’s pre-pandemic nightly norm on the indoor Balboa Theatre in downtown San Diego. Equally surprising, 60 p.c of the occasion’s 2021 viewers had by no means been to a Mainly Mozart efficiency earlier than. More younger folks and households attended than in any earlier 12 months, thanks partially to a pronounced flip to social media advertising and marketing generally and Reddit and Instagram specifically.Buoyed by these unanticipated jumps — and cautious of taking probabilities throughout a pandemic that has surged, ebbed and surged once more — Mainly Mozart will hold the 2022 version of its All-Star Orchestra Festival season totally outdoors.“We determined final fall, even earlier than the Omicron variant turned such a difficulty, to take stress off our employees and board by working in probably the most conservative, protected and prudent method,” stated Mainly Mozart CEO and co-founder Nancy Laturno.“Holding our 2022 pageant outdoors permits us to plan and look ahead, reasonably than to need to preserve adjusting to unpredictable developments. We will see the place we’re in June, and we’re cautiously optimistic issues will be rather a lot higher then than they’re immediately. But it’s our accountability to be cautious.”The San Diego nonprofit, now in its thirty fourth 12 months, will return to Del Mar Surf Cup Sports Park for pageant concerts in June and October. The pageant was held for the primary time on the identical park final June and October. The June 10-18 performances, led by longtime Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra Music Director Michael Francis, will function roughly 40 instrumentalists from a number of dozen of the nation’s main symphony orchestras.
Mainly Mozart CEO Nancy Laturno welcomes attendees to one in all her group’s first 2020 drive-in chamber music concerts in Del Mar. In June 2021, Mainly Mozart pivoted to seated outside concerts in a close-by park, the place it will return for all its 2022 Festival of the Orchestras concerts.(Courtesy Mainly Mozart)
Deviating from norm is new norm
The soloists will embody such acclaimed musicians as violinist Augustin Hadelich, cellist Maximilian Hornung, clarinetist Boris Allakhverdyan and pianist Gilles Vonsattel. They will be featured performing, respectively, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 Okay. 595. The musical repertoire is far within the custom of earlier editions of the pageant. But the grassy park is a venue Mainly Mozart had by no means used previous to final summer season and was an untested website for any classical music sequence. Then once more, deviating from the norm has change into the brand new norm for this surprisingly plucky group, which was launched in 1988 by Laturno and former San Diego Symphony Music Director David Atherton.Indeed, whereas the pandemic sadly introduced many orchestras and classical music organizations to a standstill — one solely fractionally stuffed by streaming or livestreaming audience-free performances in empty live performance halls — Mainly Mozart determined to gamble in massive and novel methods.It turned the primary classical music group within the nation to reactivate, albeit on asphalt, after COVID-19 led to a worldwide shutdown of dwell occasions in March 2020.In June 2020, solely three months after the shutdown started, “Mainly Mozart on the Drive-in” debuted. Held on a small stage erected in a dust parking zone on the Del Mar Fairgrounds, the 4 concerts drew audiences keen to listen to dwell music once more. Audience members and musicians alike wore face masks. The musicians sat 6 toes aside on stage. Attendance was initially restricted to 70 autos per live performance. Rather than applaud, concertgoers honked their automotive horns and flashed their headlights to point out their appreciation.The success of these performances led to extra Mainly Mozart drive-in concerts, however in a bigger paved parking zone, that very same summer season on the fairgrounds. Then got here the debut of two weeklong Mainly Mozart Festival of the Orchestras in September and October 2020 in a fair bigger lot. Their success impressed San Diego Opera to debut a drive-in manufacturing of “La bohème” in October.Mainly Mozart geared again up in 2021 with its all-drive-in Festival of the Orchestras on the fairgrounds in February, April and June. It drew capability crowds that numbered 300 carloads of attendees for every live performance. As the pandemic appeared to ease, some attendees sat on their vehicles or in folding seashore chairs. Bold pivots fueled by pandemic
Mainly Mozart constructed a brand new stage and put in momentary infrastructure for its June and October 2021 concerts in Del Mar, which drew the largest audiences within the now-34-year-old nonprofit’s historical past.(Photo by Ken Jacques / Courtesy Ken Jaques)
The performances themselves represented one other daring transfer for Mainly Mozart. In pre-pandemic years, its annual Mainly Mozart All-Star Orchestra Festivals had featured high musicians from a number of dozen orchestras from throughout the nation right here every June, when these musicians have been between their spring and summer season seasons. Since lots of these orchestras have been nonetheless on a pandemic-fueled hiatus in the course of the first half of final 12 months, the Laturno-led Mainly Mozart did one thing unprecedented. Its 2021 drive-in concerts solely showcased members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony in February, and members of New York’s Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the Washington, D.C.-based National Symphony in April.This was the primary time these respective orchestras had teamed up for collaborative concerts, albeit in a mixed ensemble barely half the dimensions of every of these orchestras by themselves. Del Mar native David Chan, the concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, served because the conductor in February and April. Michael Francis, Mainly Mozart’s music director since 2012, carried out in June and October.“The sheer imaginative and prescient and braveness that Nancy and the Mainly Mozart board needed to push forward is exceptional,” Chan stated in a January 2021 Union-Tribune interview.For lots of the musicians, the Festival of the Orchestras drive-in concerts right here have been their first alternative to play for a dwell viewers in a 12 months or extra. For Laturno, whose longstanding method — pre-pandemic — adopted a protected and conventional course, it was a defining second.“The core product of Mainly Mozart has at all times been an all-star pageant orchestra every June,” she stated. “COVID has supplied us the chance to take probabilities, to do issues that usually wouldn’t be prudent, for what has change into a really forgiving public.”Had all gone as deliberate, final 12 months’s February, April and June Mainly Mozart drive-in concerts in Del Mar would even have been held on alternate weeks in a big Orange County parking zone. But the pandemic led to the O.C. performances being shelved earlier than they have been even introduced. And veteran actor Malcolm McDowell, slated as an onstage narrator for a 2021 Del Mar drive-in live performance, dropped out for unspecified causes.“Everybody is aware of you’re faucet dancing throughout this pandemic, doing all your finest,” Laturno famous. “There will be some belongings you’ll do proper and a few you’ll want to repair or pivot from. Our viewers actually understands that.”That sense of understanding seems to be shared by Mainly Mozart’s longtime and new viewers members alike.
Mainly Mozart CEO Nancy Laturno, middle, is proven in April 2021 at one in all her group’s drive-in concerts. Pictured together with her are her son, Mark, who’s the group’s advertising and marketing director, and Katie McBride-Muzquiz, the director of operations.(J. Kat Photography / Courtesy Mainly Mozart)
Reddit, Instagram increase live performance viewers
With the pandemic upending enterprise as traditional for all of the humanities, Mainly Mozart shifted from the standard advertising and marketing it had relied on in earlier years to social media.“Prior to 2021, we did plenty of brochures and mailers,” stated Mainly Mozart Director of External Communications Mark Laturno, who’s Nancy’s son. “Now we’re capable of do extra with much less value — digitally — and to usher in new audiences by specializing in totally different platforms. Facebook, Instagram and Reddit have been the three primary drivers, and likewise e mail advertising and marketing.”Mainly Mozart held 4 “Ask Me Anything” Q&A periods on Reddit final 12 months. Online individuals may work together immediately with music director Francis, violinist Chan and different Festival of the Orchestras musicians. The outcomes have been exceptional.“We averaged about 350,000 views and 250 questions per session, and as much as 20 p.c of the folks in these periods have been from San Diego County,” stated Mark Laturno, who’s now making ready for Mainly Mozart’s TikTok launch.“We noticed massive spikes in ticket gross sales after every Reddit session. And we grew our Instagram following … from 55 to 7,200. We went from not being on the map to one of many 10 most adopted artwork organizations in San Diego County.”Intriguingly, Reddit isn’t seen as a focus for classical music-related discussions of any form. “You’re proper, Mainly Mozart musicians aren’t the standard folks you see doing ‘Ask Me Anything’ periods on Reddit,” Mark Laturno acknowledged. “But that’s what drew folks; they don’t have many alternatives to speak to folks in classical music. And individuals are interested in classical music, even when it’s one thing they don’t have rather a lot data about.“That’s one thing else we targeted on in our advertising and marketing: classical music is not only for older folks. It’s one thing folks of all ages like, however perhaps don’t have publicity to.”Nancy Laturno cites two different key elements for elevated attendance final June and October at Mainly Mozart’s All-Star Orchestra Festival concerts. The relocation to Del Mar from the occasion’s pre-pandemic Balboa Theatre house downtown made it extra accessible to North County residents. Ditto the decrease ticket-price choices Mainly Mozart initiated for outside performances at Del Mar Surf Cup Sports Park. Families of 4 may buy $50 “pod” ticket packages and produce blankets or folding chairs to sit down on the garden behind the dearer reserved desk seating areas.“It’s enjoyable and other people like to deliver their very own picnics,” Nancy Laturno stated. “We have the VIP tables up entrance with catered dinners and all the particular remedy. But we discovered that plenty of our donors selected to go sit in again and produce their very own chairs and picnics.”Is this one thing Mainly Mozart anticipated?“No. We didn’t anticipate something!’ she replied with amusing.“We determined to dive in with performances throughout COVID and work out how one can produce them as we went alongside. We needed to transfer alongside so quick we didn’t have the posh of being deeply strategic.”There is yet one more twist to Mainly Mozart’s nonetheless unfolding COVID-19 period chapter.In spite of drawing a record variety of attendees final 12 months, the group misplaced cash. Production bills jumped considerably to pay for erecting a brief outside venue and infrastructure in Del Mar, first in a Del Mar parking zone, then in a park. Constantly shifting well being protocols have been additionally an element. So was the last-minute cancellation by some musicians whose schedules shifted or who felt uncomfortable touring throughout the nation to carry out right here.“The good factor is now we have nerves of metal after two years of doing this, so all the employees is fairly unflappable,” stated Nancy Laturno, who credit authorities aid funding for serving to Mainly Mozart make up for its decreased revenues. “But no one is leaping again to the previous regular. We can’t. We need to be artistic and cautious. If Mainly Mozart had not produced concerts the previous two years, the federal government funding would have greater than lined our working bills.“So someone may justifiably say: ‘If you guys simply stayed house for a 12 months or two, you’d be in terrific monetary form now.’ And they’d be proper. But we determined we’d put all our efforts into producing our concerts. “We talked rather a lot about that, about: ‘What is out purpose for being? Why are right here?’ And it’s to supply dwell music.”Mainly Mozart All-Star Orchestra Festival June 2022 schedule
All concerts are at 7:30 p.m.Friday, June 10Sibelius: Valse Triste; Mozart: Clarinet Concerto, that includes soloist Boris Allakhverdyan; Beethoven: Symphony No. 4Saturday, June 11Beethoven: Grosse Fuga (organized for string orchestra); Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27 Okay. 595, that includes soloist Gilles Vonsattel; Mozart: Symphony No. 41. JupiterTuesday, June 14Schumann: Symphony No. 3, Mozart: Overture to Don Giovanni (association by Ferruccio Busoni); Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto, that includes soloist Augustin HadelichFriday, June 17Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Wasps; Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1, that includes soloist Maximilian Hornung; Mozart: Overture to La Clemenza di Tito Okay. 621; Haydn: Symphony No. 104Saturday, June 18Mozart: Magic Flute Overture; Schubert: Unfinished Symphony;Mozart: Requiem, that includes the San Diego Master Chorale Where: Del Mar Surf Sports Park (previously the San Diego Polo Fields), 14989 Via de la Valle, Del MarTickets: On sale Monday. $49 for a pod of as much as 4 folks in Section B seating; $100 for a pod of as much as 4 folks in Section A seating. VIP seating is on the market for $500 for a desk for 4 or $1,000 for a premium location VIP desk for 4 which incorporates dinner. Two seats at a VIP desk for 4 are $300 and $600, respectively. Phone: (619) 239-0100Online: mainlymozart.org
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/leisure/music/story/2022-01-30/mainly-mozart-cautious-because-of-covid-19-will-hold-all-its-2022-festival-of-orchestra-concerts-outdoors
