April 2010 interview

Thom Mariner
Co-publisher, Express Cincinnati & EXP/arts

We recently spoke with Jack Rouse, who finds himself currently at the forefront of several landmark projects within the Cincinnati arts community. In addition to his ongoing role as president of the board of Playhouse in the Park, Rouse is also newly-named president of the Music Hall Revitalization Corporation, formed to lead the renovation of Music Hall. He is heading up the search for a new Cincinnati Pops music director and co-chair of the SCPA opening gala.

Rouse’s work experience has ranged from founder and director of CCM’s musical theater department to managing live entertainment at Kings Island to the formation of his own theme park consulting business – Jack Rouse Associates – that has designed and managed projects around the globe. He sold JRA in 2008, but continues to consult with various clients.

TM: Now that there’s been a decision in terms of the construction timetable for Music Hall, does that impact your timetable for the Pops conductor search?

JR: Not really. First of all, the construction timetable for Music Hall is yet to be 100% finalized, because we’re just interviewing the design architects. There are five finalists and clearly that input isn’t there. But whatever the timetable, it doesn’t really impact the decision. Wouldn’t it be great, in a perfect world, to have a new hall and a new Pops leader and a new Symphony leader? There’s no point in waiting for that perfect storm, so no. There’s no rush to get it done. I think we’d like to do it as quickly as possible but, as the musicians on the committee said, “Let’s not hurry; let’s just do it right.”

At the last search committee meeting we finally got the list of all the people who are in one way or another qualified: either they’ve had a titled position or they’ve been in the pops world for a long time. There are 45 people that we know about who are qualified to do this job right now.

That’s a big list. Now, obviously, we can’t afford to see all of them, and some of them – for lots of reasons – wouldn’t be appropriate anyway. But we’re gonna slowly work our way through it, and it’s not totally disconnected from what Ann (Santen) is doing on the classical side (new CSO director search). I met with her to talk about where some of the overlaps were occurring in terms of what we were hearing from the musicians. Also, we’ve heard from the board and from the audiences. The one piece that’s missing in all of this is – and as a former research guy you would appreciate this – we’re not hearing from the non-users, and that’s always the most important piece of all – if you’re trying to re-invent anything.

Are there plans to do so, to talk to non-users?

We’re starting to figure out how that might happen. Just so you know, we had the musicians’ input session; we had a multi-cultural awareness session; we had Friends of the Pops, the staff, the board, and then two sessions prior to concerts with audience members. But none of those address the non-user. Happily, what’s also going on with the Fine Arts Fund is addressing the non-user through this Topos research; I don’t know if you’re familiar with that?

I’ve read about it…

It’s really well worth reading; it’s on the FAF website. (www.fineartsfund.org) Not an easy read. Even for some of us who are sort of smart, it’s hard to get your head around the first time you start going through it. There is the citizen perspective versus the consumer. For consumer, read “audience;” for citizen, read “people who care about the community, but don’t necessarily participate in the arts.” Once you understand all of that from a fundraising and a public support perspective, it all starts to fall into place. So, to that extent, we are hearing from non-users. I mean, the great good news is that nobody is against the arts or the symphony – they all think they’re vital to the community. The question for somebody with the Fine Arts Fund is: How do you translate that into more dollars? And that’s a whole different subject.

There’s a lot of anecdotal stuff going on with non-users. We talk to people all the time who don’t even know where Music Hall is, and then try to figure out why they don’t go (to concerts). And the answer is pretty much always the same: “It’s not relevant.” The preconception that “classical music is not relevant to my life” may say more about classical music than it does about the person answering the question.

Tell me more about that?

Well, I think the conception is that classical music is for an educated elite, and you have to be educated and you have to be elite and – forgive me – generally white and of western European origin (because that’s where it all comes from, for the most part) in order to appreciate it. But I think the preconception that you have to know something about it in order to attend keeps a lot of people away. Then you have the, “well, we don’t know how to dress;” you’ve got all this stuff… If anybody has been to the symphony lately, hell, half of them look like I do right now. (yellow t-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots) I mean the only people that are still dressing circa 19th century are those on the stage. With some luck we’ll figure that out through the years. So, breaking down those barriers and getting them to try it is difficult at times. It’s not just about programming; if it were that easy we would have changed our programming a long time ago.

Although, God knows there are barriers to changing traditional programming, as you know. That gets into the whole model of the music director and the conductor, and who is selecting the program and all that stuff. But I think you know the key to attracting new audiences and to making it relevant is to make sure that you’ve got some programs there that are pretty much aimed dead-on at attracting new audiences. And if people like me, who go all the time, don’t happen to care for that or don’t want to hear the Overture from Candide again, you know, or Tchaikovsky’s 4th again, well then tough, get over it, Jack, because that piece of the program isn’t aimed at you. If you really believe in developing an audience, you’ve got to take the risk of being a little populist from time to time. I don’t happen to find that a bad word. If we’re going to survive, we damn well better embrace it, I’m thinking.

To what extent do you think we need to rethink the classical music experience?

Well there is a gentleman named Jesse Rosen. He is the head of The League of American Orchestras. He was in town last week and spoke to the board, and then we did a round table afterward. There’s no question that the form (classical orchestra) has to reexamine and reinvent itself. And he wasn’t just speaking from the Cincinnati perspective. He said a lot of orchestras, most orchestras, are in trouble, but some are doing very well. Who are those? Well a lot of them are in smaller towns; they are orchestras that don’t have a 52-week agreement, and therefore they are a little more nimble. They have budgets that are probably $5 million or under. The CSO is pushing $40 million, and so the higher the budget the harder it is to change in some ways. You’d think the opposite would be true. And I think the problem is, you’re trying to take an entrepreneurial approach to an institution that is so well established. If this were the corporate world, this would be the ultimate mature market corporation. And trying to get that to turn itself into Google is pretty tough, but that’s what we’re trying to do; I mean, that’s what has to be done.

So here you sit talking to an old guy who is 70 years old, but some of us who are old have got to start taking the lead on this, because it’s not gonna come from the younger generation. The younger generation isn’t attending and the younger generation doesn’t know the problem. I mean the way to put ourselves out of existence is for us to stop trying to think like we were 20 again. It’s the only choice, because there is no input from the younger group yet – they don’t even know what we’re talking about.

Continued…