Piloting The Pivot Vol 1. San Francisco Symphony
Piloting The Pivot: A Q&A series on how businesses are navigating the Pandemic and adjusting to a new normal.
What do you do when everything around you is shutting down and you’re forced to adapt and operate within an uncertain future?
With the initial wake of bans on mass gatherings, shows, and concerts, many entertainment-based entities have shifted to live-streaming and pre-recording performances in an effort to sustain themselves and their consumers.
Simply put, this has been a tough year for most businesses, especially those within the live in-person events sector, which could be one of the last industries to be able to open their doors or return to their “normal” operations.
In our first interview of Piloting The Pivot, we checked in with our friends at The SF Symphony for a discussion on how they’re responding to the pandemic as a premier live-events entity.
In this interview, the Symphony shared what has been working for them, and how they’re leveraging this moment to prioritize active learning. They also discussed how the Symphony is re-imagining their future business and tapping into new communities by developing and collaborating on fresh and exciting online content!
Q
Before we dive deep into the pivot conversation, let’s talk pre-pandemic for a second. Give us a sense of how the SF Symphony typically operates as it pertains to the planning timeline for your live events.
A
The Symphony season goes from the very beginning of September through July with our Summer with The Symphony series. So right now, technically, would be the beginning of our 2021 season.
When everything shut down in early March, we were in the middle of our season and had a lot of exciting events on the calendar that we had to postpone to a future date or cancel all together. We had also just launched our subscription campaign for the 20/21 season.
We plan about a half year to a year in advance for each concurrent coming season, but obviously, coronavirus has created a historical-scale disruption in our and many other performing arts orgs normal operations.
Q
The pandemic has been a challenge for many businesses including yours, even though this has been a tough time, has there been any silver linings for your business?
A
It’s been very difficult to navigate but at the same time, it's allowed us to find talent within our organization that we didn't know we had before. People are taking on different roles, especially in the digital space, which has been very encouraging. The current social justice movement that's going on, has also inspired us to not take a back seat.
A lot of what we're going to be doing, going forward into this Fall and into the Winter, is definitely with a learning mindset. We’re seeing how we can use this quieter time to learn and expand our own horizons and engage with communities that Symphonies normally don’t engage with as much, and explore styles of music that Symphonies normally don't engage with, all with the hopes of bettering ourselves.
The vision is to make ourselves a more well rounded organization, so that hopefully when the pandemic is over, when we can invite 2,500 people back into our hall, we'll have a more informed, diverse, excited audience, and a more exciting, diverse repertoire and music to draw from.
Q
You mentioned the current social justice movement being a source of inspiration, but before all of this sprung up, SF Symphony was headed in the right direction already in terms of working with, or making it a priority to work with organizations like Toasted Life that are Black owned. Where did some of that inspiration come from? What led you to creating content and programming that featured more Black artists, musicians and partners?
A
Totally. I mean, you're right. We've had a Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiative, which sounds corporate, but we make a point to make it legit and make it actionable - not performative. We've had that going for years.
We introduced that program and made a point to start working with organizations like Toasted Life and other community organizations, as well as move our repertoire forward into new territory, because it's not lost on us how historically White and stagnant Classical Music has been. We are actively working to make it a space for all as well as actively make sure we work towards representation both on the stage and in our seats.
We want to not only tap into different styles of music but also tap into communities around the Bay Area like the Chinese community, which is hugely important for us, and obviously, the African American community with Jazz and Hip-Hop in the Bay Area, which has such a steep history there.
Q
Can you take us through that period of time where you realized, "We actually have to cancel our season concerts", what was that adjustment like? How did you guys get to a point where you were saying , "Okay, this is what we can't do, this is what we can do. How do we make a plan to execute?
A
We Initially took the approach of slowly canceling concerts, because things were changing so quickly early on, but we tried to hold on to live performances as much as we could because that's the whole core of our business and putting on the very best live performances is our true passion.
We have always recorded audio of our concerts for archival purposes and our SFS Media album releases, but the infrastructure for digital video content was not in place. As the reality set in, especially as we got into April and May, we decided to cancel all of our concerts through the end of this year which totaled around 60 concerts. That was a heartbreaking moment for us all, but ultimately it was necessary for the safety of our patrons, musicians, and staff.
After making the decision to cancel the remainder of our season we made sure we effectively communicated to our patrons and partners, not only about our cancelled concerts, but the reasoning behind our decision making process during this time. We truly have some of the most devoted patrons and making sure we honestly communicate with them has been a huge priority for us. With our communication strategy to our patrons in place, we were able to fully dive head-first into our future and ideate how a symphony orchestra can adapt to our new world.
Needing to switch to online programming was the obvious change for us. We of course are not the only performing arts organization that is switching to digital, but doing it in the right way was the focus for us. We decided that we have to figure out how to stay active, and engage our audiences online authentically since they can't be in the music hall with us for the foreseeable future.
Q
What were some of the early challenges and the opportunities you saw after switching to digital?
A
The biggest question we had was “how do we engage our existing audience that may not be digital savvy with digital content?” And what we realized is we can't entirely focus on that, we have to focus on, like you had mentioned, the world.
Even when we do go back to live concerts, that audience is probably going to look very different than our existing clientele. The people who are comfortable enough with going out and into a large music hall for a couple hours are going to look very different than before, so it presents a unique opportunity.
So it's all about, again, let's take the time, gather thoughts from everyone in our institution, people outside of our institution and let us be active learners. Let’s be curious. Asking questions––What are people looking for now? What's missing from the live music experience?
Let’s blow up our horizons, let's see how we can change things up so we can learn from that and then bake that into what the program is going to look like for the future. We are thrilled about the possibilities.
Q
What new digital experiences are on the horizon for SF Symphony that you are excited to share with the community?
A
CURRENTS, the San Francisco Symphony’s collaborative digital series! Each episode shares the music and stories of a Bay Area community and highlights classical music’s evolving relationship with these vital influences and creators.
Episode III, which is available now titled, “CURRENTS: From Scratch”, explores how art and activism play out in Oakland’s dynamic Hip Hop culture, and features Michael Morgan, multifaceted Bay Area artists Kev Choice (pianist/composer/emcee) and AÏMA the DRMR (emcee/lyricist), local musicians and dancers, and SF Symphony musicians.
We’re excited about this series, a lot of rich content and a lot of really cool people we worked with, like Kev and AÏMA creating what feels like a real love letter to the city of Oakland and how it’s been a cultural driver for not only hip hop, but societal change for years.
We feel like we've created something really special in the digital content realm in a short period of time, all thanks to our amazing team. There is a lot for our audience to look forward to. Not only our CURRENTS series, but more digital adaptations of audience favorite series as well as our 1:1 concerts that provide our patrons the opportunity to have a private performance with one of our SFS musicians.
Q
If the SF Symphony had to give some advice to smaller organizations, even ours that are in the entertainment space and dealt with the cancelation of a lot of live events, what kind of advice or encouragement would you give to those that are reading?
A
Don't be afraid to reach out to anyone. Take in a lot of content, see what's out there and then make yourself unique within that space. Find that little niche, that something that you think is missing. Tap into your community that you know is your core audience that loves you, but also try to break into new territory. We think this is a great time to reach new communities. That's what we're trying to do. And again, the best way to do that is just to hit the ground running and just not be afraid to start conversations. Be honest.
If you have an idea, pitch it somewhere, even if it's big or small. People are more open minded right now than they have been in a long time, so be courageous and take risks. Find out what is missing or what you think would elevate your whole organization and then make it happen. Reach out, don’t stand still, and things will start happening.