Both as a pianist and as a teacher, I always want to do my bit to find all the possible ways to engage audiences to go to live concerts and to engage piano students in a learning context. Also, nowadays there is a lot of curiosity surrounding the topic of audience engagement in a classical music context. And of course, I understand why. If I ask some non-musicians in my environment to tell me the image they have of classical music concerts or music lessons, they innocently answer that it is something that is not accessible at all for them, or that it is a world that is too far away for them to reach.
After some time asking people and researching about this topic, I ended up feeling a bit frustrated. However, this feeling changed when I finally realised that I was just not asking myself the correct question. I put a lot of time and effort asking “What do people think about classical music?” and I didn’t come to any conclusion, as the facts always depended on the context, the writer of an article, the context of a research, the culture, social issues, etc. But my vision completely changed when I realised that the problem was not in the answers I was getting, but in the question I was asking.
Then, I started asking myself “What kind of image do people get of classical music?”. This way, I aimed to discover how TV, Internet, journalism, books, publicity, etc. influence the way people see classical music. To my surprise, this question gave me a lot more answers and conclusions than I expected.
The RED FLAGS why people prejudice classical music - Comments on the movie "In your hands"
Some time ago, my mum recommended a movie to me. It is a French movie called Au Bout des Doigts, which in English has been translated as “In your hands” and, in Spanish (which is my mother tongue) as “The piano lesson”. So of course, I needed to watch it! I thought that with this movie I could see an example of how TV wants people to think a piano lesson looks like.
In the video above, I share my vision about this topic by commenting the movie, in which I found a lot of “red flags” that made me understand why a lot of people have a lot of prejudices towards classical music. With this video, I aim to make piano education look more accessible or reachable (because it really is and it can be), and to refute some assumptions such as “only talented people can earn a living with music”, “piano is a competitive discipline” or “to be a good pianist you have to study technique in a disciplined way every day” (read my post To teach technique, or not to teach technique; that is the question if you want to know my approach about this). On the other hand, I also want to emphasise the importance and the influence that the language a teacher uses in a lesson can have on students. In my post It takes us all, I talk about this topic more in depth.
I hope you enjoy the video and it makes you think or reflect! If so, I would love to know what it brought to you. Hopefully, sharing these thoughts with each other helps to connect and find possible solutions or strategies together!
Thank you very much for reading and watching!