Ticket sales show dramatic improvement for Oregon Symphony

by James Bash on March 2, 2011

The Oregon Symphony reports that its ticket sales for its classical concert series have gone up 35 percent this season over last season. This news bodes well for the orchestra, which will give its first-ever performance in Carnegie Hall in May.

Here are the details from the orchestra’s press release:

Good news from the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall as the calendar hits March and the Oregon Symphony heads into the home stretch of its 2010/11 concert season: With more than two-thirds of its performances completed, the orchestra is seeing across-the board increases in attendance – with especially large improvements at its Classical concerts, where paid attendance so far this season is up nearly 35 percent over the same time last year.

With 11 of the season’s 16 Classical subscription-series programs now completed – 28 performances in total — the orchestra has attracted an average paid audience of 1,771 per concert. That’s 34.5 percent higher – or 454 more ticket buyers at each performance, on average – than at the same point last season.

Last weekend’s concerts, at which Pink Martini founder and front man Thomas Lauderdale showed Portlanders his Classical side as soloist in performances of Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto, was typical of the kind of interest the orchestra is seeing at its box office of late. The audience filled more than 76 percent of the hall’s available seats for three performances, making it the season’s best-seller so far.

Other big Classical series crowd pleasers included pianist Yuja Wang’s Oregon Symphony debut concerts in early February and the season opener with violinist Hilary Hahn, which played to 71 and 68 percent of capacity at three performances each. Ranked by percentage of capacity rather than number of tickets sold, the season champ so far was the pair of December performances of Handel’s Messiah, for which ticket buyers snapped up 95 percent of the available seats.

“It’s encouraging to see these improvements in paid attendance, and it feels great to attend classical concerts filled with enthusiastic, happy crowds,” President Elaine Calder said. “We know that people are spending carefully these days, and we’ve introduced several special opportunities this year, working with internet sites like Groupon and Travelzoo and our partners in Portland’s music community to make sure that as many people as possible have access to Oregon Symphony tickets. As a result, revenue growth isn’t yet keeping pace with the increased attendance – but we’re once again heading in the right direction.”

The orchestra’s Pops and Kids series concerts are also seeing larger crowds this year, up 6 and 8 percent respectively; overall, year-to-date attendance is up 5 percent, despite the fact that through the end of February this season’s concert calendar has contained five fewer performances than at the same time last season.

In addition, three of this season’s one-night-only “special” events – those that aren’t part of any subscription series – have drawn sell-out crowds: Cellist Yo-Yo Ma in December, the legendary balladeer Johnny Mathis on Valentine’s Day and Portland’s own rock diva, Storm Large, whose concert with the orchestra this Friday is down to its final few available tickets. Violin superstar Joshua Bell, who joined the orchestra for a special concert early in the season, and piano phenom Lang Lang, who did a solo recital in January, were not far behind, with nearly 92 percent of the available seats sold for each.

All together, the orchestra has sold $5.2 million worth of tickets so far for this season’s 67 performances. Still to come are a just-added special event June 16 featuring trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra; two Pops series programs; and the five remaining Classical series programs, including Music for a Time of War on May 7 and 8, the weekend before the Oregon Symphony performs the same concert in New York at its Carnegie Hall debut.

Tickets for all remaining 2010/11 concerts, and subscriptions for the Oregon Symphony’s 2011/12 season, are on sale at its web site, OrSymphony.org.

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2 Responses to “Ticket sales show dramatic improvement for Oregon Symphony”

curtis heikkinen says:

March 3, 2011 at 9:58 am

The orchestra has done a nice job of selling tickets while still presenting enough unusual repertoire to keep concerts interesting and not just limited to warhorses. This is no small feat and a tribute to Carlos and all involved in programming concerts.

Reply
- James Bash says:
  
  March 3, 2011 at 12:41 pm
  
  Yes. That’s a great summary!
  
  Reply

James Bash

James Bash writes articles for a variety of publications, including magazines such as Opera America, Open Spaces, Opera, MUSO, International Arts Manager, American Record Guide, Symphony, Opera Canada, and PSU Magazine. The newspapers include Crosscut, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Oregonian, The Columbian, The Portland Tribune, The Register-Guard, and Willamette Week. James has also written a number of articles for the Oregon Arts Commission and contributed articles to the 2nd edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music. James was a fellow to the 2008 NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera. He is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America (mcana.org) and lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kathy.