Pacific Symphony wants you to follow Twitter during concert

When is following Twitter during a classical concert not considered rude? How about when the orchestra expressly asks you to?

The Pacific Symphony is requesting that patrons break with the rules of concert decorum on Saturday by keeping their cellphones and mobile devices on. Throughout the evening concert, which takes place at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, the orchestra will be tweeting tidbits about the music and the artists, including information about the string trio, Time for Three. 

Concert-goers can follow the tweets by subscribing to @PacificSymphony. The concert will feature Time for Three playing pieces that mix classical, bluegrass, jazz and other genres. In addition, the orchestra will perform John Williams' overture from "The Cowboys," Aaron Copland's suite from "Billy the Kid" and more.

Asking audiences to keep their mobile devices on during a performance isn't exactly new in the arts world. On Broadway, promoters for Neil LaBute's "reasons to be pretty" last year devised a texting game for audiences to rate their attractiveness as well as the attractiveness of their seatmates. Other stage productions around the world have used Twitter as a way for audiences to ask questions for post-show talkbacks.

The Pacific Symphony is dubbing Saturday's event as a "tweet-cert." In fact, it said that members of Time for Three will be writing many of the tweets during the concert.

Certainly some audience members will find it strange to shell out as much as $105 for a ticket only to spend the concert staring at their iPhones. After all, you can do that for free from the comfort of your home.

-- David Ng

Photo credit: Loic Venance / AFP/Getty Images

Comments

[Kent Brockman]

Do they think that the music alone will not be able to sustain a listener's interest so they have to latch on to Twitter?

The demographic that I would guess they are after probably will not shell out 105 bones, or even half that, for that concert (they are saving that cash for Lady Gaga tix) and the demographic that would shell out $105 for basically a pops concert program more that likely doesn't have twitter accounts.

I could see this being used as a way to lure more to concerts by reading mid-concert tweets similarly to one who would check in on the Packers game to see what the score is, but providing concertgoers with an additional thing to pay attention to seems way off.

This is only something they could do with John Williams music and Aaron Copland-lite (things that people are so familiar with hearing even if they think they haven't heard it yet). This would flop (more than it probably will) if they tried this with a Mahler symphony or a 20th century piece.

The other thing the orchestra is missing is that when people are out and about they want to tweet what they are doing not the other way around. To go back to the Gaga concert, the young kids there would much rather tweet and send twitpics to show that they are at the concert rather than read tweets from Gaga. They can read tweets from her and others when they have down time. Very obvious but important distinction.

[Kelly]

Regarding Kent's comments: 1) Many Tweeters are actually affluent young professionals. This group will only become older and richer over time.Twitter users are older than Facbook users, averaging 31 years of age and 20% of online adults make 100K or more. Check out this study from Pew Research Center here. http://www.pewinternet.org/Infographics/Twitter-demographics--Fall-2009.aspx 2)The Article did not cover that we are creating a hashtag for sophisticated users of Twitter who will be following the concert. The hashtag is #pstweetcert so people who are "in the know" can communicate with each other during the concert. 3) This is an experiment designed to support largely the uninitiated with Classical music. Similar to the needs of a novice sports viewer, people with limited knowledge of classical music need more contextual and historical information to begin to appreciate the art form. There have been substantial tests with a "Concert Companion" PDA tool that reported many people who are uninformed concert-goers enjoyed commentary during the performance.

[Kelly]

Also, please see this breaking news from CNN on the over 50 crowd and twitter: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/08/27/older.users.social.networks/index.html?hpt=C1