This week we’re considering rationales and strategies for reinvention. Today: demographics.
Student populations change, and we must change our approach with them.
That might involve changing repertoire selection, ensemble makeup or size, concert scheduling, or many other things. If I found that my choir community developed a sizable Seventh-Day Adventist population, I’d have to reconsider Saturday performances, for example.
In recent years, I’ve had the enviable problem of an increasingly large and capable tenor-bass population to pull from for The Rockford Aces. It forced me to reinvent the size of the ensemble, increasing my max size from 12-16, a 33% increase! The needs of the population demographics led me to determine that I couldn’t keep the ensemble at 12 and serve the community effectively.