On Friday night, June 12th, 2011 in the Longmire Building room 201 our group watched Senior Recital player Meghan Pulles Cavanaugh, soprano, assisted by pianist Bianca Lupsha. The demographics were college students and adults ages 20-60. It was pretty packed of students and family members, and showed phenomenal talent!
1. What are the demographics of the audience? Of the musicians?
Author:Nick Thomson
The demographics of the audience consisted of older people (like the parents of the performers), most of these people were white in their mid 40's to 50's, while there were some black people. The performers were all young FSU college students, and there were also a few other audience members who might have been friends of the performers who were also young college students, mostly female.
2. What role does the venue play in people's [performer, audience, researcher] expectations of the musical performance and how does this particular performance meet or fail to meet those expectations?
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3. What is the role of economics in this particular musical event?
Author: Alessandro Cuomo
The recital was in fact a free event being that it was put on by the university by a student performer. Thus, discussing the effect of a cover cost, cocktails, and/or appetizers on the musical performance itself would not be possible. However, one can highlight the plausible outcomes if such factors provided noticeable effects on the experience as a whole. Given the formality of the event, an entrance fee would have been acceptable if it had taken place at another location and been solely for entertainment rather than a certification recital. Serving drinks and food would have added beneficial gains to the musical event such as: additional revenue, satisfying the audience more than just audibly, and giving people who were not particularly fond of the genre more reason to stay. It is possible that some people who came to the event may not have had there been an entrance fee but there is no way to determine this for sure.
4. How does the purpose of the performance overlap and differ from the emotions experienced by the audience?
Author: Melissa Anderson
The emotions experienced by the audience was hard to differentiate as it was a sitting setting where everyone faced straight at the front of the room with no distractions of crowds coming in, people taking pictures, or ordering drinks. Soprano is completely different to our first ethnography of alternative, pop, rock music where the venue was easier to come and go with out making a scene, people could show they were enjoying the atmosphere by ordering more drinks, or dancing and singing along to the performance. The overlaping emotions could be joyful hearing the amazing talent an FSU student has coming from either students and/or parents. They could also differ by depending if the audience had heard her sing before, and may have thought she did better or not as good. The emotions could go either way. Compared to my perspective, not knowing much about soprano it made me more impressed by the type of music, but also made me realize it is not music that I particularly enjoy. Emotions can play a lot into music, how the performer and audience feel during the performance, and peoples opinons of good music are ethnocentricism.
5. Who are the performers and what is their relationship to the audience?
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