Live & Local: Sensory Friendly Concerts Build Audience by Toning It Down

Transcript

STEVE: So, Carlos, we'll let The Morning Set be a study in contrast from Tito Puente and Maynard Ferguson to Regina Carter.

CARLOS: There you go.

STEVE: “Après Un Rev.” It's from her Paganini album, and some people take their music a little more quietly than others.

CARLOS: Yes.

STEVE: I did not expect Jim White to come in on that note, but he did.

CARLOS: But he's here.

JIM: When you're a fool for music, you're just a fool for all kinds of music, and that's what I am.

STEVE: Well, great to have Jim White in the house with us, longtime community volunteer and activist. We love to have him in during our pledge drives with top 10 reasons to support KUVO. But KUVO is not his only passion. He's a passionate man with a lot of passions, and one of them is this new concept called sensory friendly concerts. And we're going to ask you about that in a second. But first, Jim, you're looking good.

JIM: Well, thank you very much. I had to kind of put on my glad rags when I heard there was going to be a camera down here today. I wasn't sure. Usually we're all wearing KUVO wear and just hanging out. But I'm honored as I always am when you ask me to come down and do anything with you.

STEVE: Well, you're always involved in interesting projects: longtime staffer at the Volunteers of America and all the great work they do downtown with the elderly and the unhoused. But this project here, how did it get your attention?

JIM: Well, I volunteer. I do will call for the Colorado Symphony. I'm the guy on the inside of the glass because everybody is about my age. It's down there. A lot of 'em are, I should say. And they're all very confused like me because they don't get tickets anymore. It's all on their phone.

STEVE: Oh my goodness.

JIM: So they're always trying to slide their phone into me through that little hole in the glass, and they're all upset that they're not going to get in. So, it's the perfect spot for somebody like me with nothing but empathy to say, “Don't worry, you're going to hear this show.” And I heard from being down there that the symphony does these sensory friendly concerts. So I thought, “I want to see what that is.” And they were held at in a stage and music hall in Littleton. And the audience, like all the audiences, really are a lot of people who are either autistic children or adults. Entire families. IDD is the new buzz, but it's intellectual and developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, learning disabilities, a lot of attention deficits, hyperactive behavior. It's people who could never sit through a concert at Boettcher Music Hall.

STEVE: Okay. Concerts can be raucous. They can be loud, flashing lights. Especially, I mean, it's like everybody's turned up the technology. This one kind of turns it down a little bit?

JIM: It does turn it down a little bit. We keep the lights up so there's no darkness in the room. A lot of times we have a quiet area where, even if this is too much, somebody can excuse themselves. There's a real effort made — no percussion. We use an ensemble, so it's a viola, two violins, and a cello. And the music is everything from Pachelbel’s Canon or Beethoven's Ode to Joy, but then it'll be the theme from Harry Potter. These ladies and men — Catherine Beeson is the lady who runs the ensemble, Ensemble Faucheux. She has a corral of musicians and she gets four of 'em together. And I think the beauty of it is, even though people do sensory friendly concerts around town, they involve the audience — this particular audience going to a spot. And so that involves another roadblock in that transportation is very hard for a lot of this group. It's a big deal to be able to get from A to B.

STEVE: So, there's extra room for chairs and that kind —

JIM: Yeah. Because it's all Access-A-Ride, RTD, or some way. So what we do with our little Ensemble Faucheaux, we take it on the road so they don't have to go anywhere. So I coordinate with different day programs that have intellectually, developmentally disabled adults or children and arrange for a time. And they're always very excited because here comes in live music. And the beauty of it is it’s like a no shush zone. If you want to stand up and scream, if you want to hum through the whole thing, if you want to just wander around the room, nobody is going to say anything to you how ever you experience music. But I have to tell you, when they play that first note, it's life changing. It's life changing for me. It was. And I said, “This is something I want to be a part of.” And I couldn't play a harmonica. So I said to this Catherine Beeson, who's the head of it, and said, “Listen, I've been in the nonprofit world for over 40 years. I know organizations that deal with the population you want, and how about if I am your promoter and coordinator and set these up.” I want to be the Barry Fay of sensory friendly concerts.

And so they're like, “Are you kidding? That's our hardest thing for us to find.” So I invited a couple of donors that I knew from my days with Volunteers of America to come to one of these, and they were just hooked. And they said, what does this cost? So I went back and I worked out what is a fair rate for the musicians, because you guys, — I know I'm preaching to the choir — if you can pay musicians, you need to pay musicians. It’s that simple. You can't ask them to do this for free.

STEVE: How long has this program been going on?

JIM: Oh, maybe three or four years I've been doing — I think probably the Symphony's been doing theirs longer.

STEVE: That's in its infancy then. I mean, we're just getting started in this kind of thing.

JIM: We hand out fidget toys and different manipulators they're called. So a lot of times people need to keep their hands busy while they're listening.

STEVE: Interesting. Getting this music out to different audiences, what a — and like you said, because they don't go to concerts typically, once they hear — I mean when the bow hits the string and it starts up…

JIM: And sometimes Catherine lets 'em come up and conduct, she says, “Everybody thinks this is easy, but we'll watch you. And when you lift your hands, we'll be ready. And when you lower 'em, we'll start.” And so, it's just a wonderful —

CARLOS: So, you see everything there. You see everything.

JIM: You see it all.

CARLOS: And then the hands, they never come down.

JIM: Or it's a thousand miles an hour. One or the other.

STEVE: And the lights are up.

JIM: The lights are up. And it doesn't matter how loud somebody is or any of the problems they might be having, she usually ends it with Copeland's Rodeo cause it’s kind of got a Colorado theme to it, and they're encouraged to dance.

CARLOS: Okay. Let's do a recap because we’re running out of time. For those of you who just tuned in and want to know what the heck are we talking about here. Because it really is something pretty deep here.

JIM: It is. And if you have questions or if you have a child or a family member that you think would love to hear live music but you can't take 'em to Boettcher. And really, we've expanded. Sometimes it's just very frail, elderly, we'll go to or people who cannot get to Boettcher music.

STEVE: This is a broad audience. Spectrum or IDD or elderly or…okay, this is great.

JIM: Right. But it's the power of music, live music that is missing in their life. So they can simply go when they're done here today. Jimensemble5280@gmail.com. Maybe you'll have that somewhere where they can find that.

STEVE: We'll try and figure that out and create a link because this is all being videoed. And we'll put this on our socials as well as the website, kuvo.org, the ensemble for show spelled the French way, the New Orleans way, F-A-U-C-H-E-U-X. We'll do the link when we put the story in.

JIM: And I promise I will answer all these inquiries in person. And really, there's no cost to anybody to come to these. And it's like the first time you heard Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, you probably saw it running on the movie Platoon, and you thought, “Whoa, this is a piece of music.” And that is the experience for 45 minutes in that room, it's life changing.