Alternative Classical: an interview with publicist Hannah Fiddy
Stuffy. Elitist. Out-of-touch. In this era of rapid globalization and changing values, these characterizations (and more) have been leveled at classical music for years. Fair or not, classical musicians and arts presenters have been challenged to respond to these accusations one of two ways: refuse to innovate and watch audiences dwindle, or find new ways to present timeless music to new audiences.
Hannah Fiddy, publicist and founder of Alternative Classical, is a passionate advocate for classical music who has dedicated her career to building new generations of classical music lovers. Armed with the latest studies on how younger generations consume music, she promotes performances that live outside the box of a traditional classical music concert. She seeks to challenge the industry to experiment and innovate. Through her work on and offline, she demystifies the cult of classical music, knocks a bit of “stuffiness” out of its image, and in the process has introduced people the world over to music they may not have listened to without her efforts. She reminds us that the music transcends barriers of age, class, gender, and race. All we have to do is think beyond tradition and work with the music world as it is today. It is an honor to feature her on No Dead Guys.
What is Alternative Classical and what prompted you to create it?
Alternative Classical is the home of anything “alternative” within the classical music world. Its aims are to develop audiences for classical music, dismantle some of the hierarchies within the industry, and encourage experimentation and innovation.
I created it when I went freelance a few years ago. I’d worked for a number of organisations promoting classical concerts hosted in non-traditional venues and decided to make this my marketing niche. It sounds like a teeny tiny niche but anecdotally at least it seems to be a growing area as the industry thinks more about reaching new audiences. The site started out as a way of saying who I was and what I could offer clients, but has grown into something much bigger, with concert listings, a musical bookshop, interviews, articles and various projects I’ve created over the years.
How did you find your way into classical music and what encouraged you to make the promotion of it your career?
I took music lessons as a child and also joined a choir, so I’m lucky that music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I don’t think I had any idea at all, as a teenager, that classical music promotion was even a thing, let alone that it could be a career. I went to university to study music just because it was the subject I enjoyed the most, but I didn’t have any concept of what I might do with it after graduating (other than I wasn’t planning to be a performer, which is often the assumption if you study music). I sent out a flurry of CVs in my final year, and came to understand that in the UK it’s very difficult to get your foot on the ladder without doing an unpaid internship, lasting perhaps 6-12 months. Without the means to make this possible, I worked in marketing for an education publisher, which I loved: copywriting, creating a blog, email marketing, social media, and many of the things I still do! Some years later I had the realisation that despite enjoying my job, I wanted to work in music, and was fortunate enough to be able to transfer the skills I’d learned in publishing to the music world. Transferring to the classical music industry isn’t always the most encouraged route, but in many ways I have found it very useful to have an outsider’s perspective on what can be quite an insular bubble…
One of Alternative Classical’s aims is to create new audiences for classical music. What sorts of things have you tried, and what has been the most successful?
I created a site during lockdown called Concert Roulette, which was really popular. I chose over 1,000 YouTube videos of classical concerts and selected the second before the upbeat starts (skipping any speeches, tuning up, bows and so on). Viewers are presented with a random video and they can choose to keep watching or skip to the next. It’s a really simple concept but it was viewed by thousands of people in over 120 countries and 3,000 cities, so there must have been something appealing about the format. I hope it introduced people to a range of music - some familiar, some less well-known - in an easy, novel way.
I understand that one of your projects, Humans of Classical Music, features videos of musicians, actors, singers, and podcasters from all over the world talking about their favorite classical music. Who are some of the people who have been involved in this?
This was another lockdown project that I had so much fun with! The name is of course inspired by Humans of New York, although that came much later than the project idea. I asked a range of people (mainly in their 20s and 30s) to talk for up to 1 minute about their favourite piece of classical music without using any jargon. I published a new video every Thursday alongside a link to listen to the music online. I wanted it to be like your friend in the pub telling you about a track they like.
Most of the Humans weren’t famous people but there were a few bigger names sprinkled in there, including two Grammy-nominated musicians, Anthony Roth Costanzo and Anna Clyne, three-time Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Kieran Hodgson, and UK politician David Lammy.
Classical music audiences are aging across the rich world. What do you feel needs to be done to entice young people to experience this music?
This could be a full dissertation, but I’ll try to keep it concise! The streaming statistics suggest that many young people do stream classical music but don’t necessarily attend concerts. Although there’s a lot you could pick apart with that, such as the fact that younger people are more likely to stream music in general, it is still a useful piece of information. I think if classical music is presented in creative, contemporary ways, there’s no reason why young people wouldn’t be enticed to experience classical music. Many people have a set idea of what they might expect from a traditional classical concert. Younger audiences tend to prioritise ‘experiences’, and there are now lots of organisations and ensembles creating more of an immersive experience, with lighting design, orchestra choreography, unusual venue choice and more. I’m not saying that classical music isn’t interesting enough in its own right, but I do think it’s worth considering the elements other than the music that constitute the performance.
How do Millennial and Gen Z audiences approach music differently than older listeners?
Firstly, younger audiences tend to be less bound by genre labels, and there’s a lot of music that sits between the lines, especially where contemporary classical music is concerned. What constitutes “classical” music is difficult to pin down, and you’d probably get 10 different answers if you asked 10 people working in this field. There’s a whole swathe of music (such as peaceful piano music) that a lay person might consider to be classical, but the classical music industry wouldn’t recognise or promote as being classical. And vice versa, there’s music that the classical industry lauds that a lay person wouldn’t recognise as being classical.
Secondly, fewer people listen to full albums now. Streaming services offer playlists with pieces generated by mood (among other things) and this is now a much more common listening experience than sticking to one artist and one release. Of course, more people now listen to background music while doing something else, and that’s a hot topic within the classical music industry…
I love that your “alter ego” is the Founder of London Flashmob! What spurred you to do this, and which ones have been the most memorable?
When I was a student I found myself at the heart of a flashmob in a busy London train station, before I had any concept of what a flashmob was. Hundreds of people, ostensibly there to commute home, suddenly burst into dance. I thought it was the best thing I’d ever seen, and only learned later that it was something called a flashmob (they were much less common this side of the pond). Hoping to join one in the future, I found a group on Facebook called London Flashmob. Not long after, the person running the group decided to stand down and I jumped at the chance to hold the reins!
I’ve organised some of the more standard flashmobs - wedding proposals and silent discos - which have each been memorable in their own way. The biggest and final one I produced involved over 1000 people! It was an hour-long adventure through the streets of Soho involving all manner of silly actions: we danced together, mimed, strutted, sang, did the Conga, played Stuck in the Mud, and much more. Perhaps this one could only tenuously be called a flashmob, but the people of London had a surprise that day! It was really epic.
One of the many creative hats you wear is working as a consultant for individual artists and arts groups, most notably John Rutter and The King’s Singers. What sorts of projects do you manage for your clients?
I am currently working with John Rutter and London Youth Choirs and have worked with quite a few other artists and ensembles in the past, including The King’s Singers, London Symphony Orchestra and London Sinfonietta. I also love getting to interview big names within the industry, including composers Max Richter, Eric Whitacre and James MacMillan. As John Rutter’s marketing and press manager, I keep his website up to date, send updates to his mailing list and manage his social media channels. Every year I also run his Christmas Quiz, which takes place on his Facebook page every December.
As someone who has worked with “household name” musicians, what traits do you feel are shared by the most successful working musicians?
First and foremost: hard work, dedication and perseverance. I haven’t met anyone who has just lucked out and got to where they are without incredible amounts of graft. Of course, it doesn’t work this way for everyone: many people work hard for many years and don’t become famous, and also luck inevitably does play a part; but most people have been working hard at their craft for a long time before being ‘discovered’ or reaching the tipping point of fame. It often can seem like it just happened overnight from the outside but I think that’s rarely the case.
What advice can you offer to arts organizations hoping to boost their audiences?
Embrace digital. In many arts organisations it comes almost bottom of the pile. It finally felt like this shifted during the pandemic, when everything was forced online, but things seem to have slipped back again…
Embrace experimentation, both in programming and in marketing. The classical music industry is slow to evolve, valuing tradition and “the way things have always been” over new ideas. We can be bolder and try new ideas out, accepting that some of them may not be fully successful…
Consider different audiences and treat them differently. One type of performance and/or one type of marketing won’t be to everyone’s tastes and that’s OK. Not everything is for everyone, and while something may not appeal to you personally, it may well appeal to a whole group of people with different interests and backgrounds to you.
What advice can you offer musicians seeking to create careers in music?
Be open-minded about what that career might look like. I’ve recently posted a few memes on the Alternative Classical Instagram page on this topic. One said that you don’t have to have a job in an orchestra in order to be a successful musician, and one showed what people think being a musician is vs what it really is. There are many ways you can work in the music industry and there’s no one-size-fits-all career (not to mention there aren’t enough positions for soloists and ensemble players for the number of music grads). There are lots of musicians who also have admin jobs, teach, and perhaps have a podcast. Being a multi-hyphenate doesn’t make the performing portion of the pie any less valuable.
Hannah Fiddy is a creative entrepreneur and classical music consultant who develops audiences for classical music. She is the Founder of Alternative Classical, which creates and promotes new approaches to classical music, and is unique in having a majority audience of under 35s. She manages the social media channels for John Rutter, one of the world’s most famous choral composers, and is a marketing consultant for London Youth Choirs. Hannah has interviewed some of classical music’s biggest names on both sides of the Atlantic, including composers Max Richter and Eric Whitacre, and musical comedians Isabel Hagen and Lloyd Griffith.
Described as a “classical innovator” (Culture Whisper) and a “classical music creative brain” (AA Opera), Hannah guest lectures on the subject of innovation in the classical music industry at Middlesex University and has delivered workshops and panel appearances for the Royal College of Music, the BBC and the Independent Society of Musicians. She has worked with a long list of ensembles, venues and music charities – The King’s Singers, London Symphony Orchestra, Nonclassical and Kings Place to name a few – and has produced and promoted numerous performances outside of traditional spaces, including pubs, clubs, warehouses and museums.
In a previous life, Hannah was the Founder of London Flashmob, creating quirky events from wedding proposals to cultural pranks, the biggest of which was a participatory audio adventure through the streets of Soho that attracted over 1,000 participants.