NY Philharmonic Selected for Wallace Foundation Audience-Building Initiative

The New York Philharmonic has been selected for the New York-based Wallace Foundation's Building Audiences for Sustainability effort -- a new, six-year, $52-million initiative aimed at developing practical insights into how exemplary performing arts organizations can successfully expand their audiences. The Philharmonic has been granted $760,000 towards preliminary audience research and the first cycle of pilot projects on building millennial audiences for orchestral concerts.

The New York Philharmonic was one of 26 arts organizations from around the country that were selected to be part of the Building Audiences for Sustainability initiative. The selected partners will receive financial and technical support from the foundation to develop, implement, analyze, and learn from their audience-building work. Over the course of four years, the Philharmonic will receive funds to conduct at least two cycles of work. The first grant will be used to conduct preliminary audience research and develop and implement a new audience-building program. The Philharmonic will then be provided with subsequent grants to conduct additional audience research, study the results, and use the findings to adapt and implement a second cycle of programs.

"The New York Philharmonic is honored to be among the arts organizations from across the country selected by The Wallace Foundation for the Building Audiences for Sustainability effort," said New York Philharmonic President Matthew VanBesien. "It is of the utmost importance for the New York Philharmonic, and for orchestras around the world, to continue to find ways of introducing more members of the millennial generation to great symphonic music. The Philharmonic is constantly searching for innovative ways to share our passion for music with as broad and diverse an audience as possible, and we are pleased to be a part of this important effort to help solve one of the crucial challenges facing today's orchestras."

"The arts are essential on both a personal level, providing us with experiences that open us to new perspectives, and on a community level, helping us to find common ground," said Will Miller, president of The Wallace Foundation. "However, attracting and engaging new audiences is challenging for arts organizations because, even as the number of arts groups has grown, national rates of participation in the arts have declined, arts education has waned, and competition for ways to spend leisure time has increased. We are confident that the 26 organizations selected from a pool of more than 300 identified by leaders in the arts nationwide will provide new insights that will benefit the field at large, helping to bring the arts to a broader and more diverse group of people."

About the New York Philharmonic - The New York Philharmonic -- a cultural leader in New York City, the United States, and the world -- will connect with up to 50 million music lovers in the 2014-15 season through performances, education programs, and broadcasts. Having commissioned and/or premiered works by leading composers from every era, the Orchestra now champions contemporary music through CONTACT! and the NY PHIL BIENNIAL. Other recent initiatives include the New York Philharmonic Global Academy, national and international partnerships to cultivate tomorrow's orchestral musicians. Renowned around the world, having appeared in 432 cities in 63 countries, America's oldest symphony orchestra has been a media pioneer, releasing almost 2,000 recordings since 1917 and today sharing live performances through downloads and online. Alan Gilbert became Music Director in 2009, succeeding 20th-century musical giants including Bernstein, Toscanini, and Mahler.

About The Wallace Foundation - Based in New York City, The Wallace Foundation is an independent national philanthropy dedicated to fostering improvements in learning and enrichment for disadvantaged children and the vitality of the arts for everyone. It seeks to catalyze broad impact by supporting the development, testing, and sharing of new solutions and effective practices. At www.wallacefoundation.org, the Foundation maintains an online library about what it has learned, including knowledge from its current efforts aimed at: strengthening education leadership to improve student achievement, helping selected cities make good afterschool programs available to more children, expanding arts learning opportunities for children and teens, providing high-quality summer learning programs to disadvantaged children and enriching and expanding the school day in ways that benefit students, and helping arts organizations build their audiences.