Small is Beautiful

Last night, San Francisco Renaissance Voices sang in front of an audience in Palo Alto that was roughly the same size of the choral ensemble. Considering that the group, in which I sing contralto, has less than 20 people in it, Sunday's turnout really says something.

But what exactly does it say? That the group isn't any good? (The concert we performed in San Francisco on Saturday evening was packed out. There were probably about 200 people in the house, which suggests that we're not all that bad.) That PR was sadly lacking on a busy Halloween weekend? (Could be the case.) That spending a couple of hours in a cold church listening to 16th century dirges doesn't sound like a fun way to spend an evening? (I personally can't think of a better way to spend a Halloween than thinking about the lost art of mourning, but then again, I have strange tastes.)

Who knows.

What I do know is that even if there had been one or two people in the audience, giving that concert would have been worth it. Scanning the sparsely-populated room last night, peoples' faces looked ecstatic. They seemed genuinely moved by what we were singing. That's enough for me.

If the work is of quality and people are touched, then the size of the audience doesn't matter all that much. Just read Chris Anderson's book, The Long Tail, and you'll understand why. This is more or less the point I'm planning to make tomorrow when I meet with an editor who believes that work needs to have a mass appeal in order to merit appearing in his publication. He judges success by the number of page hits an item gets on the publication's website. This is false logic. I plan to set him straight.