Michael Tilson Thomas' five-year campaign to bring some new blood into
Davies Hall is beginning to work.  San Francisco Symphony marketing
director Michelle Prisk says the most recent figures available for the
average age of season subscribers is 53 and single-ticket purchasers are
younger, although there are no similarly reliable statistics for that
group.

Now 53 is not only younger than the average age for Deadheads (brought into
the symphonic fold by MTT early in his career here, in a joint concert with
the surviving Grateful Dead), but it is also at the low end of the national
range of "between 50 and 60." The latest study by the National Endowment
for the Arts found the prime audience for classical music was born between
1936 and 1945, and individual orchestra studies often report 60 or close to
it.  The San Francisco figures represent a drop of about four years since
MTT's arrival.

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
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