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The Scene Room
The Scene Room Podcast spotlights the movers and makers redefining the performing arts—focusing on innovative marketing, leadership, and the importance of collaboration. Hosted by Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman, with a keen eye on audience trends and cultural shifts, the goal is to explore how artists and organizations are connecting with communities, shaping the future, and redefining what it means to engage and inspire.
The Scene Room
Cate Pisaroni — Reimagining How We Connect Artists with Audiences
What happens when arts marketers get caught in a loop of generic language like "spellbinding performances" and "timeless classics"? Cate Pisaroni, founder of Lenny's Studio and representative for artists like Joyce DiDonato, Ailyn Pérez, Christian Van Horn, Quinn Kelsey, Stephen Costello, Evan Rogister and many more offers a refreshingly honest take on where arts marketing falls short – and how we can take it to the next level.
Cate brings a wealth of experience to this conversation, sharing how meaningful content emerges when marketers step outside of their silos and immerse themselves in the artistic process. "I feel sometimes the repertoire is so vast and there's so much amazing music... we all benefit from being part of the process and learning more about them," she explains. This philosophy drives her approach to helping classical artists connect authentically with audiences.
The discussion reveals Cate's innovative marketing strategies, including the creation of the Liedstadt Festival, a festival she co-founded alongside tenor Julian Prégardien and musician-project designer Kian Jazdi. Liedstadt is a celebration of song that launched without a marketing budget, yet it managed to flood Hamburg with 56 concerts across 15 venues in a single day. By bringing performances to non-traditional spaces like bars, hospitals, and libraries, they removed barriers of intimidation and drew in younger audiences eager to experience classical music in accessible 20-minute segments.
Beyond event marketing, Cate shares insights on what makes compelling visual communication, from concert posters that capture the spirit of a performance through thoughtful imagery and typography, to social media strategies that balance curation with spontaneity. Her advice on influencer collaborations emphasizes genuine connection over transactional relationships, while her thoughts on community engagement challenge organizations to reimagine how audiences experience performances.
Whether you're a marketer, artist, or arts administrator, Cate's candid perspective offers practical wisdom for creating more authentic, engaging connections with audiences. Her parting advice? "Trust your intuition more, because it's one of the things that is underestimated."
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Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bowman and welcome to the Scene Room. Today I have Cate Pisaroni here. She is the creative director and founder of Lenny's Studio, a company that represents really amazing artists like Joyce DiDonato, christian Van Horn, Stephen Costello the list really goes on. Check their website at lennystudio. com. Cate and I always have really fun conversations about arts, marketing, public relations, digital media strategy, and this is no exception. We had a really great time chatting here today. If you're enjoying the podcast, please do not hesitate to share it, like it, review it, do all of those things. It helps us keep inviting these influential and innovative arts leaders to come and talk to us. So thank you for anything you can do and let's get to it. Cate, welcome to the scene room. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. So you were my first guest on the Opera Glasses podcast when I was editor-in-chief of Opera Canada magazine, so it's really lovely to talk to you again, and this time on my next podcast.
Cate Pisaroni:I'm super excited.
Elizabeth Bowman:Since our last chat. That was, by the way, anyone listening. You can check out the Opera Glasses podcast. It's on all major streaming platforms as well, and our interview was in October 2022. Since then, a lot has happened In terms of marketing trends. What stands out to you?
Cate Pisaroni:I feel like our industry is changing weekly these days, so I don't know what has changed in the last three years.
Cate Pisaroni:Perhaps there's more of a focus on storytelling.
Cate Pisaroni:I think the industry is trying more new things, which I think is exciting, but I feel we're living in this kind of strange world where not enough is changing and everything is changing at the same time, so perhaps some things are not changing for the better. I feel that some venues and presenters in Europe, for instance, they're trying a lot of things that are very zeitgeisty and that they somehow try to somehow ask people to do more fun videos about certain aspects of attending a performance. It's a good intention, but it's not always particularly interesting. You know, when you do a video with a very cool guy and the only thing he talked about is when you're allowed to applaud and that the movement of a symphony is called movement and not song, and what are you supposed to wear and how you should surprise your cough, I feel like it's an opportunity missed to actually communicate something that has more meaning and that conveys more substance and that shares our passion for this industry versus what are you supposed to wear and when are you allowed to cough.
Elizabeth Bowman:I guess that follows into my next question for you, which is what are the challenges you see arts organizations and individual artists facing right now in terms of digital marketing and branding?
Cate Pisaroni:I feel that there's not enough collaboration between the artists teams and the organizations, possibly other players.
Cate Pisaroni:I feel like there's not enough collaboration within organizations. I mean, bear in mind that I represent only artists and not institutions but from what I've gathered, I don't feel that the marketing team or the digital marketing communication whatever you want to call them press team they somehow everybody functions in their own silos and I think more interesting stories emerge when the press team and the digital marketing team is more part of the rehearsal process, because I feel like a lot of interesting content can be captured in the moment and things would feel livelier and somehow more tangible for people Like I. As a communication person working for a lot of artists, I very often attend rehearsals whenever it's allowed and appreciated and appropriate. I like to plan in advance about content that I would like to share, but then I also like to be inspired in the moment because there are things that just that you could never foresee that happen right when interesting parts of the rehearsal process where something funny happens or where somebody says something really profound.
Cate Pisaroni:Unless you're in the room at this particular moment, there's no way you know about it. And I feel sometimes the repertoire is so vast and there's so much amazing music and so many great pieces and I feel that we all benefit from being part of the process and learning more about them. I mean, I've gone to the opera since I was a small child and I would say that I go to the opera probably three times a week and there are still many pieces I don't know as well as I want to and I should, and every production is different, Every cast is different. I feel like people would be spending more time in the same room. More interesting stories would emerge that then would engage the fan community in a more compelling way, possibly.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, I definitely agree with that, and the more we can spider out that content as well on the social feeds.
Elizabeth Bowman:and you have so many artists working with your company that you could be encouraging those collaborations literal collaborations, like on Instagram and TikTok and all these things, where you are inviting that company to collaborate with your content and they're inviting you to collaborate on their content. And we have, for the past I would say I don't know five, six years there's been this focus on artists with a lot of followers and those being the focus of the collaborations. But I think, with the emerging artists that are coming up who might not have as many followers, there's still a huge amount of engagement to be had with the smaller audiences, and those are often overlooked by companies.
Cate Pisaroni:Absolutely. I feel, generally speaking, there's not enough collaboration collab posts between the organizations and the artists, For instance. I mean major opera companies in the US never do collab posts with the artists, and I feel it's an opportunity lost. And, like you say, everything is about engagement. Currently, on Instagram, it's prioritized by the platform and very often, often, people with a lot of following do not have great engagement rates, and vice versa. So I feel like if we would all collaborate with as many people as possible. Sometimes people with very little following have great engagement rates and you know their fan community shares their content everywhere and I think that should not be overlooked. It's a great opportunity actually.
Elizabeth Bowman:With that in mind, I wanted to ask you about some innovative success stories in terms of the campaigns that you've done
Cate Pisaroni:, so a year, and a half ago,, a tenor and one of my artists and a friend, asked me whether I would like to start a festival with him. We're both obviously very passionate about and share that both of our fathers are renowned Lied performers. So we have grown up with this repertoire. We love it. Lied is a little bit the problem child of the classical music industry and the Lied series across the planet are cut more and more because it's supposedly not accessible. The content is difficult, nobody wants to hear it, the audience gets older and older and since I do like to do things that are anti-cyclical, I feel the problem child of classical music is exactly how I would like to spend my time and how I would like to try to somehow see if there is an audience that we haven't found yet that could be interested in song repertoire. So he asked me whether we would just start this in Hamburg, because he felt so inspired by the city and we should just try to somehow put on five events or six events. I said absolutely great, let's do that.
Cate Pisaroni:We ended up having 56 concerts on day one.
Cate Pisaroni:It was our first day of the festival, but it was also our marketing strategy to create so much buzz in the city on the first day of the festival, that would then entice people to come to the other events for the following 10 days.
Cate Pisaroni:So we had 16 venues where we performed mini concerts of 20 minutes each, four times in a row. The weather was amazing there was no typical Hamburg rain, and people participated in many of these events, so they went from a hotel to a bar, to a library, to a hospital, to a museum. We had all these different vibes of venues and it somehow flooded the city with songs and with excitement, and a lot of people shared this on social media, which really helped us create a momentum, and the local TV station supported this, and the radio station, so they covered this as well, because it was new and fresh. And we tried to do it in this kind of way where, not having a marketing budget, we had to activate all of our network and ask many, many people if they would somehow do us a favor and collaborate and, to our complete surprise, all of the artists we asked and all of the media partners said yes, let's do it, and the biggest newspaper ran a big feature on it. So it was a fun endeavor.
Elizabeth Bowman:That underscores the need in our industry for experiential arts. Like we need to have an experience. We need to go out and have an all-encompassing and different experience everyone. So I love that because people could go to different venues based on their interests and experience all these different pieces and understand them in their own way, and that's what art is.
Cate Pisaroni:And we also don't want to overwhelm people and I feel sometimes we forget that these huge temples of music can be intimidating buildings and people don't really know the repertoire, they don't know what they would like and they don't want to commit to an hour and a half of their time when they think it could potentially be boring or something like that. So I think if we bring the music to non-musical places or traditionally non-musical places, it is a way to put people in touch with music in a new way and in a non-intimidating way. And we always talked a little bit about the repertoire and why this song is interesting and I don't know something biographical about Schubert's life when he sang that and tried to incorporate composers who are relevant to the city of Hamburg, etc. The response was really overwhelmingly excited and our audience was young and many of them came to many events of the festival for these 10 days.
Elizabeth Bowman:And it opens the door for them to then move on beyond that to the symphony or the opera or any type of classical art form. So really it is a gateway. Exactly so, congratulations, that's wonderful. And just let me know what the URL is for everyone listening so they can visit and check it out. It's liedstadt. de L-I-E-D-S-T-A-D-T dot E. Exactly For those non-German speakers Exactly.
Cate Pisaroni:You can follow us on Instagram and we're planning further iterations of the festival in Weimar and Leipzig this year. There are many other satellite events of this festival coming.
Elizabeth Bowman:What are your thoughts on influencer marketing within the arts and we sort of touched on that earlier but specifically like, what are your thoughts on influencer marketing with influencers maybe outside of our industry or within, and the role that they could play or should play within our industry? What do you think?
Cate Pisaroni:I think there's a huge potential there, but, as with everything in communication, I feel like it needs to be genuine and I think this story is more successful when people are genuinely excited about this art form.
Cate Pisaroni:Just asking an influencer to post something for you may not resonate with anybody. I think it's much better to bring them to the opera to show them some behind the scenes things, some cool things. I mean, opera houses are very cool venues and they have a lot of energy and I often feel they have some kind of I don't know if I would say sacred energy, but they do have some kind of incredible vibe that you can feel when you enter these spaces. And I think if people are genuinely excited and have experienced a performance and have talked about the show with the artist, then they can perhaps place in some marketing materials on their channels. That feels genuine, because I feel on social media we are constantly being sold something and people are tired of that too. Sometimes they just want to have a good story and not be bombarded with posts that basically center around come to that show, buy a ticket for that and buy my new album.
Cate Pisaroni:Yes, they should also do that, but I feel it's more exciting when the artists actually share something that is personal to them, and I feel more successful posts on social media can happen when artists are vulnerable and when they actually share something, and I feel the educational part of it should never be forgotten. We all have something to learn and it doesn't have to be academic and boring. It can be very interesting and exciting.
Elizabeth Bowman:For sure. I think it would be good to see more cross-pollination between influencers coming, being invited to come to the opera, the symphony, yes, concerts in general, with the idea that they would not just post a picture of them being there but, like you say, to drive a deeper connection to it, like how was their experience there? What were top three things that they enjoyed about that experience? In terms of what kind of collaboration Although I think it's quite expensive to get these types of people to bring them to the opera or whatever but I don't think it should be, because I think that the value proposition for that influencer to be at the opera or the symphony or a concert is really high, because it's a very cultured event and it shows that they're interested in experiencing culture. So what could go wrong there?
Cate Pisaroni:But I also feel like maybe the focus shouldn't just be on the people who have the most amount of followers, and cross-pollination is not just an Instagram post. I feel there should be more cross-pollination throughout the creative process. So one of the things that Lenny's Studio does quite frequently lately is we reach out to fashion designers to see if they want to collaborate with an artist on a photo shoot or whatever. So therefore, they would get photos of artists in their clothes and attend performances and we would reach a new audience with these kinds of content being produced, and that very often happens without any monetary exchange.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, when I first started working with mezzo-soprano Wallace Junta, she was the face of a bridal design line, which was really useful, actually, because they were designing a lot of gowns and she was being photographed all the time in these beautiful dresses, so that was like a beautiful part. I think that there should definitely be more of that, because they can imagine any, they can put an opera singer in anything, because they'll wear wild things that nobody would wear at a gala Like it's, things that are visual, that are art, and it can go beyond what you would see on a fashion runway even, of course exactly, and most fashion designers are incredibly inspired by the artistry of the singers and how they communicate and how they describe certain roles that they portray and they love being part of the process.
Cate Pisaroni:So I feel like everybody benefits from these things and it's more interesting than just saying, okay, there's a price tag of X thousand dollars to make this collaboration possible, because this way everybody benefits from the creative energy in the room, definitely.
Elizabeth Bowman:Okay. So the other day I asked ChatGPT to roast arts marketers and it came up with this hilarious line of text, which I may or may not share in a reel, because it really does hit close to home, but anyway, I want to ask you some bits around what it presented to me. It talked about, for instance, the overused taglines in arts marketing, such as the timeless classic, a must-see event experience, the magic for one night only, spellbinding performance, a masterpiece of insert emotion here. Anyway, with all of this said, what tips would you give to avoid falling into these traps?
Cate Pisaroni:Again, I think we should be more specific in our communication because we should think about wording that can only apply to this particular performance, because that feels extremely generic and I feel a lot of language being used around opera doesn't really communicate what this is about and I feel sometimes it's more sensationalist than the piece lends itself to. So maybe more time needs to be spent in knowing what it is that we're actually trying to communicate, and maybe the artists I have worked with so many artists who are incredibly eloquent in describing the journey of their character in an opera and I feel if there were some kind of roundtable conversation with artists for one hour in the course of a production, we would find other words to describe what we are trying to get people to see.
Elizabeth Bowman:That's a great idea, the idea of almost the speed dating setup with the marketers, where each artist, no matter how big or small their character is, can go around in a five-minute rotation with the various marketers and everyone can take notes about what was said, and then at the end the marketers can go back and compare notes to what they've experienced and I bet you they would come out with something really interesting 100%.
Cate Pisaroni:And I feel that for some reason, marketing and PR have a bad reputation, and that is not fair, although I understand where it comes from, because very often it is this kind of language that you just mentioned that seems extremely generic and that does nothing for anybody. But I feel good PR and good marketing stems from excellent storytelling, and that is a craft that cannot be underestimated, and I think the gift of the marketer would be to gather all of these stories and all of these impressions and craft a narrative from that, and I would love to see that happen. I think it could be extremely exciting.
Elizabeth Bowman:I hope someone will do that and report back to this podcast and somehow say it went great.
Cate Pisaroni:Yeah, also, artists are very creative people. I mean, I think we should I don't know, we should have more of an exchange about these things, also about the kind of content that's called social media content that opera companies are producing. I feel like the artists do their own thing and the organization do their own thing, but there's too little overlap, right.
Elizabeth Bowman:Following the same thread, there's the concert poster or the event poster and oftentimes again, you'll see generic stock photos used, or an overemphasis of sponsorship logos, inconsistent typography or just like a whole lot of headshots. Let's talk about the poster. What are key elements that you want to see on a poster?
Cate Pisaroni:I want to see a very engaging, striking, memorable image, and a headshot under no circumstances can qualify, because headshots are very often old, it's always the same cropping, it's always this kind of passport picture type frame. I want to see some imagery that conveys the spirit of the concert. If it's something extremely vibrant in program, I would like to see that reflected in the imagery. If this is still a glass concert, it should look very different than Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto or Prokofiev Symphony or an opera gala, and I feel like we very often fail to understand the power of imagery and how much can be communicated through color, through contrast, through composition in an image. So I want to see very engaging imagery. Then I want to see very large title placement on the poster with interesting choices of typography that are legible but that also stylistically convey the spirit of the concert.
Cate Pisaroni:Date and time would be nice. Ticket prices need to be on a poster. A QR code needs to be on the poster. I mean, since COVID, everybody knows how to use those. Perhaps a press quote should be on there if it pertains to this particular artist performing this music. All of the participating artists should be on there. I don't feel that we need tiny thumbnail images of all of the participants, because that just makes the visual of the poster weak and adds very little to it. So I'd rather have interesting placement of typography and list everyone Less is more I feel the other have interesting placement of typography and list everyone Less is more I feel. The other day I walked by Carnegie Hall and there's a huge disconnect between the posters that are produced by Carnegie Hall and posters that are currently on display that are reflecting independent people presenting their concerts at Carnegie Hall. It's very often the posters are not compelling, very washed out and have way too much information on them.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, it's interesting that they don't have a style chart for those coming into Carnegie Hall. The other presenters should have to follow, like almost from a brand perspective, if those posters are along the building, Because I mean, we all recognize the Carnegie Hall brand but I guess they don't want to necessarily associate with who are going in there, because they want to make it clear that they're not presenting. But, it's still nice on the building to see all of the Carnegie brand.
Cate Pisaroni:I think there should be a style guide perhaps, because then I think I mean, of course there needs to be a visual distinction by the concert presented by Carnegie Hall and by others, but I feel there's a lack of consistency that just makes it very confusing visually speaking.
Elizabeth Bowman:Maybe if they had a contrasting color for the frame.
Cate Pisaroni:Yes, exactly.
Elizabeth Bowman:Indicated that it wasn't presented by them. Anyway, they're doing just fine.
Cate Pisaroni:I think so.
Elizabeth Bowman:No, I agree with all that you say there. I do think that all organizations, no matter how big or small and likely I'm targeting this to smaller organizations should really map out their style guides, like what their fonts are, what their colors are, and be consistent on their concert poster, but also on all of the materials that go out, because oftentimes you see just a whole lot of different text being used, even if you read through their Instagram thumbnails and that kind of thing, and it can be confusing for the user because they don't necessarily recognize it as a brand. That's like low hanging fruit for an organization.
Cate Pisaroni:I think so. I think all printed material should go through the same process of following the style guide 100%. I feel on Instagram there is a trend towards less curated feeds, because I feel like a feed should be curated, but loosely curated. I do consider what I post, in which sequence, and what that looks like and what the color scheme looks like of two pictures next to each other, and that perhaps the cropping should not be identical on every single thumbnail so that there's some visual variety, right when you have full body shots and then you have close-ups and then you have perhaps a picture of the set, so that it's overall a nice visual composition and that you don't have seven shades of red next to each other and they all interfere with each other.
Cate Pisaroni:These are somehow very low-hanging fruits. I feel that the time when things were very curated, like an O'Bridel photographer's feed or something, where it always follows the same formula, where there's I don't know some text in the middle and then two pictures on either side in the same color scheme, that feels very non-spontaneous and I think that looks very pleasing when you go on somebody's feed, but it becomes very predictable and boring and I think what people like on social media nowadays is something that's fun and that's unexpected and it catches your eye and people are constantly scrolling, so there needs to be some kind of thing to make you stop.
Elizabeth Bowman:There's an element of, like you say, the emphasis on storytelling is large now, which is great, because that's way more interesting.
Elizabeth Bowman:I guess it's a matter of peppering in those spontaneous posts and collabs along with your branded content, so that as they're going through this, the scrolling, or scrolling through your feed, that they can understand that this is for this institution and and that these people also collaborate with artists and they do this and they do that, and they can sort of identify via the scroll. It's sort of like if you're scrolling and you don't see the story, then you know it's not right, absolutely 100%.
Cate Pisaroni:I think perhaps one of the ways where more visual continuity could be ensured is if reels could have a small watermark right on the bottom, left or top right or wherever you want to position that that's the logo of the institution. That would make this immediately recognizable. Perhaps that would be a way to do that. Other than that, I don't feel like all content should follow a formula. I think that's boring, or perhaps for only a particular part of the season or something. I've seen this once, um, on some fashion designers feeds where everything is green or everything is red for 20 posts and then there's a new vibe or something.
Elizabeth Bowman:I guess if you're a paint company, yes.
Cate Pisaroni:If you're Pantone, then you can do that. Can it be the color of the year?
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, I really didn't like this year's color of the year. Me neither.
Cate Pisaroni:Yeah.
Elizabeth Bowman:Not into that. Okay, if you're not sure about what that is, you can check out Pantone's color of the year. Is it what? Chocolate mousse?
Cate Pisaroni:Yes, I really wish they had that in brown set. No one ever Exactly.
Elizabeth Bowman:Okay, let's talk about the social media takeovers, because oftentimes a company will decide oh, we're going to let artists do social media takeovers, which is great. We were talking at the beginning about the lack of collaboration between artist and company, and so social media takeovers should, in principle, according to that, be a great idea, and they are a great idea. But obviously they need to be planned, and oftentimes you'll see an artist just post about like a hundred different stories about nothing, and that, I think, is a bit of a detriment to the whole idea of collaboration. But I want to know your comments on that.
Cate Pisaroni:Instagram takeovers are a little bit passe. I think we've all seen this too many times and we've seen it done poorly too many times, so there's fatigue around this format. I feel generally the same applies to an Instagram takeover as it does to a photo shoot that I organize. Whenever I organize a photo shoot for an artist, I have a mood board and a plan of content that I want to get and about the kinds of looks that I want to accomplish, and all of that is planned in advance, and then half of that plan is thrown overboard because inspiration takes over in the moment and you take it into another direction and sometimes the most interesting things emerge from that. That being said, the plan still needs to be intact before you do that, otherwise the inspiration has less fertile ground to grow from, I think.
Cate Pisaroni:So I think for an Instagram takeover, it depends on the kind of artist who does it, and I think there's too little consideration being put into pre-prepping some content so that you have some things to share that are edited and that are high quality, and then you are inspired in the moment. But if you want to do interviews with artists and colleagues during the lead up time for the show, there's not enough time for people to get ready during the lead-up time for the show. There's not enough time for people to get ready, do interesting interviews, edit the videos and post them in real time. So I feel at least half of the content should be pre-prepared right that you can then throw overboard if more interesting things come up. But, generally speaking, more prep time. Also, I feel like if the takeover is by Don Giovanni, it should be in Don Giovanni's vibe, versus if the takeover is by Zelina, should be very different in style and I feel it's become very interchangeable right, where it's like pictures of colleagues hugging backstage, which is lovely, but it's we've seen it.
Elizabeth Bowman:I have orchestrated a few takeovers for artist clients and I completely agree, like you got to pre-plan the content and often I would request, like the fifth performance day, because obviously that allows you to get a lot of that pre-footage, like some of the bows and stuff like that. Yes, oh, spoiler alert, guys, it might not be the bow from that day, it's going on the Instagram.
Cate Pisaroni:You gave it away.
Elizabeth Bowman:I just gave it away. But another thing that I thought was useful was thinking about again about this collaboration thing. I think I did. I helped Amber Braid with a collaboration when she was working at the Canadian Opera Company one time and I reached out to CBC, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, to see if, you know, they would be interested in showing a backstage tour, and so we incorporated that into the takeover. So there was, you know, a partnership with CBC and the backstage tour and that kind of thing. So it's good to think of all the partnerships that could be related into that takeover so that it looks high quality but also like high spider potential. Exactly, yeah, and I mean you could do so many things. I mean you could, like the artists are going to cafes regularly or they're working out at a gym nearby. You know they could collab with those places.
Cate Pisaroni:Absolutely, I want to see more of that. I want to see more of that too. Also, I want to see artists live their lives right and somehow expanding their network in an organic way where they can I don't know have more interaction with the dancers or with somebody who has an art gallery, and I want to see more pop-up concerts in an art gallery. I want to see more activities in schools. I want to see I don't know, I want to see a more lively community where opera singers do not just hang out with other opera singers.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, that's great. That's great advice. I just interviewed Alex Sarian, the author of the Audacity of Relevance, and his episode is airing the week before your episode. And you know there's so much in that book about the importance of community and just in general like thinking about that community. And for opera singers it's challenging because they're always traveling the world. But you really got to place yourself into the city that you're in and see what is relevant to that particular community and I think that will resonate, like you say.
Cate Pisaroni:I think community is very important. It's a word that is used a lot and it's not always fully. It shouldn't be tokenism. And I think when we talk about community, we should also look at audience experiences. What is it like to go to an opera house? Who greets you? What happens after a performance?
Cate Pisaroni:And I think there's room for improvement to make the simple experience more enjoyable. I mean, if we look at Cirque du Soleil and what that experience is like when you arrive versus in an opera company, I think we have some fun that could be had before shows and after shows. Or a lot of concert venues have after parties, which I think is a fabulous idea, where people could just have a drink and I don't know, meet some new people, exchange their thoughts about the concert, and I think artists should be part of this as well. Right, when the Q&A is not always on stage, where there's once again this barrier between the auditorium and the stage, I think it would be nice to have some kind of time to mingle a little bit and to talk to the artists. That is not just an autograph request.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, that's a great idea. And even if you had a partnership with various businesses around that opera house or symphony hall, you know where, you could say, at 11 o'clock we're having the after party at this place, like whoever come one come all, I don't know Exactly. I mean, not everyone wants to do that and those that do want to do that will feel more connected and that's wonderful. And if it is packed and crazy, that's great.
Cate Pisaroni:Wonderful, the more the merrier.
Elizabeth Bowman:If it's hard to get into, it's amazing, you know, and then you can figure out ways to maximize that engagement.
Cate Pisaroni:Absolutely.
Elizabeth Bowman:Always great ideas, Cate, we try right that engagement. Absolutely Always great ,C ate, we try right. We try To close this interview out. I want to ask what advice would you give to your younger self who hadn't started out yet in this whole crazy arts marketing business?
Cate Pisaroni:Trust your intuition more, because it's one of the things that is underestimated and so much of stage life and also of the lives of people who work with people who are on the stage is influenced, should be influenced by intuition, because intuitively, we know more than we give ourselves credit for. When is an image good? When is a composition good? Is the color scheme right? What is the story of this image?
Cate Pisaroni:You know, I shot a photo shoot the other day with Joyce DiDonato for her new album for Dido and Aeneas that is going to come out, and we had a very funny idea about what this cover could be like, because we've all seen Dido in a gown and this is what we didn't want to communicate. So we came up with something that I can't reveal yet, but I think it's going to be a very fresh take on what Dido looks like towards the end of that opera and what she communicates and what the vibe of that is. So I think, trust your intuition. We all have a lot of education and a lot of the things that inform our intuition have been studied, like we have learned what makes a good composition, etc. But sometimes we have to break the rules and we have to trust our intuition and sometimes we second guess that and we then stray and it's a mistake Great advice.
Elizabeth Bowman:Cate, thanks for coming. It's always great to talk to you and I'm so glad we got to do this again. Thank you so much.
