Alex Grunwald

The TSO has a loyal following of regular concert-goers who come to performances at Roy Thomson Hall, but what about the rest of Toronto? We wanted to bring music to the community by surprising and delighting Torontonians with a musical performance in an unexpected venue.

We seeded some pre-performance buzz on social media to let our loyal fans know they could join us for their morning brew and some music at an East end coffee roaster. As the musicians began to play, fans and surprised coffee drinkers expressed their appreciation on social media.

In surveys of the TSO’s digitally savvy audience members we had also learned that there was a desire for more recorded content, so this was an excellent opportunity to record the performance and make it available online. The video was shared and continues to generate a steady flow of views.

Future Pop-up Concert will invite people to suggest possible venues.

Because of the small size of the ensemble and the surprise nature of the performances, this format also presents an opportunity to experiment with music that isn’t generally expected from a typical classical music concert.

The TSO partnered with Second City to bring laughter to the stage of Roy Thomson Hall. We thought the hilarity should begin before the concerts, so we asked Colin Mochrie to “hijack” the TSO Twitter and Instagram accounts. The result was a hilarious behind-the-scenes view of the orchestra. 

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Every brand wants a viral video. The problem is, you don’t make a viral video – your audience makes your video viral – or not. That said there are a few things we did with our shout-out to the Toronto Raptors during the 2013 NBA playoffs that helped the video reach the broadest possible audience.

We asked TSO musicians if any of them were Raptors fans. No band wagoners please! Then, since Drake is a fine Torontonian, and a Raptors ambassador, we asked if the musicians would be willing to play a Drake song as a tribute to the team. This is when then musicians showed their true heroic nature. The principal bassist said he would do a quick arrangement of a Drake mash-up. We shot the video quickly and simply with seven musicians (including a British Knight) in a dressing room. The next day the video was the most viewed video the TSO had ever released.

The video was picked up by The Raptors, CBC, CTV, TheScore, Vice, Time, MTV, and more media outlets, and it reached 50K views in a few days. Fans asked for a longer recording of the arrangement, and since then the TSO appeared with other pop musicians performing genre-mixing arrangements as part of the Polaris Prize broadcast.

Youtube is the number one music streaming service in the world. We also know from surveys that what people want most from TSO digital content is precisely what the TSO exists to provide. Music. The TSO was mainly represented on Youtube by videos shot by audience members on their phones. There was a need for more and better quality content directly from the TSO.

We shot a complete concert at Koerner Hall before the orchestra departed for its European Tour. Each piece that was performed was to be edited and released over time as content that would have a long shelf life.

The first piece that was released, “Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” has received steady views from the day it was launched, and is on track to eventually become the most viewed TSO video.

The greatest impact we can have is in our direct personal contact with people. Brands aspire to this as well, so when we received a tweet asking the TSO Concertmaster, Jonathan Crow, for tips on playing Elgar’s Violin Sonata, we saw an opportunity to make a fan very happy.

We recorded a one-minute Skype call with Jonathan demonstrating some tips on how to tackles some of the challenges of the piece, and tweeted it as a reply. Needless to say, the fan was blown away. She is now a subscriber and a volunteer.

The TSO did a 4-city European tour in August of 2014. We sent a member of the digital team to document the action and provide dispatches from the road.

We launched the TSO blog to coincide with the tour as a hub for all the dispatches. From there, stories featuring musicians, cultural landmarks, the amazing concert venues, and an embarrassing soccer game were shared on social media, the TSO website, and email newsletters.

The TSYO is a strategic pillar for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra as a means of making a positive impact in the community, nurturing talent, and as a focus for fundraising efforts.

This behind-the-scenes documentary introduces members and faculty of the 2014/2015 Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra (TSYO) as they rehearse and perform Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in celebration of the TSYO’s 40th Anniversary. 

The TSO wanted to be more accessible to the community and the annual announcement of the upcoming season is the time when the organization puts its highest level of energy into communicating what they do. We decided to use that time to let people ask the decision-makers their burning questions, such as “Why do people hate me when I clap at your concerts?”

The TSO’s CEO and Music Director took questions live via the first-ever Reddit AMA organized by a North American Classical Music performer.

The AMA was applauded by numerous online media outlets, and while it was happening we got a call from CBC Radio inviting the CEO and Music Director to come by the studio that day to talk about the experience.

Check out the archived AMA