OPINION

So long, Lumenocity. It was fun while it lasted

David Lyman
David Lyman

So long, Lumenocity. It was fun while it lasted.

After Sunday’s 9:40 p.m. show, Lumenocity will go away. It’s not that the Cincinnati Symphony’s high-tech light-and-sound show was unsuccessful. If anything, in fact, it may have been too successful.

When it debuted in Washington Park in 2013, it felt charmed. It seemed to showcase everything that was good about a city that was in the process of reinventing itself.

The show was spectacular, with the massive east face of Music Hall bathed in undulating waves of light and images that flouted the laws of logic and physics. But it wasn’t just the technological “wow factor.” More impressive was the remarkable sense of goodwill that enveloped the entire neighborhood as an estimated 35,000 people showed up for the two free performances.

A large crowd gathered for the first Lumenocity in 2013.

It wasn’t a perfect event. Crowd control was iffy. There were too few toilets and too many oversized strollers. But no one seemed to mind. It was all so good-natured. There was a sense of municipal rebirth in the air. The orchestra had a dashing new conductor. Washington Park was recently renovated and had become a place to play and lounge. And despite fears of displacing people who already lived there, Over-the-Rhine was becoming a neighborhood to visit rather than a neighborhood to avoid.

That was then. By the following year, many of those cuddly good feelings were on their way out the door. In an effort to control the crowds, the CSO put up fences and launched a system for issuing free tickets. But the ticketing proved glitchy. And the fence? Well, once you have a fence, there’s always someone who’s outside. So much for Lumenocity as a symbol of togetherness.

The next year, the CSO started charging for the show. It was expensive, they said. And it was. But the enviable sense of goodwill that the symphony had created for itself was long gone. Lumenocity was still fun. And it probably will be this year, too.

But in all likelihood, what we’ll remember is that first Lumenocity. That magical introduction to Louis Langrée and to Washington Park and to one another. Perhaps one Lumenocity was all we really needed.

A look at Lumenocity in 2015

But they kept going. Few institutions have the ability to recognize the things that are important to audience members. You know, those intangible things that we cherish and tell our friends about again and again.

These days, businesses – both nonprofit and for-profit – are driven by the need to “monetize” things, to “optimize” and “commoditize.”

Those three “izes” are the enemies of positive consumer experiences.

It’s not that there is anything wrong with making money. It’s a necessity. We get that. But when you change the very essence of an event or a product, what is the trade-off? What do your customers lose so that you can have higher profits?

For businesses, audience experience – “user interface” they call it in the online world – seems to be a minor consideration. But for us – the public – that is what we value more than anything else.

Back in the 1980s, there was a shop called Walnut Street Popcorn & Sweets just across the street from where the Aronoff Center was built. The owner, Adele Gutterman, understood the relationship between consumer and product more than a roomful of MBAs.

When sugar prices spiked one year, she didn’t fiddle with the recipes of her scrumptious handmade chocolates. She didn’t experiment with cheaper sweeteners. If you raise the price, she said, you may lose a few customers. But if you diminish the quality of your product, every single one of your customers will be able to tell. In the end, you’ll undermine the very reason they come to the shop – high-quality chocolates.

I was reminded of Adele and her chocolates when the symphony announced in March that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Music and Event Management Inc., would now produce the Midpoint Music Festival.

In a move that outraged many longtime MPMF aficionados, the new management changed the structure of the event. Not the music, mind you. In fact, the lineup includes a few better-known bands than past festivals. Musically speaking, MPMF will still be recognizable.

What will change is the audience experience.

In the past, MPMF took place in a dozen or so venues in and around Over-the-Rhine. People would stroll from bar to bar to hear little-known bands that might – or might not – be ready to crack the big time. The sidewalks of OTR were brimming with people wandering here and there. MPMF was defined by an overwhelming sense of discovery.

Again, it wasn’t perfect. Sometimes a bar would be so crowded that you couldn’t get in. And sometimes, the flood of newcomers distressed regular patrons. For CityBeat, which used to produce MPMF, it was massively time-consuming. But generally, it broke even. And it was, by almost every measure, a boon to the neighborhood.

Now, MPMF will be held in a handful of parking lots. They’re big ones, so there will be no problem with overcrowding or being able to hear that long-awaited band.

MPMF may well make more money this time around. But ambiance? Character? The exhilaration of wandering around a neighborhood that is morphing into the city’s center for arts and entertainment?

Gone.

Were organizers tone deaf? Or is it that they don’t care? Or is it that turning what was a break-even event into a bigger moneymaker worth selling a soul?

It’s not limited to the arts, mind you. At the end of last season, the Reds traded away pitcher Aroldis Chapman to the Yankees. Sports commentators raved about what a good strategic move it was for the Reds. They’d save lots of money. And they’d have more cash to rebuild the franchise.

But did anyone ask the fans? Did team executives not feel the palpable sense of excitement that coursed through the stadium every time Chapman made his way from the bullpen to the pitcher’s mound? Didn’t they understand how thrilling it was for fans to watch the blazing speed of Chapman’s pitches and see those 100-plus mph numbers pop up on the scoreboard? They may not have understood all of that. But we did.

And now the Reds have done it again, trading away Jay Bruce, one of the very few bright spots on a mighty dismal Reds team.

You can’t manufacture unique experiences. They happen. And some organizations are better at nurturing them than others. The Cincinnati Fringe Festival is one of those events. So is the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra’s Summermusik. And Northside’s brazenly eccentric Fourth of July Parade. For that matter, so is the CSO’s own MusicNow festival.

It’s a little like preparing a treasured recipe. You put the right elements in the right place at the right time and then you have the courage to step back and let them work their magic. Or, on occasion, to not work.

But big organizations aren’t very good at stepping out of the way. They have too many obligations to worry about; big buildings, high overhead, large staffs, lots of salaries. All those things are important. But they’re don’t breed institutional agility.

There are no rules to any of this. One size does not fit all. Even as we demand more flavor from our coffees and breads – they’ve got to be artisanal, you know – we seem willing to accept patron experiences that are increasingly diminished. Character is an important consideration when you’re buying a $1 doughnut. But it doesn’t seem to be as crucial when purchasing a $100 pass to a music festival.

So farewell, Lumenocity. We will miss you. But it was probably time to leave. We’ll remember you. Always.

And for that, we thank you.