Classical music appeal much more than in China than India

The New York Philharmonic, home to legends like Gustav Mahler and Leonard Bernstein, will see a significant alter this year as its president and executive director Zarin Mehta ends his tenure. Mumbai-born Zarin, 73 beats pro, the son of Mehli Mehta, who founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra in 1935 dr dre headphones, and brother of music conductor Zubin Mehta, is credited with broadening the Philharmonic expertise by cultural initiatives like its 2008 concert tour of North Korea. He talks to Vrushali Haldipur concerning the challenges of fund-raising and engaging audiences inside a digital era

Cultural organisations are largely dependent on donations and endowments. It was reported that endowments for the NYP dropped from $212 million to $170 million in the past decade. What are the other challenges which you faced during the financial downturn?

Whenever you possess a mature organisation like the NYP beats by dre studio, it comes with its own set of challenges. There is always the question of exactly where does the revenue come from -- the ticket sales, the charges and also the fund-raising . Throughout the recession monster beats, our endowment went down enormously, by about 30%. It only started to come back about a year ago. Our concerts are sold out so it is apparent that there is an active public interest; we just need to discover means of capitalising on it.

With file sharing and YouTube monster headphones, the expectation is the fact that music should be accessible at no cost. How does an orchestra deal with this audience expectation?

With the web, I think the medium has served only to develop the audiences who want to go to live concerts. We had been the very first orchestra to provide downloadable concerts, and to create the library of music accessible to all. After all, there's only that a lot you can get out of that small piece of wire sticking in your ear. You'll have that inherent have to go and watch and hear some thing live. Every time there is a technological advance , people say no one will go to concerts or films any longer. But that's not what happens finally. Within the commercial music industry, individuals stopped going to record stores to buy music, but that was never a major problem for an orchestra. So it did not affect our finances drastically.