Grammys’ Garden Party Stirs Debate : Fan Involvement Is Cited for Move to Bigger N.Y. Venue; Critics Fear Awards Will Lose Dignity

The Grammy Awards’ move next year to the arena setting of New York’s Madison Square Garden is designed to add excitement to the annual ceremony. And the decision--announced Wednesday at a New York press conference--is already causing a stir in the music industry.

Some observers hail the shift to a larger facility--12,000 seats, as opposed to the 6,000 capacity of Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium, where the Grammys were held the last two years--as a way to increase fan involvement in the industry’s most prestigious fete.

Others worry that the Garden will turn the Grammys into a pop spectacle that will undermine the dignity of the affair.

“The move to Madison Square Garden is the next exciting step toward building the scope and influence of the show without sacrificing the elegance, emotional connection and entertainment value which the Grammys are known for,” Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, said in announcing the plan Wednesday.

Predicted Pierre Cossette, executive producer of the show: “Within two or three years the Oscars and Emmys will follow suit by using an arena. . . . Once again, the Grammys are leading the way for all other award shows.”

They have a supporter in Reprise Records President Howie Klein, who got a sneak preview of the new approach last week when he attended Canada’s Juno Awards ceremony. The event was moved this year to a 14,000-seat arena in Hamilton, Ontario, after being staged for years in smaller theater settings.

“Having ‘real people’ there who weren’t necessarily fans of the companies’ bottom lines, but of the music, lent a lot of excitement,” Klein says.

But that excitement is what Ron Stone, president of the Gold Mountain management firm, dreads. Stone, whose clients include Grammy winner Bonnie Raitt, was also at the Juno Awards and had an entirely different experience than Klein.

“I watched the Junos and was becoming nauseous with a terrible feeling that this is where the Grammys are going,” Stone says. “What they’ll end up with is a TV show with no glamour and no value in the awards.

“The Junos turned out to be a terrific TV show--they had their highest ratings ever. But it had little or nothing to do with honoring the people within the industry for perceived or real achievements.”

Making the Grammys a good TV show is clearly the major incentive for the move. Next year’s ceremony is the last of the academy’s current contract with CBS, and with ratings generally disappointing in recent years, drawing more viewers is imperative to give the Grammys leverage in negotiations with networks.

Greene also feels that the change is important to continue the Grammy Awards’ move up what he calls “the ramp of relevancy” following the new nominating procedures that were credited with steering major awards to groundbreaking performers rather than merely popular ones.

But will it cost the show its dignity, as Stone fears?

“I think so,” says jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard, a 1990 Grammy nominee for his score to the film “Mo’ Better Blues.” Blanchard, like many of his peers, feels that the jazz and classical forms have taken a secondary role to pop, rock and country in Grammy shows, and that a desire to cater to the tastes of a large audience could push this music even more into the background.

“You’d hope the music industry would be sympathetic to paying respect to musicians and music that is deserving,” he says. “It can work . . . [but] we should always think of quality first.”

Conductor Zdenek Macal, who directed the classical segment of this year’s telecast featuring violinist Maxim Vengerov, agrees that the Grammys’ first priority should be a well-balanced musical offering.

“I am most concerned with presenting classical music to the world,” said Macal, music director of the New Jersey Symphony. “If we can do something that shows it to more people, that will help the music.”

This is the second time Greene has announced plans for a move to an arena. The 1993 Grammy show was originally planned to be held at the Forum in Inglewood. But after MTV’s raucous 1992 Video Music Awards show at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, record industry outcry persuaded the academy to return to the Shrine Auditorium. The Forum is the likely local venue when the Grammys return to Los Angeles.

“Now we’re more prepared to do this right,” Greene says. “It would be so easy to go back to Radio City [Music Hall] or the Shrine year after year. It works. It’s elegant and beautiful. But we can’t stop taking prudent risks.”

The increased seating, Greene says, will accommodate both an added fan presence, with as many as 4,000 tickets expected to be sold to the public, and many music industry figures who have been unable to get tickets before. In recent years, only 400-500 of the 6,000 seats at the Shrine and Radio City Music Hall have gone to the public, mostly through radio and newspaper promotions.