Talking to a friend recently arrived from The Hague I heard an interesting planned strategy put into use by a recorder duo: doing a lot of small gigs in a city (small local churches, libraries, museums, community gathering spots) for a very small or no fee to collect e-mail addresses from potential concert-goers and drawing all these people to a major concert in the city center. Makes sense, and is a organized and planned mirror of how a pro pop band gets to "make it". Ernesto Ett 11-99 242120 4 11-28376692
On 06.08.2013, at 18:49, Nancy Carlin <na...@nancycarlinassociates.com> wrote: On 8/6/2013 2:07 PM, R. Mattes wrote: I never meant to say that the web page would get the gig for any musician, but it is the place where people go to look up an email address to offer the concert. Also the savy presenters will be looking there to check on what kind of promo materials will be available to them (pictures that can be down loaded or linked to, a well written bio for their publicity, etc.). Actually more of the bookings come from hammering away and name recognition and connections. Here is the US a lot of that is done at some very expensive conferences such as APAP - now called Arts Presenters. We do have a number of American groups running their own concert series and some of them invite others to play in their series. Mostly I see a lot of energy going into putting on 3-4 of their own group's concerts and very little back and forth concert opportunities. You are right about the concert presenter having many options to choose between. So how can we encourage them to hire more lutes and early music? They have to know it's out there and available (and many in the US do not). And they need to be reassured that they will get an audience and not loose money. Nancy > Here I have to strongly object. I think that web-pages are totally > over-rated (and I _do_ have some experience with the World Wide > Web). Of all the musicians I know, only one, once, got a concert > because of his web page. Maybe it's totally different in the states > but the idea that a concert organizer googles for a Lute player > (or any other kind of musician) is absurd. You get concerts because > you _know_ people (and contact them at least twice a year!). You > build up networks - invite other musicians to concert series you > organize and hopefuly you get invited back (oh, and you need to > have at least a small concert series :-) > > The problem of most organizers/comitees is not having to few > groups to play (and hence having to find some) - it's more often > having too many .... > >> I have yet to see a paper out at a lute concert >> where the players is collecting emails for his own mailing list. >> Concert promoters have a hard time getting audiences out and need >> all the help they can get. Musicians who help them fill the seats >> get booked. - the lute world seems to be made up of players of all >> levels, but completely empty of people who are just fans. > Yes, that's sadly a phenomen the lute world shares with the > guitar world. Player-only-audiences. I think it correlates with > the fact that guitar-/lute players often _only_ listen to > Lute/Guitar music (have a look at your lute/guitar player friends > CD shelves). I prefer to dwell in the early music world where ensembles > do have "fan" audiences. > > Cheers, RalfD > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > -- Nancy Carlin Administrator THE LUTE SOCIETY OF AMERICA http://LuteSocietyofAmerica.org PO Box 6499 Concord, CA 94524 USA 925 / 686-5800 www.groundsanddivisions.info www.nancycarlinassociates.com
