'Concertize' ????!!!!!! Is this a new choral term from over the pond?

 

Chris Rowbury

Coventry, UK

We always have our [two] major concerts on a Saturday night beginning at 7:00 pm.  We have tried Friday nights, but it is so hard to get people in their seats due to traffic during rush hour ( we are a suburb of Houston, Texas).  Also, Sunday afternoons were not good as we were competing with other church activities in the area.  We are a large community treble boys choir, so that may have some bearing on all this.

 

Bill Adams

Fort Bend Boys Choir of Texas

wra(a)fbbctx.org

www.fbbctx.org

 I've found Sunday at 5:00 PM to be a good time. I try to end by 6:30.  It leaves the afternoon comparatively free for the audience, ties nicely into dinner plans after the concert, and allows time before the concert for a 3:00 or 3:30 warm-up call for the singers. ( The more traditional Sunday at 3:00 concert is not convenient for singers who've had a church choir commitment.)  We have an annual Memorial Day Weekend benefit concert with one performance on Sunday and one on Monday.  Both have excellent attendance.

 

R. M. Treen

Cape Cod, MA

 We have tried scheduling concerts on Friday nights (7:30 and 8:00), Saturday nights (8:00) and Sunday afternoons (3:00 and 4:00). To be honest the size of the audience seemed to be tied to the literature more than the time or day. Friday nights are hard as many people complained of being tired after work. To combat that we tried hooking the concert to dinner in the area, but that didn't seem to have an effect.

 

We fight with the weather here in Florida as our plethora of warm, sunny days often keep people from coming to concert halls, especially on Sunday afternoons. We had our largest audience this past December on a Friday night with torrents of rain and lightning all evening. It seems more like a crap shoot to me than something we can predict.

 

--Gregory Ruffer, Music Direcctor / Founder

The Orlando Chorale

The Orlando Chamber Singers

 The community choir that I direct has its concerts on Sundays (a) 4:00 PM - Enough time to get home from church, and have dinner, but they are home on Sunday evening relatively early to start the work week.  We also save some money renting our performance venue on Sundays rather than Friday or Saturday.  We would not do a weekday performance, just because of the time and energy it takes to perform is a problem when most members have "day jobs."  We have also found that our best audience attendance is on Sundays rather than other days (when we have tried other days).  I will say, however, that our community is not quite as large as yours, nor do we have a university.

 

SJS

My advice to a non-school related choir is to schedule performances at times of the year, or month, when you are not in conflict with school/university calendars. I'm always baffled when organizations that don't have to schedule performances, for example, the first weekend in December or May, do so, when they could wait until the 3rd week/weekend, or possibly even the first week/end in June. My concerts, including those of my community/college choir, must be geared to the University's calendar to take advantage of maximum rehearsal time and keep the singers/students engaged. Therefore, I can't schedule a final concert in the middle of April. What would we do for the rest of the semester, and why would I want to waste scheduled rehearsal time? If non-school events can be scheduled in mid-late February, avoiding the weekends prior to spring break, and either April or June, to avoid the final weeks of the semester, I think we'd all have less competition for audiences. The smart professional choral groups here in St. Louis, for example, schedule their Christmas concerts very late, avoiding the crush of school/university/church concerts on the first two weekends in December, and I'm sure their audience numbers benefit.

 We are in New York City and give our concerts on early Saturday evenings...  5 or 6 PM.

Hello Galen,

Kathryn's suggestions are good ones, especially if one lives in a larger metropolitan area or any area where there are an abundance of choral groups.  I have a community chorus that combines with one of my student choirs for most of its concerts, so we have a built-in connection to the academic calendar and only perform twice a year.  When I was at Caifornia Baptist (a time you will remember well, Galen) we started a community chorus that functioned the same way. Our major concerts are always on Friday nights at 7:30 and because we have stuck with that we have been able to develop an audience.

 

I have found that with any organization the most important thing is to find a couple of dates that you can do every year because no matter what dates or days.  It will always take a few seasons of consistent dates to develop a recognition factor.  some of the local choirs in St. Louis have consistent dates but perform in a variety of venues.
Typically they will have one or two signature concerts that are always in the same location but they also have a couple of concert dates that will be in different venues around the city,  I don't know how this works for them but they keep doing it so I must presume they have had some success.

 

Another thing that will help draw an audience is to invite collaborations with some local school choirs.  If you have a couple fo concerts each year that might also include a fine local high school choir as part of the program in some capacity, I think that will draw an initial audiene of parents, family members, etc. and also develop a community connection.

 

Grace and peace,

Larry Smith

Missouri Baptist University

St. Louis MO

smithl(a)mobap.edu

Galen,

 

Your situation sounds much like ours. We have a large university in a small town, and as it happens I'm involved in scheduling both a university ensemble and community ensembles.

 

For many years our university ensembles had fairly standard performance times: Saturday night for the Symphony and the major Choral concerts (or Friday night and a repeat Saturday night sometimes); Sunday afternoon at 3:00 for my Early Music Ensemble; Monday evening for our Percussion and Marimba Ensemble; Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday for Wind Ensemble. But like most systems that work, it's been stretched lately by a proliferation of bands and their expanding into weekend days and times.

 

We also have a University Chamber Music series that plays about 6 weekends a year, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. And student recitals, which are fitted in wherever they can be. It's crowded, but not yet even close to the last year I was at Indiana, when they printed programs for over a thousand performances during the year!

 

Obvious variables: Church choir practice. There are Wednesday towns and there are Thursday towns, and there's no rhyme or reason to it. This happens to be a Wednesday town, which is also the rehearsal night for our Community Band. (Our Community String Orchestra rehearses Mondays, and our Community Master Chorale Tuesdays.)

 

Sunday afternoons or evenings: Depends on the mix of Sunday services at the churches in your own town, again a variable without much rhyme or reason.

 

Traditonal and expected starting times: Around here, 8 p.m. In other places I've been, 7:30 p.m. I don't think I've ever been in a 7:00 town. And if I recall NYC theaters, 8:30 or 8:40 starting times.

 

For our annual Summer Musical, there's no question that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoon are the best draws. When we've done Thursdays the crowds have been sparse, and Wednesdays even worlse.

 

For our Community Strings we have to fit into the schedule in the university's Recital Salon, so we are sometimes Friday night, sometimes Saturday, and sometimes Sunday afternoon. Our Community Band has settled on Sunday afternoons at 4:00 as our best time, as it has to fit into the schedule of the high school auditorium.

 

Summary: It's impossible to give a generic answer for all times and all places, and local traditions are by far the most important. Within that, it's basically whoever gets dibs on the best times and days first!

 

John

 

 

Greetings!

 

In spite of and (perhaps) because of close proximity to New York City, the performing arts community in Orange County (NY) and surrounding area is abundant and VERY active.  It's taken us a while, but Classic Choral Society has found concert scheduling success in 'our' neck of the woods!

 

The Orange County Classic Choral Society presents two performances of each of its three yearly (formal) programs.   Our concerts are at 7:00PM on Saturday evenings and at 4:00PM on Sunday afternoons - but never on the same weekend.   Many people who live in our area (lower Hudson River Valley) also work in NYC (a little more than an hour's commute away from home), so Friday night and Sunday night concerts rarely worked for us, especially in winter. 

 

Over the years, we've found that this works best for our singers and our audiences: 

Kind regards and best wishes for successful planning!

 

Jan Kohler

Artistic Director

Orange County (NY) Classic Choral Society

 

 

Galen:

The Community Chorale that I conduct presently gives two performances of most of  our concerts. The Mattinee is at 3:30 pm and the evening concert is at 7:30 pm. The mattinee concert draws more "out of town folks," families, and older folks. This way people who are driving a bit of a distance can see the show and still drive home while it is light outside. Also, we have found that the retirement homes would rather shuttle their residence during the day. And, for families, they seem to like to come to the mattinees, go have a bite to eat and then go home.

The evening perfromances seem to draw younger groups, the "standard" local group of folks.

For us, 3 pm is a bit too early and so is 7 pm. But, I can see where these times might work in the same fashion.

Good luckk

Cheers,

Frank