The best new hall in town is your place. Shift opens the door on the newest idea that has been around forever: The house concert.
What if instead of spending a week's salary for a seat three miles from the stage, you could clean up the living room, invite over a few friends and welcome your favourite artist right into your home? Well, guess what? You can.
House concerts are a growing phenomenon, and are bridging the gap between two very different groups of accoustic musicians who need little more than a quiet room and a glass of water: classical artists and singer-songwriters.
The second oldest profession
The house concert is the democratization of the second oldest profession* in the music world: the patron.
Every performer, from the biggest star to the humblest broadcaster, needs a patron -- someone to support them, protect them and guide them through the lean years to the promised land of artistic freedom. Twas ever thus. For Claudio Monteverdi it was the De Medici family. For JS Bach it was the Lutheran Church. For Mozart it was.... Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it? Mozart never did find a suitable patron and for that we lost him and all of the music he might have created but for his untimely death at 36.
Come up to my Salon...
Patronage was alive and well in late 18th and early 19th century Paris, but it took a slight twist. There were plenty of very nice concert halls in Paris in the early 1800s, but the real concert scene was in salons.
A salon was a gathering of like-minded aristocrats who would share and discuss art and ideas. The salon circuit allowed artists, such as Liszt and Chopin, to meet and woo many patrons at once, while allowing those same patrons to host a great party and remain free to invite a different artist the following week.
A Harper for every castle
At the same time in Ireland, a similar arrangement had emerged for what must be the historical equivalent of the modern singer-songwriter. A Harper, in Ireland, was a musician who would travel from estate to estate writing and performing tributes to the master of the house, in exchange for payment and room and board. The greatest of these was the blind harper Turlogh O'Carolan, who, thank you very much, lived that way his entire adult life and lived very, very well.
Cue the record company
The arrival of recorded sound created a new kind of patron -- the first to actually make a profit -- the record company. The record company enabled head-in-the-clouds artitsts -- who went in to music to get away from business -- to do just that while earning millions upon millions for the label that sold their wares. Rightly and wrongly, the record company became the main support for almost every kind of musician, which was fine, until digital technology started pushing record companies off the scene.
Here's where you come in
The way it is these days, if a musician wants to play the big halls, or film their concert, or book a world tour, they can do all of that, but they have to do it themselves: front money, investors, slings and arrows and all. There are many, many great musicians who just plain don't want to spend their days doing that. Besides, it doesn't always work. Filling Massey Hall is one thing, but somebody still has to pay the ushers, the merchandise sellers, the bartenders... and the rent isn't cheap.
On the other hand, if a musician can forget the rent and the staff and simply carry their cello or guitar into a nice room full of nice people, get free food and drinks and maybe a place to stay and still go home with a healthy day's wage by almost any reckoning they are way, way ahead.
You are the new De Medici
There you have it. You don't need to be a De Medici, or a church, or a record company, anymore. All you need is a few chairs and a few friends who love music and you, dahling, are a music business giant. Or at the very least, someone who gets front row seats for some very close-up music making.
In case you're wondering, some notable names have embraced this kind of music-making. Canadian singer Jane Siberry has led the way with house concerts across Europe and in this country. There are websites to help you organize and spread the word, some classical, some not. And, from personal experience at the event in the picture above, I can tell you from the performer's point of view that going to a lovely room, giving a show and having time to hang with friends after is nice work if you can get it, and at this point in history, it looks very much like you can get it if you try.
Who would you invite?
Would you host a house concert? Who would you dream of playing in your living room? Would you go to a house concert, or do you prefer the distance and size of a concert hall. Let's say Yo-Yo Ma** is coming through town - would you call your friends, pick up a bottle of Mateus, pull some sausage rolls out of the freezer and invite him over? Why not, right? He's got to play somewhere.
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Footnotes:
*You're counting the bartender? Okay - 3rd oldest.
** Okay, it was the White House. It's still a house.