Building an Audience

As music educators, how can be build an audience? Should we worry about building one, or does it happen naturally?

I remember, when I was a student at CCSU, every music major was required to attend a specific number of concerts throughout each semester. This was a way to ensure that every performance had a audience and every person supported, heard, and saw their peers and mentors perform. A simple structure that "killed two birds with one stone" so to speak where everyone benefited. The down side to this? Any music major knows that their major is just about the busiest one imaginable. We take anywhere from 8-12 classes a semester, rehearse, practice, perform, and sometimes even work. When every minute of every day is accounted for, it makes taking an hour or two to attend a concert a frustrating task at times. As much as I always enjoyed a good concert, I'll be the first to admit that if this requirement had not been in place, I probably would not have attended half as many concerts during my undergrad as I did and not due to lack of interest but rather lack of time.

Why do I bring this up? Not to complain about having to attend concerts that I loved going to. Not to advertise the h*ll that music majors go through. But rather, to make the point that everyone is busy.

That is the reality of the world we live in. We have our jobs, our families, our relationships, our studies, and the very little and precious "us" time that we cling to for dear life and the fact is, the lives of our fantasy audience members is just as important to them as ours is to us. So how do we make taking the time to attend a public school concert a priority? We want our kids to perform for a good size audience. We want their families, their teachers, and the community to want to see and hear them perform. But with life always getting in the way, how can we build our audience?

For one thing, we advertise! A lot! We build up the music, we build up our students, we build up incentives. We make our concert the place to be. We schedule them at a convenient time and place, we make the admission free, maybe we even sell things during intermission. We impress upon student's families and our colleagues how much we appreciate their attendance and we work to make every concert an enjoyable experience that people want to come back to and one that our students are proud of.

The truth is, we can't guarantee an audience- no one can. But what we can do, is understand that life is busy and do our best to get our concerts put on the list of priority.