Hosting a House Concert is a wonderful way to hear music in an intimate acoustic environment. It is good for the community in which you live, as you are presenting real live music in a relaxed and warm environment, and it is good for the musicians as a relatively small acoustic space is often the very best place in which to play and create a rich and satisfying musical event.
House concerts can be arranged in various ways. Most often they are advertised by word of mouth, by email list and occasionally by poster and community radio. Hosts most often ask attendees to RSVP by phone or email, in order to control numbers and avoid giving out their address randomly. There is a suggested donation, which generally goes to the musician, minus any expenses the host incurs. Often a pot luck is encouraged, to give the event a more festive, social feeling. These details are always left to the preference and taste of the Host.
Even relatively small rooms can generally accommodate small house concerts. Usual attendance is most often 20-40, with very occasional ones holding more, depending of the ambition of the host, and the size of the room. If the Host is in need of extra seating, guests are often asked to bring folding chairs. In summer, some places organize events on back yard lawns, or decks.
I love doing house concerts, as this most closely recreates the atmosphere in which the music I play was performed down through the decades. I also love meeting folks in these intimate settings. And in these days of decreasing numbers of commercial venues for acoustic music, the burgeoning of the house concert movement has helped sustain musicians and intrepid listeners countrywide.
Please contact me if you are interested and want to talk more about the possibilities and details of hosting a house concert.
kevincarr@aol.com
