How to book 251 concerts, Part 1: Tell a simple story

 

This is not a closely-guarded trade secret. Every presenter I’ve ever engaged with has told me each show and recording needs to have an angle, a title, a theme, a hook. Unless you’re pop-star-famous, in which case your theme can be “I’m Yo-Yo Ma.”* Otherwise, without a story, few people will come to your concert.

In this project, though, the theme is central and came first; it’s not the result of a tacked-on branding effort. As a result, I’ve been almost caught off guard by how much the project resonates with people, which I think accounts for the greatest part of their eagerness to sponsor shows and  do even more: suggest venues in nearby towns, help me find local collaborators, pour on the concert publicity, and write or broadcast feature stories.

Actually there are two themes. One is: I’m going to play every town in Vermont. This has immediate appeal to the Vermonter’s characteristic pride in a small-town sense of local place. While Vermont’s communitarian ethos is easily exaggerated and often idealized, like most myths it has a basis in truth. Town Meeting Day is still a thing, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns is active (unprompted by me, they’ve apparently circulated info about my project, which has already led to offers to host concerts), and the state runs a Village Center designation program. It is equally true that the sense of locale is under threat here as everywhere by Dollar General, Netflix, and social media, and that threat makes people even more keen to get behind anything that bolsters the vitality of local centers.

The other theme is the absurdity and unsustainability of long-distance touring. I’ll say right off that I don’t pretend to have the answers. As someone with a day job (university teaching) who does not depend on performing to earn a living, I’m not telling anyone what they should do. That would be in especially poor taste now that streaming services, which pay musicians ridiculously little—Spotify is believed to pay about 1/3 of one cent per stream—have made live music once again the (by far) main source of musical income for performing musicians.

I just know that routine jet travel (among many other things) is incompatible with the survival of civilization, and with the continuation of a great portion of current life on earth. And that staying alive is, you know, an even higher priority than “making a living”. Apparently this strikes a chord with lots of other musicians and audiences. 

We’re all carrying a lot of cognitive dissonance: I don’t fly and I’m vegan, but (like virtually all US-ians) my greenhouse gas emissions are still far higher than the global average, and far above what is estimated to be the maximum for a livable future. (US average = 16 tons CO2 per person per year; current global average 4.5 tons per year; max for livable world, 2 tons.) Still, most people recognize that a lot of things are going to have to change radically, and radically quickly, or the consequences will be even more catastrophic than is already ensured.

Well, that got heavy. The footnote is light-hearted, anyway.

*There’s a great bit from an interview with composer Benjamin Boretz, where he said (something like) “To achieve real commercial success in classical music, you have to be Yo-Yo Ma. And I don’t mean that metaphorically.”