{"id":353,"date":"2010-01-07T22:16:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-08T02:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alexsings.ca\/welcome\/zen-and-the-art-of-hosting-a-house-concert\/"},"modified":"2010-01-07T22:16:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-08T02:16:00","slug":"zen-and-the-art-of-hosting-a-house-concert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexsings.ca\/music\/zen-and-the-art-of-hosting-a-house-concert\/","title":{"rendered":"Zen and the Art of Hosting a House Concert"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love house concerts and they’re definitely trendy these days. I get a lot of questions about them from friends and fans. What are they? How do they work? Are they fun? Could I<\/span> host one?<\/p>\n

With a major house concert performance coming up in just a couple of weeks, there’s no better time to write about what house concerts are and how they work.

So, what is a house concert?<\/span>
Simply put, a house concert is a performance that takes place in someone’s home. House concerts are usually cozy affairs, unamplified, with lots of opportunity to chat with the musician(s), before, after and even during their sets. I often perform songs at house concerts that I would never pull out in a public venue – songs that are too intimate to share with the rowdy regulars heckling from the bar.<\/p>\n

There are many benefits to house concerts – they are family-friendly (no need for a babysitter), recession proof (BYOB) and if you’re the host, or a close neighbour, you won’t have to go far to get home once the show is over.

Great House Concert Experiences<\/span>
I played some fabulous house concerts last year, often as one of two singer\/songwriters, swapping songs back and forth. Here are just a few of my magical house concert memories of 2009.<\/p>\n

At a show just outside Halifax, with Dolores Dagenais<\/a>, Dol wowed us all when she demonstrated her prolific songwriting abilities: she wrote an entire song during the intermission (the song was about Hurricane Bill which was forecast to strike Nova Scotia later that evening).<\/p>\n

At a matinee in Newcombville this summer, Susan Crowe<\/a> and I shared our ideas about songwriting (illustrating our points with our songs) to an audience of writers, and raised over $1,000 for the Writer’s Federation of Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n

Outside of Peterborough this fall, I debuted my first ever spoken word piece to a lovely audience, while sharing the stage with Tanya Philipovich<\/a>. On the drive there and back, Tanya and I brainstormed a bunch of ideas about how to improve our lives as musicians. I came away from that evening a whole lot wiser, as well as richer.<\/p>\n

And last, but not least, my penultimate show of 2009 was a Christmas party at the home of a friend and fan; I performed two sets and then a number of us sang together into the wee small hours of the morning. Here’s the feedback from that show (reproduced with permission): “My friends are all still raving about you!!!! In fact a couple of them said that unlike most musicians you sounded better live than on CD. And they should know as they listen to your CD every time they come over :).”<\/span><\/p>\n

What is required to host a house concert?<\/span>
All you really need to host is a love of music and space to put a enough people to pay the musician for their time and talent. Different musicians will be looking to make different amounts. Maybe you can fit 10-12 people and charge 20-25 dollars a head, or 20 people at 15-20 dollars a head, or 30 people at 12-20 dollars a head. Some hosts arrange for a portion of the door to cover refreshments, or to donate to charity; in other instances, all of the proceeds go to the artist(s).<\/p>\n

Upcoming house concert!<\/span>
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I have a big house concert coming up in a couple of weeks, on Saturday, January 23, 2010. I’m very excited about it. It is being hosted in Toronto’s High Park neighbourhood by Sarah Hopen, the principal of STAR Company<\/a>. She is running a series of house concerts from January to June 2010, with a broad spectrum of brilliant musicians and writers, so you’ll want to get on her mailing list.<\/p>\n

More information is available on the Starry Nights Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tickets for my Starry Nights performance ($12\/person) are now available through Eventbrite<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the easiest ways to decide if you would like to host a house concert is to attend one. <\/span><\/p>\n

(For more information about hosting house concerts, here are a couple of good online resources: Concerts in Your Home<\/a> and Acoustic Roof<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love house concerts and they’re definitely trendy these days. I get a lot of questions about them from friends and fans. What are they? How do they work? Are they fun? Could I host one? With a major house …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,33,143,71,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-house-concerts","category-hurricanes","category-intimacy","category-performance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsings.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsings.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsings.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsings.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsings.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsings.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsings.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsings.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexsings.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}