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Since we have a concert coming up, I'm always curious when we get patrons younger than 80 that show up. Pittsburgh is a pretty greying community and we just don't draw in 'the younger crowd'.

In your opinion, does the audience in wind ensemble shows reflect a similar trend with orchestra audiences?

And, about how many people come to your shows? We usually get between 100-125 or so.

I would say 80% of all traditional band audience members are over 70.

The other 20% are probably friends or relatives of the band members

In 20 years, we will have no audience....

Dean wrote:I would say 80% of all traditional band audience members are over 70.

The other 20% are probably friends or relatives of the band members

In 20 years, we will have no audience....

I think a band (or orchestra or any other group) has quite a lot to say about the makeup of the audience. The problem is that most bands want to keep doing things the way they've been doing them since Grandpa played 2nd peckhorn with the band.

One of the local bands (by no means the best) finds its audiences with event tie-ins. In the winter, they do a concert at the library geared to kids (there are story tellers and other entertainment). Last year, they served as a warmup group on July 4 for a big Riders in the Sky public concert. They play at local festivals. They're not the main act, but you can be sure that lots of folks know of their existence.

Sounds like it's time for some original thinking. Just listening to a band playing the Holst Suite in F isn't sufficient reason for most folks to bother attending even a free concert.

I'm not sure it's as bad as all that. I think once people retire they have a lot more time to go to concerts, and that the blue-hair audience phenomen might get even better once the boomers retire in large batches. I can certainly afford to attend concerts but rarely do go. All my free time is taken up playing concerts.

MA

bloke wrote:I don't visualize many aged "boomers" attending these concerts... ...unless, of course, these bands play The Sounds and Sensations of Garth Brooks over and over...

bloke "who has no idea whatsoever if such a concert band medley exists"

If it doesn't yet, it will ...

In my experience, maintaining / acquiring a community band´s supporters and audience involves the establishment of tradition and lots of personal relations.
Plus, I´d say the band should be willing to literally walk that extra mile. I don´t know about the community bands in the US. When I was there, we had the High School band program, but I didn´t hear of any other bands.

Here in Austria (a large portion of which consists of villages up to 5000 people) community bands play an important part in the village´s social structure. Among the local groups, we rank 2nd place right behind the (non-professional, these are volunteers) fire brigades in puplic appreciation and receive A LOT of support. We receive part of our budget by the community, but a great portion is donated by the public.
In return, there are quite a few gigs that we play on behalf of our supporters:

- on prominent birthdays (that is, people turning 80, 85, 90, or older) the mayor of the village will congratulate. The whole band will show up in uniform (traditional alpine outfit) and play a few traditional Austrian marches. That´s at least every two or three weeks, about 20 nights a year.
- some of the local pubs (changing, about two out of six in a village of 3500) will host a "Daemmerschoppen" each summer. That´s a small scale beerfest for locals and tourists that features the community band as THE event. That´s another 2-3 two-hour-services.
- important church services (Children´s first communion, Christmas, processions… this is catholic country, remember?) will be attended by the band. Another six occasions.
- May 1st is a holiday (Labour Day) over here. On that occasion we have our most important fund-raiser. The band will step off at 7 am on both Saturday and Sunday to march all over the village, again performing trad. marches until about noon. After that we split up in pairs and collect donations in assigned streets.
This is so traditionally established, that this day is known as "Day Of Music" to everybody, and some of us have been on the same identical collecting tour for 30+ years.
There are several occasions when we play in small ensembles on funerals when we´re asked to.
You can tell we are heard many times a year, so everybody knows "The Music" around here.
Our annual main concert takes place in church and will attract about 400 people each year, most of whom are locals.

Hans

We play some pretty non-traditional stuff. Last night we did a pdq bach piece and some other offbeat stuff. The only traditional stuff was one march, America the Beautiful, and Stars/Stripes. I think marketing and networking is pretty important in today's world, where classical music is often considered to be ZZ Top or the first Celine Dion album. Playing festivals, Octoberfests, etc, would seem to take the band back to the community rather than make the community come to the band!

I estimated attendance last night around 50-75. I think the band might have even outnumbered the audience. But regardless, I had a lot of fun and that's why I'm in it in the first place. It's not the sort of thing you get involved in for fame, money and glamour.

Elimia,

please don´t get me wrong. I wasn´t implying this was the way to go for everybody.
Just wanted to share an impression I got concerning concert attendance and the way this is tied to the acceptance and popularity of a band in the community,
and offered some information to back it up. Plus, I figured some might be interested what bands do over here, because I myself am always curious about these things.

I´d say our musical year can be split in two seasons: Beerfest season and Symphonic windband season. I already described the former, which will be spring and summer. In winter we have only ONE concert where we play mostly modern music composed for wind band, and some arranged classical works. (Stephen Melillo´s "Pilatus", Mussorgski´s "Great Gate of Kiev" from "Pictures At An Exhibition", "Der Traum Des Oenghus" and the likes.
Some of this stuff requires a little work both from the musicians as well as the audience, but it does receive the public´s appreciation, because they´re curious what we come up with based on what they´re used to hear on other occasions.

So I guess it´s a matter of both the band and the crowd approaching each other.
Plus, around here people in general and amateur musicians in particular tend to go crazy about waltzes, marches, and polkas, so to a large portion of the band the summer program is what they prefer playing.

Hans

tubeast wrote:Elimia,

please don´t get me wrong. I wasn´t implying this was the way to go for everybody.
Just wanted to share an impression I got concerning concert attendance and the way this is tied to the acceptance and popularity of a band in the community,
and offered some information to back it up. Plus, I figured some might be interested what bands do over here, because I myself am always curious about these things.

I´d say our musical year can be split in two seasons: Beerfest season and Symphonic windband season. I already described the former, which will be spring and summer. In winter we have only ONE concert where we play mostly modern music composed for wind band, and some arranged classical works. (Stephen Melillo´s "Pilatus", Mussorgski´s "Great Gate of Kiev" from "Pictures At An Exhibition", "Der Traum Des Oenghus" and the likes.
Some of this stuff requires a little work both from the musicians as well as the audience, but it does receive the public´s appreciation, because they´re curious what we come up with based on what they´re used to hear on other occasions.

So I guess it´s a matter of both the band and the crowd approaching each other.
Plus, around here people in general and amateur musicians in particular tend to go crazy about waltzes, marches, and polkas, so to a large portion of the band the summer program is what they prefer playing.

Hans

No apologies necessary - geez, I think it's awesome how 'community' your band is. I'm jealous!

Hm...in our band, the South Dakota Symphonic Band, our concerts are played to audiences where I'd say the median age is around 35 or 40. It is like a community band, although our members come from different communities. Towns just aren't very big here.

Many of the people in the audience are children and their parents, aunts, uncles. Also, I would say that a good 60% of our audience is Native American (sicangu lakota) becuase of our venues. We have school connections (most of our members are either High school players, music teachers or former music teachers). And, we plan our concerts when we know we will have an audience. (for example, a night when the community will be coming to a school for some particular reason or another)

I think that we're probably different than other band situations because our communities are so different.

10 - 12 Summer outdoor concerts - average around 2500 people split 33% over 65 33% middle age 33% young families The 4th of july week concert is around 10,000 folks with much greater bias toward families.

Fall, Winter, Spring indoor concerts - 500 - 700 size - Depends on size of hall - usually 90% filled - with 100% bring your own oxygen tank crowd!

This is in Naperville, IL