One of the questions I'm asked most by budding musicians is how they can build a programme of music that actively engages their audience. Its certainly is something I questioned when first starting out as a musician. Don't worry below I'm going to give you 5 easy steps to build a killer programme for any scenario.
1. Establish the venues capabilities
I'm going to assume here that if your searching for advice on how to build a concert programme you probably aren't playing in purpose built concert halls. This means when planning your programme you're going to have to think about your venue logistics. An example of this may be thinking about whether your venue has a full piano for pianists or a PA system for singers. Another thing to bear in mind would be the size of your venue for example taking a whole concert orchestra to a small coffee shop would be ridiculous.
2. Establish the aim of your programme
The key thing to consider here is the effect this has on the difficulty of the piece you choose. for example if your choosing repitoire for your A level recital your aim would be to show off your capabilities as a musician to your examiner meaning you would likely choose harder pieces that really show off your technical abilities. however aroud that time I also played a concert in a nursing home for which the aim was the enjoyment of the residents which made a massive influence on my choices. for instance i chose severall shorter well known pieces instead of multi movement complex works. Remember many people dont care about the complexity of the piece they want pieces that conect with them emotionally.
3. Think about the timing of your concert
This refers to both the time of day your concert takes place and the time of year. For example if I was playing a lunchtime recital for city workers I would choose a series of shorter upbeat pieces. No one wants to come from a morning of meetings then dive straight in to 2 hours of mahler. The same principal applies for time of year since people may think its odd if you play chrismas music in march.
4. Think about the demographic of your audience
A great example of this is if I was giving a concert to children I would choose pieces with a story behind them as from personal experience I have found that children tend to respond well to this as it gives the piece a purpose. Aditionally if you wanted scope to make this an educational experience for the children you could start a conversation with them as to why the music sounds like a storm ect.
5. Think about the mood and the story behind each piece.
This is important as a programme of all slow music is likely to get boring an repetitive after a while. Aditionally you may want to place pieces with a linking story togther. An eample of this is I played a piece in concert recently that was written as a homage to poulenc. In this case I played it with a piece of origional poulenc before so the audience could make the link instead of assuming musical knowledge they may not have which may make them feel excluded.
So there are my top 5 tips to plan a concert programme I hope that helps you guys. comment below with youre favourite piece to play in a concert.
Ash Strowger xx
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