Building an Audience

Maintaining a dedicated audience is a concern for all music educators. When I attended University of Rochester, our Chamber Singers concerts rarely got more than 25 attendees. Here at the University of Bridgeport, the audience is largely composed of friends of the performers, and they seem to predominantly appreciate the jazz and gospel ensembles, rather than traditional choral music.

The key to audience-building, of course, is publicity. Relying on word-of-mouth is a start, but that is very ineffective, because it can bring about the situation mentioned above: only friends and family will show up. Who do we want to be our audience? To gain outside listeners, we need to reach out beyond the performers' immediate circle of contacts. The standard and most common way, of course, is to post flyers, at school, at cafés, houses of worship, libraries, and so on. To be effective, those flyers must be attention-getting and aesthetically pleasing. Some groups also advertise in local periodicals. More recently, ensembles have started using social media to advertise, which can be an effective way to reach people who would otherwise have no way of hearing about the concert, or even that such an ensemble existed.

It is important to build an audience, not just for the self-esteem of your performers, but so outside listeners are able to enjoy your performance as well.