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Saturday, May 16, 2009

Venues

It dawned on me a few weeks ago that small musical organizations in the Bay Area must conduct site search - where can we give our concerts? - on a regular basis. Some venues are well-known and busy (St. Gregory of Nyssa in SF, First Congregational in Berkeley), others are less known.
There must be a tremendous duplication of effort involved in these site searches. Does anyone maintain an up-to-date database with venue information? Such a database would be in the interests of venues AND performing arts organizations.

In a perfect world, the database would include the following:
  • Location
  • Contact information (address, email address, web site, contact person, if any)
  • Audience capacity
  • Parking capacity
  • Nearby public transit routes
  • Cost for a performance (and length of time covered by the fee)
  • Cost for a rehearsal (and length of time covered by the fee)
  • Does the site have an organ? What kind of condition is it in?
  • Does the site have a piano? Is it kept tuned?
  • How big a chorus can be accommodated
  • How much space is there for an orchestra or other instrumental ensemble?
  • Whether the site has a green room and whether there's any additional cost for that
  • Whether the site has rooms for soloists and whether there's any additional cost for that
  • Whether the site has a room for a conductor and whether there's any additional cost for that
Question for the reader: Do you know of such a database? Please post in the comments if you do.

2 comments:

  1. Peggy Salkind compiled such a list for use by SF Conservatory students when she was on the faculty there--I think I saw it around 1991. It became less and less useful with the years--my impression is that available venues are considerably fewer than, say, 20 years ago--and I don't know if anyone's created a newer version using newer methods. But the Conservatory would have a obvious reason to do this; maybe an inquiry to someone there (a librarian? an adviser?)would get results

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