Berklee Press

Author: David Wallace
Format: Softcover with Media Online
Version: Text

Learn to engage, excite, captivate and expand your audience! These practical techniques will help you to communicate with your listeners on a deeper, more interactive level. As you do, the concert experience will become more meaningful, and the bond between you and your audience will grow.

Whether you are performing music for an audience, teaching a group of students, leading an ensemble, or just speaking publicly, your success as a performing musician directly depends on your ability to connect. Featuring real-life examples and eight actual concert transcripts from several different genres and performance settings, this text gives you the tools you need to deepen your impact, build an enduring relationship with your fans, and sustain a long-term musical career.

You will learn to:

• design concerts that capture and maintain your audience's attention
• develop an engaging stage presence
• create meaningful activities for your audience that increase their enjoyment and understanding of your material
• communicate as an ambassador across cultures and languages
• become more engaging, interactive, educational and memorable

Endorsements
"Engaging the Concert Audience should be required reading for every musician - young and old, professional and amateur. David's passion for music leaps off the page and challenges readers to consider the fundamental truths of what it means to be a musician: why do we do what we do, and how do we do it to the best of our ability? Applying his strategies quickly makes us better communicators and more compelling artists.

Since I have incorporated David's advice into my own concerts and audience engagement efforts, I have witnessed a profound, positive impact on my listeners. It is a great joy to witness my audiences listening with excitement, deeper understanding, and enthusiasm.

For musicians seeking to connect, build a fan base, and develop future audiences, here is your answer: Engaging the Concert Audience by David Wallace." - Rachel Barton Pine, internationally renowned violinist, composer, author, and recording artist

"Engaging the Concert Audience is the essential guide to creating successful, insightful, innovative, interactive concerts. Every musician and concert programmer must read this book and learn its delightful lessons. Why? You will meet the future inside these covers - your concert-presenting future, and our field's potential. Thank you, David Wallace!" - Eric Booth, author, The Music Teaching Artist's Bible

"Engaging the Concert Audience will help millions more people engage with live music in enduring ways. I was floored reading it because it contains so much truth. In a well-organized fashion, David lays out many tried-and-true methods to engage audiences with music of all genres in serious, playful, focused, spirited, and creative ways. Each method and illustration takes you deeper in your understanding, to make your concerts really work and have a lasting impact on communities." - Eli Yamin, musician; managing artistic director of Jazz Power Initiative; author, So You Want to Sing the Blues

"David Wallace's book should be a must-read for any concert musician, period. As a performer, you have a duty to reach out and provide context for your listeners so they can connect with your art. This is the book that gives you the tools you need to start really engaging any kind of audience in any situation." - Jessica Meyer, composer, violist, singer, founding member of counter)induction and Piaclava

"Engaging the Concert Audience is a must-read for any serious teaching artist! Dr. Wallace doesn't simply tell you what to do, but he teaches you what not to do and why. This book provides musicians with fresh and effective ways to present interactive programming to audiences of all ages, backgrounds, and musical tastes." - Jerome Jennings, drummer; leader of the Jerome Jennings Group; jazz educator; nominee, Grand Prix du Disque

"Engaging the Concert Audience propels us into the future with engaging thinking and masterful musicianship. These pages will lead you into fruitful and exciting thinking for navigating the waters of your performing career. David Wallace is my hero!" - Mark Wood, Emmy-winning composer, platinum recording-artist, original member and lead violinist of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, collaborator with Celine Dion, Kanye West, Lenny Kravitz