How To Find Live Performances
Written by DrumSetDudeIn our last post, “Goal Number Two: Attending Live Performances“, we said that we were going to look at four different locations to listen to live music. We chose:
- Bars/Restaurants
- Performance venues
- Churches
- Schools and Universities
Our goal is to find a quick and convenient way to find the music we want to hear. I’d like to be able to use the internet if at all possible. Let’s take a look at each location and see how we did.
Bars and Restaurants
The best resource I’ve found for locating a local restaurant by food served and clubs by music featured is CitySearch.com. They cover most of the major metropolitan areas and will set a cookie in your browser so you only need to type http://www.citysearch.com once and select your metro area.
Once you find the club or restaurant you’re looking for it’s relatively easy to get a schedule. Some even post them online. Otherwise, it’s a quick call to get the info you need.
Performance Venues
If you know the artist you want to see and haven’t in a while you can head over to either TicketMaster.com or StubHub.com to see when they will be appearing in your area. They’re also a great place to check and see who else is coming around that you may not have known about.
TicketMaster.com is more for straight ticket purchases while StubHub.com allows you to buy and sell tickets securely. This means that you may be able to snag tickets you wouldn’t otherwise have gotten.
Churches
This one is a tough nut to crack. I wasn’t able to find any local or regional listing of churches by location or faith. I’m sure one exists and I would appreciate any help from my readers here.
The method I would recommend is to Google the name and city of the churches in your area and see if they are online. I know a lot of churches publish newsletters and many of these are online as well. These newsletters would be sure to list upcoming events and concerts would surely be listed there.
If you were unable to find them online you can always use the fallback-the yellow pages under Churches. They could either mail or fax you a schedule or point you to the address of their website where you could get it.
Schools and Universities
By schools I am referring to any pre-college level education. Programs put on by schools can range from children in their first concert ever to professional performances put on by junior high or high school students under the auspices of the music department at that school.
Most school districts are now online and you should be able to find your local school fairly easily. Again, many of them have regularly updated web schedules of events. If the schedule itself is not posted, you should at least be able to get the name of the head of the music department whom you could email or call to get a schedule.
Colleges, especially those with well-known music schools, should be A LOT easier. Most of them will have upcoming recitals and concerts posted on the front page of their school of music site. Again, if not, you should find the name of the Dean of the music school whom you could email.
I hope this article has been helpful to you in your search to find live performances in your area. You should be able to find something ranging from free school performances to those unbelievable seats you thought you’d never find.
Can You Help?
What are the secret ways you find live performances? Please leave me a comment below and share with everybody.
As long as I’ve helped you get one step closer to inviting music back into your life, I’ll feel I’ve been successful here.
Tags: bars and restaurants, church concerts, music school recitals, school programs, stubhub.com, ticketmaster.com
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