A house concert or home concert is a musical concert or performance art that is presented in someone's home or apartment, or a nearby small private space such as a barn, apartment rec room, lawn, or backyard."VIDEO: House concert in Royal Oak," Daily Tribune, June 29, 2010. Found at Oakland Daily Tribune website. Accessed July 20, 2010."Set Your Ass in the Grass 4th of July House Concert," Bozeman Daily Chronicle, July 2, 2010. Found at Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Accessed July 20, 2010.Jenny Williams, "Marian Call House Concert, or The Importance of Music in Our Lives," By June 27, 2010, Wired "Geekdad" (blog). Found at Wired website. Accessed July 20, 2010.Ben Salmon, "Sisters musician plays show: Dennis McGregor plans solo house concert," The Bulletin (Bend, Oregon), June 25. 2010. Found at The Bend Bulletin website. Accessed July 20, 2010."Scots playing in Merville" (Photo caption: "Findlay Napier and Gillian Frame will perform July 18 at a Merville house concert as well as offering guitar and fiddle workshops"), Comox Valley Record (Comox Valley, British Columbia), July 8, 2010. Found at Comox Valley Record website. Accessed July 20, 2010.William Demarest, "From Alaska to New City: Folk Singer Brings Haunting Tunes to 'The Borderline': Local folk music club hosts Kray Van Kirk for intimate concert." New City Patch (blog), July 15, 2010. Found at New City Patch website . Accessed July 20, 2010.House concerts website About Us page. Accessed July 21, 2010.Jim Kavanagh, "Intimate shows bring down the house", CNN, June 10, 2010. Found at CNN website. Accessed July 21, 2010.Andrew McGinn, "Freedom Farm Acoustic Concert season opens: The trend of 'house concerts' — it's exactly what it sounds like — has come to the area," Springfield News-Sun, April 16, 2010. Three photos by Marshall Gorby; captions: (1) "Gary Haber stands in front of the century-old livestock barn he turned into a concert venue. (2) "John Batdorf, a Springfield native who went on to record for Atlantic as one-half of the early '70s duo Batdorf and Rodney, will return to the area to play an intimate house concert, part of a growing trend of live shows." (3) "Gary Haber, owner of Freedom Farm just outside of West Liberty, in his "concert hall," the loft of a century-old barn." Found at Springfield News-Sun website. Accessed July 21, 2010.
Logistics considerations of holding a concert in a contemporary home include audience capacity, collecting cash or donations, whether the proceeds will be split with the host, marketing and whether to publicize the venue, the equipment or sound system, to provide refreshments or to hold a potluck, whether to have one show or present a series, and the choice of musicians.
Common in the historical past, but now unusual in the age of large concert arenas, a house concert is almost invariably described as an "intimate" experience.John H. Baron, Intimate music: a history of the idea of chamber music, p. 1. (Pendragon Press, 1998) . Found at Google Books. Accessed July 21, 2010. A true house concert needs to be distinguished from a smaller musical ensemble, recital at a high school, or modern chamber music concert, which may sometimes be called a "house show" or "house concert".See, e..g, "Annual Recital: Valley Stream music school celebrates the greats," Long Island Herald, July 14, 2010. Found at Long Island Herald website. Accessed July 20, 2010.
Logistics Audience capacity for a house concert is typically smaller than at a coffeehouse or club, but some concert spaces may accommodate 200 people; others can entertain two dozen or so.
Generally tickets are not sold in advance, but cash is collected at the show. Sometimes, the money collected goes straight to the performers, with no "profit motive" on the presenter's part. However, at other times, the purpose of the show is to collect money to pay for rent, or is paid by a donation. In fact, calling it a donation may prevent zoning issues that a host is operating a business such as a cabaret illegally or without a license.
Traditionally, there is little or no sound system, so performers may play and sing acoustically, or perform or act without a microphone. Since at least the 1970s, however, extension cords, mult boxes, and other equipment innovations have enabled such performers to hook into a sound system, either inside or outside a house. Nonetheless, the musicians "use just enough equipment to make for a complete experience without being too loud for the neighbors."
Refreshments, if any, are usually either a "pot luck" brought by the listeners, or provided by the hosts using a bit of the gate receipts. Sometimes, the performers get a meal and/or lodging with the presenters as part of their compensation.
Most house concerts are "one-shots", but others are presented as a series, for example, every two to eight weeks over a "season", of anywhere from six to twelve months."The Playlist: Quick Hits," Columbia Free Times, July 13–19, 2010. Found at Columbia Free Times website . Accessed July 20, 2010. Some lesser-known musicians may go on tour with gigs consisting primarily of house concerts. Even notable musical acts, such as Sirsy, may schedule "private party" gigs while on tour.See Sirsy tour page. Accessed July 21, 2010.
Promotion House concerts are conducted "by invitation" (for practical reasons), social media such as Twitter or Facebook, or word of mouth, rather than as "public" concerts like a club or concert hall. However, in smaller towns and cities, the local media may help publicize such a concert. In an academic study on the cataloging of concert event ephemera, one of the only two flyers studied that did not have a publicized venue was for a house concert, the other being obscure.Michael J. Graves, "CONCERT EVENT METADATA: DESCRIBING CONCERTS EFFECTIVELY IN A DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT," A Master's paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Library Science, and Approved. (Chapel Hill, North Carolina April 2003). Found at School of Information and Library Science of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill website and Google Scholar website. All accessed July 20, 2010.
Experience Now unusual in the age of large concert arenas, a house concert is almost invariably described as an "intimate" experience.Russ and Julie's House Concerts website . Accessed July 21, 2010. In "a small setting as a house concert, [a singer] fills the air with her voice and [a musician] with his guitar. You are surrounded by the music." It is "up close and personal." The Wyldwood Shows, in Austin, Texas, can accommodate 200 people in a "lush backyard setting for what amounts to a near festival-like atmosphere."
A house concert is also a unique experience in the United States of 2010; one blogger at Wired magazine wrote:
At house concerts, "you don't have worry about whether you'll have a good seat since the show is literally in the living room of the home ... at ... trailside Court, New City." This comes with a duty to recall "that this is a house concert, so behave accordingly and don't do anything you wouldn't do in your own house, OK?"
People host house concerts because they "want to share great music," or they may live in a town where "there are too few venues where people can go to experience great music in a close and friendly environment." One may also wish to host a home concert because it makes one happy, or "to give exposure to some incredible musicians whose talents [they] truly believe in and wish to help promote." A retired musician may be a host as "one way of reconnecting with that part of themselves."
Enjoyment of house concerts spans age groups, and includes younger kids and teenagersMyra Flynn, "Flynn: Finding an Audience," (Interview), Vermont Public Radio, July 13, 2010. Found at Vermont Public Radio website. Accessed July 20, 2010.:
Folk music singer-songwriter Carrie Elkin says of house concerts:
In the Seoul, South Korea, "The House Concert" series, the audience sits directly on the wooden floor along with the musicians so they can feel the vibration of the instruments, providing an even more intimate and "goose-bump" inspiring connection to the music and the performers. "The House Concert" organizer explains:
History
House concerts are not new, yet have had a recent resurgence in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Precursors Folk music, country music, and blues music have long histories of performances at people's homes and backyards. Most people's only experience of music was house concerts:
Early music was performed commonly as "house concerts"; even Mozart used the format. The lute, an instrument with a "treasure house of music", works best in very small concerts of early music: "The lute is not very loud, and so is not a candidate for Carnegie Hall. It is an intimate instrument, perfect for the player himself, or for a very few listeners. ... "
In the period of the Renaissance and Baroque, especially in the 16th century, all secular music was performed in a chamber of the nobleman's home, and thus called chamber music. Only in the 17th century did it come to mean either secular or religious music, and only in the time of Beethoven and later were halls built specifically for public concerts. Even into the 20th century, chamber music was performed in home concerts. Ralph Kirkpatrick recalled playing a clavichord at a house concert in Hamburg, Germany after 1929.Ralph Kirkpatrick, "On Playing the Clavichord," Early Music, Vol. 9, No. 3, Wind Issue (July 1981), pp. 293–305 (Oxford University Press). Abstracts found at JSTOR and websites. All accessed July 20, 2010.
From the mid-19th century until the mid-20th century, many wealthy individuals had pipe organs installed in their homes. Prior to the advent of recorded music, the organ was the only instrument able to provide a real approximation of orchestral music under the control of one performer, with sufficient volume to entertain a group of people. In Great Britain and Europe, and especially in America, a wealthy person's home was not considered complete without a pipe organ. The AEolian Organ Company in particular catered almost exclusively to this clientele. Many house organs were of modest size, with two manuals and 10 to 20 stops; however, the homes of the richest had organs that rivaled a cathedral organ in size. While many home organs began to have automatic player mechanisms (operating in a manner similar to the player piano roll system) from the 1890s, the highest artistic standard was, of course, a live performer. Members of the upper-class families, such as the Vanderbilts, Carnegies, Mellons, and Schwab had house concerts regularly for their friends to hear a performance by a noted artist on their pipe organ. Dependent on the taste of the host, these house concerts generally included very little "legitimate" organ music, and consisted mainly of arrangements of popular tunes, operatic overtures, and transcriptions of orchestral works. Several prominent organists such as Archer Gibson worked almost exclusively playing house parties.
On December 6, 1897, Norwegian romantic composer Edvard Grieg and his wife Nina Grieg, a lyric soprano, performed some of his music at a private concert at Windsor Castle for Queen Victoria and her court; she later hosted Pablo Casals and the Carl Rosa company.