Halls for Hire in London

If you are a musician or composer, you’ll want to get your work out there at some point. While your orchestra may have many dates booked to play, this rarely gives you the chance to play the pieces that you want to, and to show your talent off in the way that suits you best. The solution? Putting on your own classical music concert of course! This is a difficult event to organise, but immensely rewarding and 100% worthwhile.

Step 1: Get the Musicians Together

Before you have a concert, you’ll need some musicians. Reach out to people that you’ve always wanted to work with or have worked with before and explain to them your idea. If you are working on a collaborative piece, it’s important that you start early to ensure that you play well together. Invite musicians from a range of disciplines to make sure that your concert has variety. At the same time, the music should have a certain theme around it that brings it all together. Getting all of the musicians you need together will take some time, so have a date in your mind as to when you want the concert to take place and reach out early.

Step 2: Find the Perfect Venue

Discovering the ideal venue for a classical music concert comes with its own set of problems, so start your search early. There are hundreds of different halls for hire in London, you just need to take the time to view some of them before deciding on the one that’s perfect for your event. With a classical music concert, there are extra items that you need to take into consideration before booking.

Set Up

While the concert hall you choose might seem perfect, you need to look at how all of the instruments are going to be placed, whether the venue has the capacity to fit them all, and whether it’s equipped acoustically to deal with it all. Will it be easy to get a piano into the venue? If not, you might need to look elsewhere. Thinking about how your music is going to sound to everyone in the audience is crucial, so you’ll need to thoroughly test these before booking.

Technical Issues

While it’s a classical concert, you’ll still need a lot of tech up and running. Some of the instruments will be electric, and you’ll need to make sure that your venue has the capacity to deal with this alongside multiple microphones and lighting. The venue might have their own tech team, but you also might need to hire some of your own people who are used to working at classical concerts.

Accessibility

We’ve already mentioned the difficulty of getting a piano into a venue, but you’ll need to think about how difficult access will be for all of your musicians. How much parking is there nearby? Is there good access to public transport for those who will need to travel with an instrument? You might find a hall that seems like it would be perfect, but if it’s difficult for the musicians to get to, you may find that some back out of the concert. You’ll also need to think about how your audience will get there. There’s no concert without them after all.

Step 3: Have a Grand Finale

While you may be thinking about your concert in terms of individual recitals, it’s important that you give the audience something big at the end of the show. The best way to do this is with a large collaborative piece that brings as many musicians from throughout the night together. This will take a lot of work and practise, so you will need a good conductor to keep everyone together. If you have something like this however, you’ll sure to have a standing ovation from everyone.

Step 4: Promote

Once you have the date and the venue set, you need to start promoting your concert far and wide. Develop a poster that you can put up everywhere that’s local and start advertising on social media. Don’t be afraid to encourage the musicians involved to share it with as many people as they can. This isn’t the time to be modest. If you don’t get the ticket sales, then the concert isn’t going to be a success. Utilise the contacts that you already have and send them a personal message inviting them to attend. You can even take out advertisements in your local newspaper to promote your concert as much as you can.

Step 5: Tickets

The price of the tickets is something that you will need to carefully consider. Too low and you won’t make anything from the event or be able to pay the musicians and the other people that you’ve hired to help. Too high and you will struggle to fill the music hall that you’ve hired for the occasion. Take a look at what other similar events have been costed at and use this as your basis when pricing your tickets. Are seats closer to the front going to be priced differently? You will also need to make sure that it is easy for your audience to get hold of tickets. One way to boost sales is to have an early bird offer which will encourage people to buy well in advance in order to save money. You should have an easy to use online ticketing option, but tickets should also be available to purchase on the night if they are still available.

Organising a classical music concert takes some meticulous planning skills, not to mention hours of rehearsal time! Being able to bring the music that you love to a new and engaged audience makes to whole event worthwhile, and you’ll waste no time in starting to plan your next musical evening for them to enjoy.