Live Performing Arts Events for Every Man, Woman, and Child: A Look Back By Thomas Wolf

A recent article in the New York Times[1] brought nostalgic memories. Entitled “A Mother on a Mission: World Class Music for Everyone,” it recounted the history of the Community Concerts organization that for decades played an outsize role in making available live performing arts events throughout the United States.  Launched in the 1920s, Community Concerts was a uniquely American concept that greatly enhanced the number of cities and towns getting into the concert business.  It also helped performers like me get bookings in places that otherwise would never have heard of us.

In small towns, whether in churches, high school auditoriums or make-shift venues, Community Concerts offered local people a chance to hear some of the finest performers of the day.

Big cities in the United States had a long-standing tradition of presenting the performing arts.  But most smaller communities did not.  The mission of Community Concerts was “to offer every, man, woman, and child in this country the opportunity to experience the magic of live performance by bringing artists and audiences together.”[2]   Working to accomplish this mission was one of the largest artist management companies in the nation, Columbia Artists Management (CAMI), based in New York City.  Its aspirations were not entirely altruistic.  By setting up series in new communities, it could expand opportunities for performers on its roster (and fill its coffers with commissions at the same time).  In time, instrumentalists, chamber groups, dance companies, orchestras, theatre troupes, opera companies—even comedians, magicians, and other offbeat entertainers (literally tens of thousands of performers)—would owe part of their livelihoods to Community Concerts.  For people in small towns (and at times they were very small)—whether in churches, high school auditoriums, or even make-shift venues—it was a chance to hear some of the finest performers of the day.

Volunteers in these communities would organize a performing arts series, book the halls, promote the events, and sell the tickets.  But in order to take uncertainty out of the equation and eliminate financial risk, there was a brilliant catch to the Community Concerts ticket-selling scheme and budget development.  Tickets were sold a season ahead of time in an intensive one-week campaign (if you wanted to attend, you had to purchase tickets then and only then). Furthermore, you could only purchase tickets for an entire season of events (no single ticket sales allowed). Once the money was raised, it would be clear how much was available to spend on performers (artists would be engaged within the limits of the available funds). Doing away with discretionary single ticket sales made possible another concept—instead of ticket buyers, those audience members who opted in were purchasing what were called “memberships,” receiving special cards attesting to the fact.  Membership conveyed extra benefits beyond attendance in your home town.  If you were a member of a Community Concerts organization in your own home town, for example, you could flash your membership card and be offered free reciprocal seating in another town (on a space available basis).

The large New York-based talent management company vetted and supplied the performers and provided advice as to their selection and name recognition.  This virtually guaranteed that the local volunteers, who often had little expertise when it came to choosing performing artists, booked reliable and proven players and avoided embarrassing mistakes.  The general approach was to spend the bulk of the budget on one or more very big name artists and/or large group attractions (like a dance company, for example) that people would likely want to see.  The rest of the series could be filled with low-fee offerings. Since it was necessary for audience members to purchase the whole series, the presenter did not have to worry about selling single tickets for that lesser known talent. Whether or not people showed up for those other shows was their business.

Imagine attending a fully staged production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni by Goldovsky Opera Theatre, right on your local high school auditorium stage for the price of a few dollars compliments of Community Concerts. This presentation from 1971, of which I was a part, went to over 50 communities, many quite small.

For artists on the Community Concerts roster, this new network proved a bonanza (at its height Community Concerts was active in over a thousand communities).  And though CAMI originally expanded the network of towns solely for performers under its own management, an anti-trust suit that went to the U.S. Supreme Court made this restrictive roster illegal, so artists from other managements eventually had to be allowed in.  Indeed Community Concerts was a great source of engagements for all the musicians in my family (including me when I started touring) even though none of us was represented by CAMI. On one tour alone, my uncle Boris Goldovsky’s Opera Theatre realized fully a third of its bookings through Community Concerts. For some artists, an entire tour might be made up of Community Concert bookings.

For some of the performers though, Community Concerts could be a mixed blessing since their normal fees were often discounted and the national management required a very large slice of the pie as a commission.  This economic reality was especially challenging for younger performers just starting out. Since they generally were considered “fillers” for a series that used the bulk of its budget on big-name attractions, the lesser-known individuals or groups had to offer themselves inexpensively in order to be competitive with other “no-names.”  One young brass quintet with which I was familiar in the 1980s played over 100 community concerts one year and came back with very little money to show for it.  By the time they paid their travel expenses and Community Concerts had taken a third of their discounted fee as its commission, the group netted very little. Still, the tour had been worthwhile one of the members told me. How else would a young unknown ensemble promote itself across the continent and begin to establish a reputation? Their only complaint was the exhaustion of performing so many concerts night after night, always in a different community with many hours of travel in between.  It was the only way to make enough to support themselves though after three seasons, the group decided to forego the stress and strain of Community Concerts tours. This was no problem for the management. There was always fresh young talent to fill the void.

An inscribed Civic Music Association program by my great aunt and uncle (the duo-piano team Luboshutz & Nemenoff) from Waco, Texas (April 19, 1940). The New York management office supplied these generic programs free of charge to presenters though they lacked the details of the time and place of the event. Enterprising presenters or audience members had to write that information in themselves.

 While Community Concerts was by far the most successful of these presenter networks with links to a particular talent supply company, it was not the only one and not even the first.  Two others – the “All Star Series” and the “Civic Music Committees,” linked to other New York managements, actually pre-dated Community Concerts and operated alongside it for many years.  Many of the management organizations behind these brands offered other services such as supplying printed programs.  In the case of the Civic Music Association, for example (linked to NBC Artist Services in New York), a community presenter could get printed programs delivered free of charge. The catch was that the printed programs were generic (that is, they did not list the specific community, location, and date of performances).  Enterprising audience members would write in the concert details in pen and some would even go backstage after the performance and secure inscriptions and signatures of the touring artists for their scrapbooks. What an opportunity to meet and greet famous musicians in their very own town!

Many of my most colorful experiences on the road were in tiny towns on these circuits.  On one tour for Goldovsky Opera in the early 1970s (I was playing flute and serving as tour coordinator), we were scheduled to perform in Devils Lake, North Dakota (population around 7,000).  There weren’t many hotels in Devils Lake and by the time we tried to book rooms for our company of 40, most were full. It turned out to be bird hunting season and the town was inundated with visitors sporting hunting gear and touting shotguns.  In the end, we had to settle for the only option in town with available space – a rickety old establishment with tiny rooms and shared bathrooms.  Lest we might forget that it was hunting season, a large sign in the bathroom I was using proclaimed, “DO NOT WASH BIRD IN SINK!”

The afternoon of the performance, it started to snow and I feared that either the performance would be cancelled or we would perform to an empty hall. But to my surprise, the local auditorium was full that night, the crowd was enthusiastic, and after the show, volunteers put on a community supper for the entire company with the best home-made food we had eaten in a long while.  For our group of performers, half-starved with mediocre food in road-side restaurants for weeks at a time, it was one of the happiest evenings of the tour.

Boris Goldovsky, Don Giovanni, Goldovsky Opera, Luboshutz and Nemenoff, Musical memories, Community ConcertsClaire PurgusCommunity Concerts, Luboshutz and Nemenoff, Boris Goldovksy