Texas Guest says, "The reality is that young folks today do not go out to pubs and sit and listen to music -they go out to socialize and to party."

Early on, when I first started singing in coffeehouses, I patterned the sets I sang after what I had seen nightclub performers (of various genres) doing. Most of them would do an "act" of twenty-five to thirty-five minutes maybe three or four times during the evening. I generally did the same thing, usually starting every hour on the hour. This left a good half-hour for people to chat freely without disturbing others who wanted to listen to me, and it also gave the (PC alert!—sexist word!) waitresses a chance to ask people who had been there for a couple of sets, "Would you care to reorder, ahem, ahem?"

One coffeehouse owner kvetched at me because thought I was slacking off. He was used to piano-bars where the pianist played background music for most of an hour, then took a five minute break. I explained to him what I was doing and he still didn't buy it, so I tried it his way. Didn't work anywhere near as well. Less turnover, fewer reorders, and people tended to talk a lot if I sang more that half an hour. So I went back to my own way.

I think tailoring one's presentation to the nature of the venue makes a big difference.

Dunno if that contains any worthwhile information, but I just thought I'd toss it out there.

Ruminations and speculations.

Seattle Opera's General Director Speight Jenkins recently announced that Seattle Opera has the highest per-capita attendance of any opera company in the country. The Seattle Symphony has shown a recent growth in attendance, especially since it moved into its new digs at Benaroya Hall, and Pacific Northwest Ballet also boasts the highest per capita attendance of any ballet company in the country, with 11,000 subscribers (!!). Early Music Guild performances are generally quite well attended. The Seattle Youth Symphony is doing well, as is the Bellevue Philharmonic.

Seattle and environs probably has more live theater, such as the Seattle Repertory Theater, A Contemporary Theater (ACT), and various small theater groups than most cities its size. The Fifth Avenue Theater with its road-show productions of Broadway shows is doing well.

All of these are all-out, fully professional productions. Seattle Opera is the fourth largest opera company in the country and features well-known singers. The Seattle Symphony under the baton of Gerard Schwarz is considered a world-class orchestra.

Smaller musical groups such as The Esoterics, or the group that local folk singer Nancy Quensé sings with, The Medieval Women's Choir, usually performing in large churches and almost always fill the venue.

And then there are the eleventy-fourteen sports stadiums that the tax-payers are repeatedly mugged to pay for, and they seem to be pretty well attended, despite the fact that (in addition to the tax subsidies) what you have to pay for tickets would buy you a good late-model used car.

I'm not sure how well rock concerts are attended around here because I don't follow that, but the Paramount Theater, at least, almost always has something going on and I've heard that ticket prices are similar to those of sports events.

The Northwest Folklife Festivals are shoulder-to-shoulder mob scenes every Memorial Day weekend, but I seriously doubt that the vast majority of people who go to it are there to hear folk music, or anything that even pretends to be folk music. The Bumbershoot Arts Festivals, same venue but over the Labor Day weekend, is a similar crush of people.

So in spite of gas prices and recent raises in the cost of living, it isn't that people are not going out anymore.

I'm not sure what all this tells us. . . .

Interesting thing to contemplate:   almost all of the above have regular subscribers. Seattle Opera, for example, sells season tickets, and they almost always have close to sell-out houses. Eleven performances of Verdi's Aida is going on now. Four more operas coming up, along with individual recitals of singers such as tenor Ben Heppner. Most of these events are pre-sold, some through subscriptions, and are always to capacity or near capacity houses.

Can we learn anything from "the big kids on the block?" I don't know. I'm just asking.

Don Firth