Yet another person on both sides of the divide. I' ve been a performer, and I've managed and got bookings for a folk-chorus. This year, my role as a booker is predominating.

My desire with any performer is to get them to a place where they can get the best audience, and presumably also maximize their profits, even if its not sponsored by my own series.

My energies, and the energies of my society's volunteers, allow me to book only a finite number of concerts a year, and I want some diversity among my offerings. I will consider a good performer even in a genre that I'm not personally into, but that falls within the purview of my society (traditional music). I consult with acquaintances who have expertise in that specific genre, and solicit their advice. (It's great having access to a stable of experts.) I like to tell members of my society, "If I haven't booked somebody YOU don't want to hear, then I'm not programming broadly enough."

I generally won't book someone I've never heard, at least via recordings, unless they come with sterling recommendations from someone I trust. But I will gladly book a performer whose talents excite me but who does not yet have a reputation, and enthusiastically promote them to help them develop a name. And one of the peculiarities of my core audience is that I can sometimes book someone whose scholarship or research makes up for a lack of performance savvy, but that luxury is, as I said, an idiosyncrasy of a part of my constituency.

I get a lot more requests from performers than I can book. I'm fortunate to live in a city with many other venues, and I often tell performers that they should contact such-and-such a venue or series, which is more in line with their performance style or income expectations. (Or, not said, a place more conducive to singer-songwriters who don't build on traditional music styles, or a second-line venue commensurate with their lack of mastery of their style, where they can gain experience and learn to be better performers.) And sometimes I just have to say "the dates you proposed are thick with previous commitments; perhaps some other time."

I can try to take my audience in new directions, and tap into an additional audience that suit the performer, but I can only push my core group so far, and I have limited resources to promote outside of my usual group. If my audience chooses not to come, I have an empty hall and either a small take for the performer or a disastrous debit for my series. If appropriate, I can try to present some of these events as house concerts with no guarantees to the performer (and no hall rental costs), which minimizes risks.

And by the by-laws of my society, I'm term-limited. After two years, somebody else gets to impose their judgements and tastes on the Society's booking process.

--Charlie Baum