*cino needs YOU to vote each day in December to help us win a $50,000 grant to renovate the old kindergarten room at Huss School! Why vote? Read on…
Reason #29: A small, professional quality venue can put Three Rivers on the map for national touring artists seeking grassroots house shows, with mutual benefits to the artist and the city.
As the music industry has been changing significantly over the past decade, some artists have been adapting by forming more personal relationships with their listeners. They’re doing house shows or raising money to record through donations and pre-sales. In return for our response as listeners, they give us the gift of good art. We make it possible for them to do what they were created to do and they, in turn, change us with beauty.
Every once in a while, I get an e-mail from amazing musicians we know who are looking for spaces to put on small shows and every time, I wish we already had a place to accommodate them. I picture the film by the Icelandic band Sigur Ros, who took a break from world tours to embrace their own small country, playing wherever they could find space to rural, intergenerational audiences. It’s easy to go after the major markets, but for artists and audiences who are longing for something more than just a commercial transaction, smaller is better and local has more heart. We hope that Huss School can provide a space for some of these kinds of interactions to take place, with a mutual benefit to the artist and to our small city.
December 29, 2010