Take advantage of free musical performances in the summer!

I've been enjoying a number of free (or almost free) concerts this summer. Our town, Newmarket, Ontario, and the neighbouring towns all have musical evenings in parks, and Jazz Festivals, and even musical entertainment at weekly farmers markets.

I'm recommending to musicians and to music-lovers to take advantage of these concerts. Musicians will get fans this way. I've bought a CD, and "friended" and "liked" and "retweeted" about a number of the acts that I enjoyed. Listeners will expand their musical taste to include genres they might not have considered.

These performances have given me and my children excellent experiences of seeing and hearing all kinds of live music with very little effort and no stress- short travel time, no dress-up time, no worries about being late or whether we can sit still or hold in our coughs or comments...

We've got lawn chairs and blankets ready to go in the family minivan at all times, just like the summers of soccer when my girls were little.

We love music and listen to the radio and our playlists on iTunes, watch YouTube videos and posts on other social networking sites, and we make music at home on our keyboard, guitar, ukulele and recorders. We sing and dance at home and when shopping. Music is a big part of our lives, and watching other musicians perform is special. The live experience leaves a greater impression than just hearing a song on the radio.

Live music, not a recording of a live concert, is special. When you're singing along, clapping and waving your hands, and applauding for a particularly good guitar solo, you make real lasting connections to the music and the artists. Often, the artists stick around to shake hands and share hugs with fans. And, they sell CD's and merchandise to provide physical souvenirs of these wonderful experiences.

I've said it before about classical music, in this post, that performers need to go out into the public, in flash mobs or free concerts, so that people can be introduced in a very positive way to music that they feel cautious about, or have preconceived negative feelings about. And, I'd like to extend that to jazz, funk, metal, any kind of music. Every kind of music takes some getting used to. Musicians have to be willing to go out there to summer music festivals and farmers markets to get their sound out there into the public ear.

In this article by Graeme McMillan on the Time website, See, Hear: Rediscovering the Pleasures of Live Music, the author argues that the communal experience of live music might be the best way to experience music. He says:

I feel like I’ve slowly come to understand how important the live music experience can be to bring us out of ourselves in terms of taste and expectation, and introduce us to something new, wrapped up in the more familiar guise of just going to a show.