Organ Recitals: 10 Tips for Getting Successful Concert Engagements

Many organists want to develop a successful recital career. This means that they must play recitals regularly. Playing recitals can be very exciting and worthwhile to pursue but you must know how to get such contracts in advance. In this article, I would like to share with you 10 steps for getting successful concert engagements.

1. Create an original and exciting recital program. Think of the ways you could be unique among many hundreds of organists. Keep in mind your audience, an instrument, and your own capabilities.

2. Master this program. Do your best to learn this program thoroughly. Even if you will plan to play your concert from the scores, I recommend you memorize all the pieces in your program.

3. Develop a strong professional portfolio. Create professional website and a page on social media sites with your bio, video samples of your recordings, calendar of past and future concert engagements and start a blog.

4. Start submitting your videos to YouTube. Share them on social media sites. Be careful not to spam and always think of your readers and listeners first so that they get value from your postings.

5. Find a venue. Look online for possible churches, concert halls with nice organs where you would like to play your concert. Make a list of these places with contacts.

6. Send your proposal to the organisers. Write an attractive concert proposal and send it to your prospective contacts. It is crucial that you make an offer that would be interesting to these people. When writing this document, first think why they should select you to play a concert from hundreds of other organists.

7. You can also send some letters of recommendation along with the proposal. Since only a small percentage of your contacts will ever reply to you, it is important that you write to as many people as possible.

8. Decide on the dates and sign the contract. If your proposal will seem interesting to the organisers, you will need to set up your concert dates and sign the written contract agreement. At this point but not earlier make sure you discuss the issue of honorarium with them.

9. Submit the exact concert information to the organisers. Once the recital contract is done and the organisers receive your signed copy of it, it is time to send them the exact program of your recital along with the professional photo and CV.

10. Write the program notes and send excerpts to the organisers. Use a language that the regular organ music listener would understand. This will help for publicity purposes.

Use these steps when looking for concert engagements today. If you succeed in getting your first recital contract, it will be quite exciting for you and it may start to open up new possibilities because one event frequently leads to another.

You can also recycle the steps you take in preparation for recitals for the future events. This way you will develop a system which will be reliable and efficient.

By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my free Organ Practice Guide.

Or if you want to learn to improvise in the style of Bach, I suggest you check out my free 9 day mini course in Keyboard Prelude Improvisation.