How many concerts do you attend a year


How many concerts do you attend on an average per year and what type of concerts do you attend. What seat do you strive for in the concert hall and what aspect of the sound do you enjoy.

I will save my reply until others have voiced in.
ramstl
Baltimore Symphony; Yuri Temirkanov, Director - I have a 9 concert subscription. I end up going to a few more, so we'll say a dozen. My 3 subscription seats are in a second tier box (3 seats) overlooking the stage on the soloist side (left as you look at the stage.) So the orchestra is below where I sit. The sound travels up very well, so I guess if it were an audio system it would be near field listening. Hall accoustics are not as much of an issue that close.


I probably go to a half dozen other concerts of chamber music, solo recitals, etc at various venues in the Baltimore, Washington DC area.


I sing in the Baltmore Choral Arts Society full chorus and chamber chorus (www.baltimorechoralarts.org). If this counts it is another 6 to 8 per year. Interestingly, I almost never attend a choral concert I am not performing in. Being in the Chorus and usually in or near the front row, I guess it is surround sound listening.


I also usually get in at least one opera or ballet a year.

At the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore the best seats for soundstage, orchestra balance, etc, etc is actually the middle of the cheap seats in the upper tier in the back of the hall. The sound up/back there is really great, unlike many concert halls (and it is cheap). The seats up there are usually full of musicians and other music lovers who know how good it is up there. The people who go to be seen are on the main orchestra floor level. I also like to watch, so my view of the whole orchestra from above in the box is perfect.

About 50 - almost all are classical music. The bigger the ensemble is, the farer away from the stage we sit (yet still in reasonable distance f.e. about row 20 to 30).
Sometimes - the smaller the ensemble the worse the concert's sound can be in comparison to the high end system at home, which always lets me appreciate the quality of the latter.
There are recordings which beat EVERY live sound experience - yet still live is not only a sound-matter as y'all sure do know...
Merry Christmas!
Its getting harder to find music we're willing to pay $100 or more to hear. Seems that the musical directors in So Cal vibrate between Mozart and Mahler, ignoring most of what was written in between, except of course for Beethoven's overexposed warhorses. We'd eagerly buy tickets to hear more Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schuman, Dvorak or Brahms, but the opportunities are becoming all too rare.
i attend 6 or 7 colorado symphony concerts a year, sitting in the seats owned by a friend who's a member of the board (dead center- about twenty rows from the conductor; we have a hall in the round modeled, unfortunately, after berlin's). i also go to an average of 2 rock/blues/groove concerts/mo and usually sit (sit?) in the vip or comp sections, courtesy of my well-connected older son. (hey, i supported him for more than 20 years--this is just a little payback!) -cfb