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WSO outdoor pops - some numbers
A follow-up to last week’s thinking-aloud post on bringing the Waco Symphony Orchestra back to downtown for an outdoor pops concert:
The outdoor pops concerts were held in the late 1980s and early 1990s and drew crowds of 6,000 to 8,000 people (Susan Taylor, executive director of the Waco Symphony Association, thinks attendence may have been as high as 10,000, and that could be; I just remember the hillside surrounding the Indian Spring Park amphitheatre blanketed with people).
It’s not cheap. The cost of hiring 50-60 orchestra musicians for a pops concert runs in the ballpark of $18,000 to $20,000 (and that’s less than the cost of a full orchestra for a regular season concert).
In contrast, the city’s Jonathan Cook tells me his four-concert Brazos Nights budget runs about $35,000, thanks to help from corporate sponsorships (Spanish-language radio station KWOW-FM, “La Ley,” for instance, underwrote part of the costs for the Cinco de Mayo-themed Brazos Nights concert on May 2). Entertainers are paid $500 to $7,500, but he adds it’s hard to find a good headliner for under $10,000 these days. And with tomorrow’s gas prices …
Expensive, but doable, if there’s a way to find new corporate underwriting and/or private donors. Charging admission would add a whole layer of logistical complication to such a concert, but if you could get 2,000 people to pay $5 for a pops concert, it seems like you could knock a good chunk out of your operating cost (at least according to Hoover economics, which, admittedly, is a bit naive and simplistic).
Any way, it’s more food for thought as you’re watching Madagascar Thursday night, June 19, at Heritage Square …
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