Modern Music: Design a Professional Concert Program in 5 Easy Steps

Finally, you have the date and your first music concert or recital, but you do not know how to put together your first program. Follow these five simple tips on designing a professional concert program.

1. Choose a title for the concert program
You could choose a title for your program as simple as "String Quartet Recital", something descriptive like "Long Lost Love Songs" or something outlandish like "Insanity Jam". Why should your concert program have a title? A concert title helps the audience have a better understanding of what links the pieces together. For example, my upcoming multimedia oratorio Creation is part of a larger music program that centers around the theme of "life".

2. Keep program design simple
Unless you have the funds to create a large full color glossy concert program with ads, similar to ones handed out at Broadway shows or professional orchestra concerts, you probably want to stick with a simple program design. Folding a landscape letter-sized resume' stock paper makes an excellent starting point for formatting your program. Have the title, venue, time, and a simple graphic along the front. A nice border can accent the graphic. The inside pages will have the program order, program notes, and composer information.

3. Use a clean design for the inside of the concert program.
Keep the fonts the same, using italics or bold text appropriately for music composition names or headings. Make sure the font is large enough to read and is legible. Lengthy program notes and composer bios can be added as an insert while short descriptions (of one or two sentences) can be noted underneath the name of the composition.

You can follow this example:

Horizon for Orchestra (2000) Composed by S. Pena Young (b. 1977)
Performed by the Florida Orchestra

Horizon for Orchestra uses the unique timbre of the percussion section and the orchestra to mirror the journey of life, ever going, full of complexities, and propelling forward towards a semblance of hope.

4. Adding Special Acknowledgments
At the end of the concert program, include information such as acknowledgments to any donors, volunteers, and/or staff members who contributed to the music concert. You can also add contact information about the artists, venue, or composers on the back of the concert program.

5. Digitizing the program
Many artists are finding that digitizing their concert programs and posting them online to arts websites, social networking sites, artist blogs, and artist e-groups not only creates a permanent archive of their work, but encourages other artists and musicians to check out upcoming concerts. Posting your concert program online is fairly simple and can be done in a variety of ways. The simplest way to digitize your concert program is to save it as a .pdf file and upload it to the artist or music website of your choice. If you do not have a readily available .pdf, then scan in the program and post the resultant file, just be sure that you are not infringing on any copyrights (ex. the program cover graphic).

For more examples of concert programs, check out these online concert programs:
Jackson Civic Chorus Program
The Buffalo Philharmonica Orchestra
Yourtown Symphony Orchestra