Recommended Artists
If you’re a professional soloist or chamber ensemble, apply to be on our database and receive free promotion to our members.
For Music Professionals - Become a Recommended Artist
Our new Recommended Artists Guide is a searchable database of professional soloists and ensembles. We will promote you to our 3,800+ member groups across the UK.
How does it work?
Applications are open all year round. If your application is successful, you will be listed in the guide for two years, and can reapply to be included in consecutive years.
You will still be assessed on a range of specific criteria and will only be accepted for the guide if they reach a certain standard.
In order to keep fees affordable for our members, there will be a maximum fee that artists can quote.
How to apply
You can apply to appear in our directory using an online application form. Applications are assessed by a team of staff and volunteer listeners. You can apply at any time, and if you are accepted, you will appear in the guide for two years, after which time you will need to re-apply.
Fees information
To ensure artists in the guide are affordable to our members we only consider artists who quote fees that are no higher than:
- £600 for a solo artist (no accompaniment)
- £750 for a solo artist with an accompanist (the accompanist does not need to be named)
- £850 for a duo (must be an established duo who work together on a regular basis, and both people must be named in the application)
- £1200 for a trio
- £1400 for a quartet
- £300 per person for larger ensembles
Fees quoted do not include travel expenses, but must include VAT.
How applications are assessed
We require three assessments that show you have met our criteria before you can be listed in the guide. To carry out the assessment we ask our members and volunteer listeners if they have attended any of your recent performances, or can attend a forthcoming one (we ask you to provide complimentary tickets, and will contact you to make arrangements).
Your application will be kept open until we have received three reports.
Assessment criteria
The assessment is in the form of comments rather than marks. We are looking for performances where the assessor is enthusiastic about the performance they have seen, and where it is clear that performers rate highly in the following areas:
- Technical ability
- Balance and cohesion of ensemble
- Musical engagement
- Stage presence
- Programming
- Interaction with the audience
How to apply
- The contact details of the person completing the form
- Description and photograph of yourself / your group
- Your location (nearest town/city and postcode)
- Your online profile (website and social media links)
- Your fees
- Booking contact details
- Most recent concerts in the UK
Unfortunately not. If you are applying as a soloist, then we can only assess performances where you are performing as a soloist (with or without accompaniment). If you would like one of your ensembles to be featured in the guide, please make a separate application for them.
If you are applying as a soloist, then yes. If you are part of a chamber group, we can only consider performances by the group as a whole, and not separate individual performances by members of the group.
At least one performance must be for the full-size group, the others can be of varying sizes.
Not at the moment. These performances are harder for us to assess under the current criteria, but we aim to include these in the future.
Yes. It is important to our members that you can demonstrate that you have undertaken educational work and so we will assess these performances. However, we will need to assess at least one recital performance, as these are our primary focus. If you are not able to include one at this stage, we will send an assessor to a future performance.
We will send an acknowledgement of your application, and shortly afterwards we will contact you to let you know the status of your application and how and when your application will be assessed.
Fees
All information that you give us at the point of applying will form your final entry in the guide, if you are accepted. Please make sure that you have considered your fees carefully before submitting the form, bearing in mind the limits mentioned above and the fact that these fees will be valid for two years. You can change your listed fees once your two-year period is up, as part of the re-application process.
Yes, if it is the member that offers the higher fee in the first place. We encourage our members to pay more if they can – however, please don’t expect this. If someone asks you to quote a fee and they say that they got your details from the Recommended Artists guide, please quote the fee that you have submitted to us.
Assessment
We would like to receive three reports for each artist before accepting them into the guide. This helps us to ensure that we have a balanced and wide-ranging assessment for all applicants. In some cases, our listeners will have heard you perform recently, and so we will not need to send listeners to any further performances as they can complete reports straight away. If we do need to send listeners to hear you perform, it will be for up to three separate performances.
Either one or two. Some of our listeners attend alone, but others bring their partner with them (often because their partner is driving them there and back!). Please assume that we will require two tickets for each performance until we are able to confirm.
We will contact you to let you know which performances will be attended and to ask you for the complimentary tickets. If tickets are required, we will endeavour to give you as much notice as possible.
When writing their report, listeners are asked to consider musicianship and technical ability, interaction and engagement with the audience, programming and repertoire, and the audience’s response, as well as their own personal enjoyment of the performance.
Listeners are under no obligation to introduce themselves to the performers: some will choose to do so because they want to find out more about you, but some prefer to remain anonymous during the process. In all cases, listeners are unable to give feedback to you about the performance.
Yes, but we would ask you to let us know if this is the case so that we can pass the information to the listener and take this into account when considering your application and the listener’s assessments.
We will ask you to provide details of another performance we can send a listener to. Your application will be held open until three assessments have been received, at which point we will make a decision and communicate this to you. There is no time limit on this process.
Applications are kept in progress until three assessment reports have been received. We will then make a decision about whether to approve the application or not.
After the assessment
We can only let you know if your application has been successful once three listener reports have been received, so it depends on how soon listeners are able to report on and/or attend your performances. We will endeavour to keep you informed of the status of your application on a regular basis.
We ask that you wait for two years before applying again.
Please contact the panel administrator if you require feedback.
If your application is successful, your entry will be listed in our online guide for two years. After this time, you will need to reapply. We will contact you to let you know when your entry is about to expire.
Being listed in the guide does not guarantee that you will receive any bookings. If our members do want to book you, they could contact you at any time during the two-year period.
We regularly remind our members about the existence of the guide and how it can be used. We do not promote individual artists within the guide, but rather the guide as a whole.
We provide support, resources and a community for leisure-time music groups across the UK.