Engaging professional artists

Booking professional musicians can be financially challenging for many leisure-time groups. Making Music offers members specially reduced or subsidised rates to make booking and engaging artists more affordable.

Philip and Dorothy Green Young Artists subsidies

The Philip and Dorothy Green Young Artists (PDGYA) scheme enables young musicians at the start of their careers to gain vital performance experience across the UK, while Making Music members can engage some of the very best young musical talent at a reduced cost. 

Working with professional musicians is a great way for your group to develop musically, with great benefits for the professional as well. Here are our top tips to help your professional engagements run smoothly.

Below we've compiled the best practice tips that will enable the professional musician you’ve booked to give the very best of themselves, and it comes at no extra cost to your music group.

Initial contact

The intial contact with your proposed professional musician should include:

In this recording of our webinar, guest speakers discussed how the programming of living music creators can influence and diversify the repertoire of the future.

This event had a double focus: helping you understand more about the benefits and challenges of commissioning a music creator, and also exploring who you should commission and how to broaden your search and find the right music creator for your group.

We welcomed guest speakers:

Founded by Dan Goren and launched in 2013, Composers Edition is a unique publishing enterprise, which works to bring composers and performers together, and facilitates and celebrates music making involving contemporary repertoire. 

The Composers Edition team is especially focussed on opening up new music to musicians and programmers who might feel uncertain about what and how to programme or commission new work.

We have created a template contract for engaging freelance performers in a one-off performance or series of performances.

We have created it with lawyers, and it is intended to be a starting point only. It should not be considered a finalised legal document or as constituting legal advice. Neither Making Music nor its legal advisors shall be liable for any decisions made or action taken in reliance on this document, or for any damage arising from its use. The contract is suitable for use in all countries of the United Kingdom. 

Opera Anywhere is passionate about producing accessible, innovative and entertaining opera and operetta for all ages. 

Making Music members can book established professional musicians and ensembles at a subsidised fee. In turn, the artists gain exposure and more opportunities for bookings.

We are delighted to be preparing to launch a new and exclusive Recommended Artists Guide, an online database of affordable professional artists to book specially by leisure-time music groups and promoters.

The pandemic has thrown all kinds of challenges in the way of group music making. However, our member groups have found ways to rehearse or safely put on performances whether entirely online, in person, or a combination of both - all while managing to mitigate the risks of Covid infection. Read about how they have done this in their own words.