With the current economy, many people have had to scale back on the things they buy, focusing their money more on the basics rather than luxuries. The decrease in buying has led some businesses and events to not do as well as they had in recent years. The Oregon Bach Festival, however, did not have that problem this year.
The Oregon Bach Festival once again reached record ticket sales, despite the troubled economy. George Evano,@@http://oregonbachfestival.com/people/staff/@@ Oregon Bach Festival director of communications, said that this is not the first time the festival reached record sales.
“We have had three-straight years of setting record sales,” Evano said.
This year, the festival made more than $550,000 in ticket sales. Compared to last year, this is a 2 percent increase in sales.
“We met what we were aiming for,” Evano said.
The record ticket sales are largely contributed to the ambition that the organization had this year. Evano said that this year was the most ambitious yet because of the increase in the number of concerts and the added cities that hosted performances.
But the main contributor to the ticket sale record was, of course, the performers.
This year, the festival had a total of 21 different concerts. Eugene hosted 15 concerts and an additional six events. Portland hosted four performances and Ashland, Astoria, Bend, Corvallis and Lincoln City each hosted one. Out of all the cities, 65 different events were presented. Out of those 65 events, 12 of the concerts were sold out.
Sold-out concerts included Joshua Bell@@checked@@ who opened the festival with his rendition of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto, and Angela Hewitt’s @@checked@@rendition of The Goldberg Variations by Bach. Hewitt’s performance was in such high demand that stage seats were added to allow more people to attend.
Among the performances was The Pink Martini with Storm Large, making festival history. For the first time, the Oregon Bach Festival presented its first outdoor concert at the Cuthbert Amphitheater.@@http://www.thecuthbert.com/@@ This performance allowed for the festival to reach beyond its normal audience and pull more people in.
Other performances were put on by the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Guy and Nadina, Ya-Fei Chuang, John Scott, the Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy, Matthew Halls, and Joe Powers Tango Quintet.
The festival not only brought people from around the country together, but also from around the world. The Register-Guard reported that there were 18,000 ticket buyers from 35 different states and 12 countries.
The festival turned out very well, Evano said. “We are very pleased about it.”