Upper Lansdowne loves music – and musicians!

We’ve been working hard to make Upper Lansdowne Hall an appealing venue for touring musicians.

• You can see who’s played at the hall so far here

Our audiences welcome most music genres and to make it easy and comfortable for visiting artists, we offer free accommodation, dinner and breakfast, so no out-of-pocket costs. Logistics information here.

• Upper Lansdowne is a picturesque village in a beautiful valley, 30kms north of Taree on the NSW east coast
• It’s only 25 minutes inland from the Pacific Highway turnoffs at either Coopernook, or Cundletown
• It makes a convenient and relaxing stopover point for touring artists traveling up/down the east coast and provides an opportunity to perform in a friendly and appreciative environment, be treated to great country hospitality – and make some money!

We offer touring artists: A free night’s accommodation either in a self contained cottage close to the Hall and/or your own room(s) with friendly locals Free dinner and breakfast Event promotion via email, website, Facebook, local radio and posters displayed in the Manning area Ticket prices mutually agreed, usually about $30 You keep 70% of ticket sales after any expenses. These are usually minor e.g. promotion costs, unless a support act is involved, or specialist equipment hire required (we have our own PA) Payment details here Our cut goes towards the upkeep of the almost 100 year old hall, which ain’t cheap! Obviously you keep all of your merchandise sales Several concerts have drawn over 150, peaking at 177 so far and artists have taken home over $2,000 from ticket sales on those occasions. We like to have a good time and a dance, so kudos if you can get us up on and going (rules permitting) We have found our audience is seasonal – see here for more details We understand we’re only a waypoint on a tour schedule, not a destination per se, so we try to make it as easy and relaxing as possible for artists

What artists say about us:

“It’s an incredible thing to go to a town you had never heard of, in a region you’ve never performed in, and find yourself playing to a whole hall full of wonderful, attentive people. We were blown away by the generosity and hospitality of the Upper Lansdowne community, not to mention the beautiful surroundings. And it’s always a bonus to play on a stage with plenty of room for ten musicians!” The Northern Folk

“I’ve been touring longer than I care to remember but Upper Lansdowne will always stay with me. A wonderful venue for acoustic music combined with a great listening audience and exceptional hospitality. It doesn’t get much better than that!” Nick Charles

“What a memorable and lovely night we had at the Upper Lansdowne Hall playing our Italian folk music! The audience was so attentive and appreciative. We also enjoyed a lovely home cooked meal and peaceful country accommodation and hospitality. Would thoroughly recommend jumping off the Pacific Highway and getting a gig at the Hall with it’s lovely cultured local community.” David De Santi of Zumpa.

“When we received the detailed directions to the venue and accommodation, we knew that this was going to be a well-organised event. What that didn’t prepare us for was the warmth of the welcome we would receive in Upper Lansdowne. The community spirit shines through, from the team that put on the event to the audience that came and supported it.” Winter Wilson.

“We loved performing in the magic Upper Lansdowne Hall – the warmth of our welcome, the enthusiasm of the audience and beautiful location made it a real pleasure. ” Les Poules à Colin.

“Wonderful kind people, beautiful landscape, gorgeous and comfortable accommodation, and a fantastic place to play a concert with a really attentive audience. I’d return in a heartbeat. “Katey Brooks.

“We had a beautiful experience at the gorgeous Upper Lansdowne hall. What privilege to share our stories and songs to such an engaged audience, who had come from far and wide. Sharing good food and music on a beautiful misty night. Thank you to the crew for a very special evening “Snez.

“The Upper Lansdowne Hall gives such a warm heart felt welcome, with home cooking, a great space deep in this beautiful valley where we stayed in such comfortable surroundings, we could have played all night to this great community of good folk”. Cara & Fitzy

Artist Selection Process:

• Our aim is simple: To run concerts where we think we can get a worthwhile crowd along and everyone has a good time
• We’re a listening audience, but we also enjoy a good time and a dance, so don’t think you have to play quietly because “it’s a nice old country hall with nice old country people”!
• We have a music committee who assess whether artists are suitable for our context
• We try to be accommodating, but sometimes we have to say No, either because we don’t think there’s a match to our audience demographic, or we have too many other events on

Types of Concerts:

We don’t like to turn artists down, but we have to sometimes, as we get asked to host a lot of events and we want to avoid ‘exhausting’ our audience. After putting our thinking caps on, we’ve come up with this approach that we hope will allow us to run more concerts.

Normal Concert

• We aim to run these roughly once a month.
• These concerts are planned well in advance and are fully promoted. We aim to get you an interview with the local radio station 2Bob, who will usually play your music in the lead up
• Ticket prices are usually $30
• We’d like you to play 2 sets of about 45 mins each

Dual Headline Concert

• To fulfill the aim of getting a worthwhile crowd along, we may ask whether you’d be interested in a dual headline arrangement
• We think there’s a win-win here, because a stronger line up means we can charge more and hopefully get more people and more takings to split

Support Acts

To support music in the community, we sometimes invite local support acts. Some perform for free and some are paid, typically around $250 for a 45 min set. Their fee comes out of ticket sales before the 70/30 split applicable for the main act.

Concert Schedule:

• We aim to hold roughly 1 concert a month, sometimes more in the peak, summer season
• We find it’s difficult to get a good audience in December, due to all the competing Xmas events
• We see a big drop off in audience numbers during winter and for that reason, we now usually only do Sunday afternoon concerts in winter
• You can see what concerts are currently scheduled at the hall here

In-house PA:

• See this page for details on the hall’s PA
• It works well in the context of the hall and to keep things simple and costs down, we prefer not to hire extra equipment
• We operate it ourselves, so there are usually no production costs
• Feel free to bring your own equipment to replace or supplement the hall’s

If you’re interested:

Contact: Alastair Breingan 0409 712 659 or 02 6556 9226, or email music (at) upperlansdownehall.org.au