What Candlelight Concerts Can Teach Cultural and Heritage Organizations About Creating Experiences
For years, I’ve seen ads for Candlelight concerts in my social media feeds. You’ve probably seen them, too: string quartets playing in intimate spaces lit by hundreds of flickering candles.
This year, I'm noticing an increase in people talking about attending these concerts. In a local Frederick, Maryland, Facebook group, neighbors were swapping recommendations, comparing dates, and asking who wanted to buy tickets together.
The Frederick area has access to wonderful orchestras, talented chamber musicians, and a thriving performing arts community. Within a short drive, Baltimore and Washington, DC, offer even more outstanding live music.
My first instinct was to wonder why we’d import culture when we have so much of it here. Then I looked more closely. In many cities, the musicians playing Candlelight concerts are local.
What makes the Candlelight Concerts more appealing than the traditional symphony and chamber music concerts offered in the area, I suspect, is the packaging.
They're not just selling a concert. They're selling an evening people want to have.
And I think there's an important lesson here for museums, historic sites, performing arts organizations, and other cultural institutions.
The experience is the attraction
Candlelight is an international concert series created by Fever, an entertainment and ticketing company. During these concerts, musicians perform classical pieces, film scores, and arrangements of popular songs in atmospheric venues filled with (flameless) candles.
Fever’s own website sums it up: “Candlelight in a nutshell: a fresh spin on classical music performances.”
Most symphonies and chamber groups already perform similar repertoire. What Fever has done is up the game by wrapping the performance in an experience. It stages concerts in unique (often historic) venues, surrounds the audience with atmospheric lighting, and builds programs around music people already know. Together, those choices make classical music feel less intimidating and more accessible to people who might never buy a symphony ticket.
None of this requires Fever’s budget or global reach. Local arts and history organizations have many of the same ingredients already.
Here are five lessons I think heritage and cultural organizations can take from the Candlelight model.
1. Atmosphere is an important part of the experience.
Look at how Candlelight concerts are promoted, and you’ll notice the musicians are rarely the focus. They’re in the photos, of course, but what you really see is the warm glow of hundreds of candles, the architecture around them, and an audience gathered close together in a softly lit room. Before you’ve heard a note, the images tell you what kind of evening it will be: special, a little romantic, and relaxed enough that you don’t need to know anything about classical music to enjoy it.
That’s what atmosphere does. It sets expectations, and for people who might feel out of place at a traditional concert, it makes the invitation feel more open. The setting does a lot of the marketing work before anyone buys a ticket.
Museums and historic sites have a real advantage here. We already have historic buildings, landscapes, collections, and authentic places that a touring concert series has to rent or recreate. Yet we often treat those spaces as containers for exhibits and programs rather than as part of the experience itself. Our marketing tends to lead with what’s inside (the collection, the history, the facts) and not with how it feels to be there. Visitors usually see these places at their least atmospheric, too: in the middle of the day, under the same institutional lighting, following the same route through the same rooms.
Thinking more intentionally about atmosphere doesn’t have to mean a big investment. It might mean changing the lighting, offering an evening program, opening a space visitors don’t normally get to see, or giving people a way to experience a familiar place differently, like a lantern tour or a quiet after-hours visit. How people feel in a place is a big part of what they remember about it, and what they tell their friends.
2. Familiarity can be a gateway to discovery.
Candlelight’s repertoire is one of the most interesting parts of the model. Alongside Vivaldi and Beethoven, the lineup includes tributes to Coldplay, Taylor Swift, Queen, and Adele. For someone who doesn’t usually go to classical concerts, a string quartet playing songs they already love is a much easier yes than an evening of compositions they’ve never heard. They know what they’re getting, so buying the ticket feels like less of a gamble.
Once they’re in the room, though, they’re still hearing live instrumental music played by skilled musicians. Some of them will leave with a new appreciation for the string quartet itself, and maybe enough curiosity to try a different kind of concert next time. The familiar song gets them in the door, and the experience does the rest.
Heritage and cultural organizations can use the same approach, but we often work in the opposite direction. We promote a lecture about a historical event, an exhibition about an artist, or a tour focused on a particular period, and we expect visitors to arrive already interested in the subject. That works well for the people who are already our audience, but it doesn’t do much for everyone else.
What if we started with something people already care about instead? That might be a familiar song, a favorite food, a current issue, a personal or family connection, or a place they drive past every day without knowing its story. Any of these can lead to a deeper experience with history, art, or culture, as long as the program is designed to take people somewhere once they arrive.
Making something accessible doesn’t mean watering it down. Often it just means giving people a reason to be curious in the first place.
3. Make it easy for people to imagine themselves there.
One of Candlelight’s biggest marketing strengths is how quickly it gets the experience across. You see a candlelit room, you recognize the music on the program, and right away you have a sense of what the evening will be like. You don’t need any background in classical music to understand the appeal. The ad answers most of your questions before you’ve thought to ask them.
Compare that to how many cultural organizations describe their programs and exhibits. We tend to lead with an exhibition title, historical terms, institutional language, or a long description of what participants will learn. That information may be accurate and important, and it’s often written for funders, colleagues, or the people who planned the program. But it rarely helps someone picture actually being there.
When people decide how to spend a free Saturday afternoon, they’re asking practical questions:
What will I be doing?
Who could I bring?
Will I enjoy it, or will I feel out of place?
Is this worth giving up the other things I could be doing?
We’re competing with brunch, youth sports, yard work, and the couch, and a description that doesn’t answer those questions makes it easy to choose something else.
A small change in language can help. “A lecture on 19th-century canal commerce” tells people the topic. “Join us on the towpath at sunset to hear how goods (and gossip) moved along the canal, then stay for cider by the lock house” tells them what the evening will feel like. The history is the same. The second version just gives people a reason to show up.
4. Sell the feeling, not just the activity.
Candlelight’s marketing never really says, “A string quartet will perform for an hour.” It suggests romance, beauty, intimacy, and the chance to do something a little out of the ordinary. Those are emotional benefits, and they matter because cultural experiences compete for people’s discretionary time and money. Most people don’t buy a ticket because of what will happen on stage, but because of what the evening will mean to them.
Cultural organizations offer the same kinds of benefits, but we rarely say so out loud. A museum visit is a chance to learn history, and it can also be an afternoon when grandparents share family stories with their grandchildren. A historic walking tour covers the architecture of old buildings, and it can also help newer residents feel like they belong in their community. A concert is a musical performance, while doubling as a night out with friends or a way to celebrate an anniversary. In each case, the emotional benefit is often what gets someone to commit, even if the content is what they remember later.
Naming those benefits doesn’t diminish the cultural or educational value of what we do. If anything, it helps people see why that value matters to them personally. Our sector is very good at explaining why a place, a collection, or a story is significant, but we need to get just as good at explaining why someone would want to spend their time experiencing it.
5. Collaborate to Create Something Neither Organization Could Offer Alone
One of the most interesting parts of the Candlelight model is the relationship between the performance and the place. A string quartet in a traditional concert hall is one experience, while the same quartet in a historic building, surrounded by warm light and distinctive architecture, becomes something else entirely. Each part makes the other more appealing.
It’s worth remembering that in many cities, Candlelight is already pairing local musicians with local venues. Fever is essentially serving as a matchmaker. Our communities are full of the same ingredients, and too often they sit side by side without ever being combined.
Imagine a historic house museum partnering with a chamber ensemble to explore the music and social life of the family who once lived there, an art museum working with local musicians on performances inspired by its collection, or a heritage organization teaming up with a theater company to stage community stories in the places where they actually happened. Each of these goes beyond hosting an event in an unusual venueby combining interpretation, performance, place, and storytelling in a way that gives audiences a new way to connect with culture.
The benefits go beyond the visitor experience, too. Each partner brings its own expertise, resources, and audience. The performing arts organization gains a distinctive setting and a chance to reach new patrons and the museum gets to share its collection and stories through a different medium, with people who might not have walked through its doors otherwise. Both come away with a wider reach and stronger community relationships.
Of course, a historic house could simply invite a string quartet to play by candlelight, and that might be a lovely evening. But copying Candlelight’s formula isn’t really the lesson here. The more interesting question is what experiences we could create by combining the spaces, stories, talents, and assets that already exist in our communities? That doesn’t have to mean an expensive production or a brand-new program. I hope it encourages you to rethink something you already do, looking at an existing program from a different angle, or finding a partner whose strengths fill in your gaps. What lasts are experiences that feel meaningful and memorable to the people we hope to reach.
What are audiences really buying?
I don’t want to suggest that Candlelight concerts succeed only because of their atmosphere. Popular music, ticket pricing, convenient scheduling, effective advertising, and an easy-to-understand format all likely play a part. Candlelight also isn’t the first to experiment with immersive or unconventional approaches to live performance -- many orchestras, museums, and historic sites are already doing creative work to reach new audiences, and some of it is excellent.
Still, the enthusiasm I’ve seen for these concerts in my own community raises a question every cultural organization should consider: are we designing and promoting experiences around what we want to present, or around what audiences are looking for?
Ideally, the answer is both. Our missions, collections, scholarship, and artistic standards matter, of course. They give our organizations purpose and set us apart from the other ways people might spend a free evening. But audiences have choices, and they rarely make them using the same criteria we use to develop programs. They may be looking for connection, discovery, relaxation, beauty, entertainment, or simply a memorable afternoon with someone they care about.
Paying attention to those motivations doesn’t mean abandoning our mission, but we do need to be thinking about how our mission reaches people who wouldn’t otherwise find it. Those Frederick neighbors swapping dates and splitting tickets weren’t looking for a string quartet, per se. They want to spend a fun night out together. Our organizations can offer that kind of evening, too, and many of us already have what we need to do it.
The lesson isn't to add candles.
Cultural and heritage organizations have extraordinary assets: authentic places, compelling stories, talented people, significant collections, and deep roots in their communities. But having something valuable to offer doesn’t guarantee that people will see its value or choose to experience it. To close that gap, we have to understand what motivates our audiences and what they’re looking for when they decide how to spend their free time, and then connect those desires to our missions.
That might mean presenting familiar content in a new way or making a space feel more welcoming and atmospheric. It could mean partnering with an organization whose strengths complement our own. Or it might be as simple as changing how we describe an experience so people can picture themselves enjoying it.
Those Frederick neighbors swapping dates and splitting tickets were choosing more than a concert. They were choosing how to spend an evening, who to spend it with, and what they hoped to feel while they were there. Audiences make that same choice every weekend, with or without us.
Are we giving them a compelling reason to choose us?
