Heartlands Concert Poster

(Click on image for larger version.)

This is the official concert poster for the premiere, next summer, of Heartlands, the new music I was commissioned to write, and have been writing all year. The commission has amounted to a full concert's worth of music (a whole CD), around 70 or 80 minutes of new music, and will be premiered in June 2012. The music was commissioned for the Fifteenth Anniversary Concert of Perfect Harmony Men's Chorus, the gay and gay-affirming men's chorus of Madison, WI. The piece will be premiered in Madison, then performed again in Milwaukee.

Then we will take part of the concert's worth of music and perform it in Denver, CO, in July 2012, as part of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Choruses (GALA) convention that happens every four years. The GALA convention is a chance for choruses to get together, perform for each other, feature new music, and network both musically and socially. It's a huge celebration of music, of life, and of joy. A lot of people will hear my new music at GALA, and I hope that Heartlands will be performed again, and that I'll get more commissioned work from this exposure.

I hope all of my friends who are able to attend one of the concerts will do so.

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I made this poster early, using one of my own photos of rural south central Wisconsin, so that it would be available for marketing and fundraising. The poster is tabloid size (11x17) with versions to be used as postcards for mailing, and also smaller concert flyers.

The music score is currently being engraved and typeset in music software, and I am almost done proofreading. I plan to publish the score in book form later this spring or summer, and will use the poster illustration and typography to make it have a consistent look and feel. That's about branding, in graphic design: consistent visual imagery and style, and consistent typography, that create an identify, a recognizable logo and image for an event or person or business. Making this poster early means we can brand the concert early, and begin marketing campaigns and future fundraising mailings immediately. I have also made a letterhead and identity system for Heartlands and for the Fifteenth Anniversary Concert season.

I'm very satisfied with this poster. The idea was to emphasize the horizontal lines, the big sky, the open spaces of the land. I chose to do it in B&W for the evocative tone, and converted the photograph to a mezzotint to give it a classic antiqued look. The poster will probably be printed on colored paper; off-white or pale sepia, to give it a sense of being rooted, solid, and tied to the land. A vintage look, if you prefer, like some poster you might discover in a barn or farmhouse, both old and new.