With their final concert of the season coming up on April 23, the Oceanside Classical Concerts is already gearing up for their 2016/2017 season.
The Elmer Iseler Singers will be at Knox United Church in Parksville on April 23. The 20-voice professional chamber choir is based in Toronto.
David Douglas, the artistic director for Oceanside Classical Concerts, said the group is going to be a great season closer.
“They are one of the best groups in North America for what they do. They’re very famous,” said Douglas.
“We have a lot of singing groups within this community and so the people that sing know how good these people are when they come.”
This fall, the concert series will be going into its third season. The Oceanside Classical Concerts are a not-for-profit subscription-only series.
“It’s almost like a club in terms of the subscription and membership,” Douglas said.
Douglas said in the first season, there were 190 subscriptions and the 2015/2016 season had 280 subscriptions.
“I’m hoping that we will completely sell out this year. It looks very promising because we’ve sold a lot already.”
Douglas said people will be selling subscriptions in the foyer during intermission and at the end of the April 23 show.
He added there’s still a lot of time to sell subscriptions until the first show in October.
But he does warn that there’s a possibility tickets could sell out before then.
The venue, Knox United Church (345 Pym St,, Parksville), can only hold about 300 people said Douglas.
“We can only ball park 300 people. It’s about as many as we can sit in there,” Douglas said. “That’s our limiting factor.”
Douglas said White Rock has a similar series that’s been running for decades which has about 800 subscriptions and a wait list of about 300.
“I’m envious of that. It would be nice to have a waiting list here of people that would like to sign up,” Douglas said. “We might get there this time, I don’t know.”
The 2016/2017 lineup includes Poulenc Trio & Friends (Oct. 19), Andre Laplante (Nov. 21), Canadian Guitar Quartet (Jan. 23, 2017) and Gleusteen & Ordronneau with John Avison Chamber Orchestra (March 11, 2017).
“We’re looking for world-class performers and we’re trying to bring world-class performers that are based in B.C.,” he said. “If that doesn’t work, we’re looking for people from Canada, and lastly we’re looking for people that are coming from the U.S.”
Douglas started planning the upcoming season’s concerts before this past Christmas. He said it’s all about advanced planning.
“You have to be — in this business, if you want to get the good artists — this is how it works out and you need to be tapped in to finding out where they are and what they’re doing and if we can afford them and all that sort of stuff and then negotiating from there.”
He said he hopes to have the 2017/2018 season pretty well under control by October of this year.