Arts Council's Amplify concert series aims to fill small venue void in Winston-Salem

For a “City of Arts and Innovation,” Winston-Salem has surprisingly few venues for emerging musicians to perform professionally, making it tough to earn a living while honing their craft. The Arts Council of Winston-Salem & Forsyth County is working to change that dynamic with its new concert series, Amplify. 

Years ago, small to midsize-performance venues like Ziggy’s, The Garage, and PS211 provided a platform for young artists and newly formed bands to share their work with audiences. Those clubs have since closed. The Arts Council hopes to fill the gap with monthly concerts featuring multiple performers at the fully equipped Reynolds Place Theatre in the Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts. 

Guest Curator Spencer "p.s. edekot" Aubrey says live music fans will get to know the current movers and shakers in the local scene, and the artists will get an important education about the performance industry.

“Having a green room, you know, being able to have contracts, being able to parse through language, talking about different things that are expectations when you step into larger venues or venues that have performance as a regular part of their business,” says Aubrey.

Aubrey hopes that timely sound checks, effective communication, and professional lighting and audio will be invaluable parts of the Amplify experience. 

Director of Theatre Operations and Programming Corinne Bass says after years of financial hardship, and related costs that were passed on to artists, the nonprofit is poised for change.

“We are now in a position where we can offer a steeper discount for our resident theatre companies,” says Bass. “We can subsidize the use of the space to a greater level for one-off events. And we're able to produce our own programming like Amplify that the primary focus of that is paying the artists involved.”

Bass says artists will be further supported by the council’s marketing and publicity wing leveraging their database of ticket buyers. 

“We're able to bring in audiences that might not see these folks if they're playing in a brewery or at Monstercade,” she says. “For the Amplify events, we'll be featuring at least three different artists or groups per concert, and we're doing one a month for the next year. That's going to be at least 36 artists that are being marketed to new audiences.”

The first official Amplify concert featuring Saxophonist Michael Kinchen, emerging folk duo Discount Rothko, and spoken word poet Tamika Wells is Thursday night at 7:00 p.m.