We’ve introduced a membership circle for BJP called Nica’s Circle. You’ll find info about it under the Membership tab: it’s a $5/month subscription that gives folks access to exclusive content and the earliest access to concert tickets.
We’ve created Nica’s Circle — named after a famous patron of the arts, Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild —because of our experience with COVID-19. When the pandemic hit and live concerts were shuttered, BJP had no means to support and employ our community of musicians whose livelihoods had been decimated. Because the vast part of our ticket revenue goes directly to the musicians (once we were a non-profit we had to keep a fraction to pay for insurance and related operating costs) we didn’t have any means to fund non-concert programming and that left us high and dry. After many hours of grant writing, we received funding from FACTOR, CADA and the Canada Council for projects that are employing musicians and other artists and for that, we are tremendously grateful. (Canadians should be proud of the level of support given to the Arts during the pandemic.)
Establishing Nica’s Circle allows us to create a small income stream that can be used to support non-concert programming and that’s important to our future capacity to support the Canadian jazz community. We also hope that as we build up our content, our Circle members will enjoy the behind-the scenes material and educational content.
As for ticket buying, here’s how that works:
Nica’s Circle members are recognized by our website when they visit and have 48 hours exclusive access to purchase tickets. Ticket sales are then opened up to folks on our email list who have 24 hours to purchase before the concert is announced to the general public through social media.
There is no cost to being on the email list: just be aware that you might see the listing for the concert on Eventbrite and not be able to access tickets until after the 48 hour advance sales is over.
So, thanks for your support as our programming grows and we develop new ways to keep musicians employed and our community engaged!
Lisa
