It was a few years ago now, back in 2020, that I first noticed my Instagram feed filling up with eye-catching images of dark churches filled with seas of glowing candles. Adverts promised an evening of Chopin’s piano music or Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, although they gave no musicians’ names. At first, as it was the height of the pandemic (albeit between lockdowns), I thought it was a scam. But then I saw posts from friends who had actually been and loved them. What’s more, it was often people who had never been particularly interested in classical music before. Three years later,
and I’m still getting lots of candlelit adverts. And, according to Fever, the company behind Candlelight Concerts, the series is now in over 100 cities around the world and has had more than three million attendees. It’s a success story that few people in the classical music world are talking about.
What is a Candlelight Concert like to attend?
In a bid to find out more about the Candlelight Concerts phenomenon, I recently joined an audience in All Saints Church in Bristol for an evening of Hans Zimmer’s music, played by a string quartet from the local Bristol Ensemble. The musicians performed on a raised platform, in front of which were hundreds of candles – perhaps not quite as many as in some of the most dramatic publicity images, but a sizeable number nonetheless. Up close it was clear they were LED-powered rather than flickering live flames. Their warm glow created a welcoming atmosphere. The pews were packed, and the evening was a sell-out. Over the next hour, the musicians played extracts from Zimmer’s soundtracks, with spoken introductions and interludes. The concert was exactly as the adverts promise: an enjoyable hour of music played in an atmospheric setting. ‘It was amazing,’ one concertgoer, Caleb, told me afterwards. ‘It’s been many years since I’ve come and seen something like this.’
When did Candlelight Concerts begin?
In an age when ‘reaching new audiences’ has become a mantra for many arts organisations, Candlelight Concerts has found something of a winning formula. Its parent company is Fever, a global entertainment platform, founded in Spain in 2011. It now offers tickets for everything from puppy yoga to zombie pub crawls, bottomless brunches to bingo nights. Soon enough, they noticed a gap in the market. ‘How Fever works is that we use data in order to create original experiences for people based on what they’re already interested in,’ explains Arielle Hutchinson, a project manager for Candlelight Brighton. ‘Our marketplace already had other events, some of which involved classical music. We saw there was an appetite for it.’ The team set out to create an accessible concert format, marketed to a younger audience. It launched in Madrid in 2019, then rapidly expanded internationally (despite the pandemic). It's now running in the rest of Spain, the US and the UK.
Candlelight Concerts became a brand. Its ingredients were simple: pick an unusual venue (not a traditional concert hall) in a city; select one of its single-composer programmes; hire local musicians; fill the place with LED candles. ‘We like venues that are culturally significant: monumental churches, cathedrals and museums. Bringing new audiences into these venues is important for us,’ says Hutchinson. ‘And the approach is that we support local artists too.’ A group of curators employed by Fever works to set up the concerts and find the right musicians. Anecdotally, it seems to be hitting the mark. ‘This setting was very fitting,’ another concertgoer, Amelia, tells me in All Saints, much of which was rebuilt after the Second World War and has unusual painted glass windows by John Piper. Venues in London include Southwark Cathedral and Sea Life. Elsewhere across the UK, audiences can hear music in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, Ripon and Chester cathedrals, and Titanic Belfast.
Classical music on Instagram: what's Candlelight Concerts' big idea?
And, of course, the candles are crucial. ‘They create this enchanting, magical ambience,’ says Hutchinson. ‘It’s very social media friendly. People want to take pictures with the candles
to post on Instagram.’ Amelia is a case in point. ‘To be honest, the concerts always pop up on my Instagram. It’s my birthday on Monday so that’s why we’re here,’ she says. Take a scroll through Instagram and TikTok, and there are countless posts tagged by satisfied customers. Often, they're going for a date night, anniversary, birthday or celebration. ‘What an amazing experience’; ‘Unforgettable evening’; ‘Family night out on the town!’; ‘Beautiful performance by the Havenwood Quartet playing Vivaldi The Four Seasons’.
The success of Candlelight Concerts on social media
I’m willing to bet there will be many people who dislike the thought of a concert being boiled down to being good social media content, but it also feels like a savvy move to embrace a powerful marketing tool. On Instagram, Candlelight Concerts has 1.3m followers, while on TikTok the number is at 379,500. At its best, social media has a colossal power to reach millions, cutting through the usual boundaries of cost, geography and cultural barriers that stop people entering the concert hall.’
@candlelight.concerts Sometimes, we visit stunning places that leave us breathless ✨ @Naz | Travel Content Creator has been to one of those places for a Candlelight concert: the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal 🤩😍 #classicalmusic #candlelightconcert #music #concert #montreal #classicaltok #fyp #candlelight ♬ son original - Iceland_Adventure
Plus, the musical aspect hasn’t been forgotten, says Amanda Turchiari Boucault, a spokesperson for Fever. ‘All the arrangements are newly created for string quartet or piano and violin. We’ve made Christmas movies and a Nutcracker one too. This is a way to democratise access to classical music.’
What music do Candlelight Concerts feature?
Browse the Candlelight Concerts event listings on Fever’s website, and it soon becomes clear that the definition of ‘classical music’ is, with the best will, fairly broad. Vivaldi and Chopin are still on the menu, along with nights at the opera and Viennese spectaculars – but so are Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran. ‘That’s how we started, right, doing those core composers like Vivaldi and Chopin. And we’re still doing that,’ says Hutchinson. ‘But we’ve been able to branch out to do contemporary music as well and I think our call will always be to do a bit of both.’ The ‘classical’ aspect here, she argues, is the use of classical instruments to play pop music as well as the concert format. And it’s true there is a wider fashion recently for classical covers of contemporary pop songs, sparked by the music for the hit Netflix show Bridgerton. Back in 2021, the Vitamin String Quartet, which featured on the soundtrack, reported a 350 per cent increase in the number of people streaming its music.
Why Candlelight Concerts might not be for you
Candlelight Concerts is unlikely to be for regular concertgoers. Wigmore Hall can breathe easy. The performance I heard was enjoyable but not exceptional. And its story has not run entirely smoothly. At All Saints Church, another audience member, Fabian, didn't have a great experience. While he enjoyed the concert, right at the back of the church he couldn’t see the candles. He also struggled to hear the music. Amid all the positive social media posts, there’s also the odd disgruntled or amused concertgoer who found that reality didn’t live up to expectation. These often referred to light flooding through the windows, making the candlelight redundant.
A gap in the market: making classical music accessible
Candlelight Concerts has found a space in the market. It brings to mind the work of André Rieu, who carved himself a niche as King of Waltz. Or perhaps the impresario Raymond Gubbay attracting mass audiences for his Classical Spectaculars. Most of Fever’s concerts have tickets starting round the £20 mark, going up to £45- £50 for ‘premium’ tickets. This means they are no cheaper than many concert halls – but its popularity continues to grow. And its ambitions are global. ‘In Mexico, we’re launching a Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) concert with music specific to this country, and we’ve just launched an iconic Arabic music programme, which has been really successful in Dubai. The data is not only to see what people are interested in, what’s selling better, but also to adapt locally to each audience’s preferences,’ says Boucault. ‘The idea was to make classical music more accessible to younger audiences, and we’ve seen that’s happened.’
Visit candlelightexperience.com to find out more.