Kevin Sutton wrote:

>Don't spend money I say.  Start with the universities.  Many of us live
>near at least one.  I live within and hours drive of half a dozen.  There
>are many high quality free concerts at universities.
>
>I have an idea.  Let's all pledge to invite a member of the great unwashed
>to a concert during the next month.  Odds are that we will turn on quite a
>crowd to great music and they will buy their own tickets!

Great, great idea, Kevin, vitally important and, in my experience,
extremely rewarding.  I have a good friend who used to be a grunge-rock
fan and is rock-n-roll down to the core.  I started giving him comps to the
concerts of the orchestra I played in, and he loved it!  Now, several years
later, the only CDs he buys are classical, and he joyfully goes to concerts
on his own on a regular basis.  He is truly grateful that I went to the
trouble to convince him to start going.

>"But Kevin, concert tickets are expensive and I can't afford to buy a
>ticket for some plebian just to save great music."

Even beyond the free concerts at universitys, there are always summer
concerts in parks, open-air opera, if you live in a big city, and low-price
concerts if you get away from the big lights of the symphony halls.  And
even there, there are cheap seats up in the faraway reaches of the hall,
sometimes they are even more fun because you get a panorama view of the
stage, and you can always sneak down during intermission and sit in one
of the good seats, which is fun, too.

Dave