Episode #21: Sam Bessen

Hello and welcome back to the Dominic Brancazio Podcast! In this episode we’re joined by my friend Sam Bessen. Sam is the “Eleanor and Lester Levy Family Curator of Sheet Music and Popular Culture” in the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at the Johns Hopkins University and he’s also the Founder and Artistic Director of “In the Stacks,” an innovative classical music series based in the George Peabody Library in Baltimore, Maryland. In today’s episode, we talk about all of the behind the scenes details of how Sam came up with “In the Stacks” and how he built it up to be an amazing success. “In the Stacks” collaborates with many different art forms and artists to bring the Baltimore community a very accessible and engaging concert experience. It’s one of the coolest projects I’ve seen and I was so happy to hear how Sam put the whole thing together.

In this conversation we talk about how and why he came up with the series, how he schedules the season, we go over how he budgets the concerts, how he originally advertised it, how he goes about choosing repertoire, ways of making the performances more engaging and accessible for audience members, things to consider when putting a concert series together, some shoutouts to notable performances and performers, and we also talk about ideas for future programs.

If would like to learn more about Sam or “In the Stacks,” I’ve included his website to check out in the description below. I loved catching up with Sam in this talk and it was so awesome getting to hear him describe how he created this project. If you’re in Baltimore whenever this series makes a comeback for live performances again, I highly recommend checking it out. Thank you again for listening and please enjoy the show.

To learn more about Sam:

https://www.inthestacks.org