TV show captures music in unconventional venues

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12/10/2007 Reported By: Senaxis News Services Source: Reuters/Billboard

A converted 19th-century synagogue, a museum and a 100-year-old ship might not seem like usual venues for rock concerts, but producers of a new cable TV show hope to broaden viewers' concepts of live-music locations.

"Live From the Artists Den" will premiere on Ovation TV on January 13 with an episode featuring Scottish singer KT Tunstall at the fully restored, early-20th-century-era Prince George Ballroom in Manhattan. After that, the eight-episode series will settle into a regular Thursday 8 p.m. time slot.

Other artists and venues featured will include Patty Griffin at the Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts on Manhattan's Lower East Side (Griffin has already released her performance from the restored synagogue on DVD), Josh Ritter at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Fountains of Wayne on a 100-year-old ship at New York's South Street Seaport, Ben Harper at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee, the Swell Season at the Good Shepherd Center Chapel in Seattle, and Crowded House at the Masonic Hall Grand Lodge in New York.

"We were in the frame of mind that in an unusual space you do an unusual show, and we did," Crowded House frontman Neil Finn said. "We were quite expansive and loose with the format. At TV tapings, it can sometimes feel a bit formal, but it didn't feel very formal in there at all. People were really digging it. I think every aspect of it turned out brilliantly.

The producer of the series, Mark Lieberman, said one of his inspirations was a growing realization that traditional music venues are "awful." He started out putting on living room concerts, and said he "saw magic in the room" when people were allowed to experience musicians in nontraditional settings.

"One of the main things I wanted to address was the issue of music discovery waning after a certain age," Lieberman said. "People who were big fans still love music, but they can't stay out in smoky clubs until the middle of the night. This brings the music to them in a new, innovative way."

To deliver the shows, Lieberman partnered with Ovation, a 10-year-old channel that was resurrected last year.

"Even though I personally don't like TV, I felt like Ovation was smart and curated, and the mission fit was spot-on," Lieberman said.

According to the channel's senior VP of programming Kris Slava, Ovation is available in 16 million homes nationwide and has a presence on DirecTV. "The channel's focus is the arts, but we have a very broad definition of art," Slava said. "We run everything from classical concerts to artist profiles to pieces on photography and ballet."