Dozens of concerts and performances take place in homes and intimate listening room-style performance spaces in the Tampa Bay area and Florida locales beyond as part of the Second Annual Listening Room Festival. Singer-songwriter Fran Snyder introduced the listening room concept to a wider Florida audience with last year’s inaugural fest. "When you've got somebody on stage just telling story songs, house concerts is where they thrive. We call them ‘listening rooms,’" Snyder told CL, speaking from his experience as both a house concert performer and founder of the world's leading online community for acoustic living room concerts, ConcertsInYourHome.com.
The fest provides free tools for music fans to host private, personalized concerts in their homes, though the public is invited to attend the event climax and charity concert component. Acoustic folk, bluegrass, soul, roots and pop are represented on the Palladium’s Side Door stage by five stars of the circuit as selected by Florida house concert hosts from 350 independent, touring members of ConcertsInYourHome.com: Natalie Gelman, Kristen Graves, Paul Sprawl, Roy Schneider and Hannah Miller. Proceeds benefit Immokalee Farm Workers, CASA and other worthy organizations.
Second Annual Listening Room Festival Charity Concert, Sun., March 3, 6:30 p.m., Palladium Theater, St. Petersburg, $16-$18, listeningroomfestival.com.
This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 6, 2013.