The search for new spaces in which to host live music during the complicated 2020 has not only given rise to a so far unpublished cycle, Bravo Madrid. It has also promoted a little-explored symbiosis: that of promoters of independent bands with the owners of Madrid theaters. “We were each looking to the side. Now, we have met, we have met and we have decided to continue collaborating. Bravo Madrid is a new experience that has come to stay. We continue to extend dates for 2021 and we have already started to work on a new edition for next season, regardless of whether the coronavirus issue has been solved or not ”, advances Máximo Lario, one of the promoters of this series of actions live in places like the Nuevo Alcalá Theater and the Calderón Theater.
Since December, this proposal has offered a fortnight of concerts and another similar batch has already closed in the coming months, plus what has not yet been announced. This week gives way to a classic like the Aviador Dro band (on Thursday 25 at 9:00 p.m. in Nuevo Alcalá) and the promising Alice Wonder (Sunday 28 at 12:00 in the same place). The artists have taken advantage of the circumstances to offer their audience something special and unusual. “As everyone lives the same crisis, everyone has a greater capacity to adapt. If a date has to be canceled or changed, viewers no longer fry us with complaints as before ”, celebrates Lario between jokes.
Your company, Intromusic, started in the early 2000s as a musical promoter for a certain group of artists that its founders wanted to support. Dorian and Maga were among them. “Little by little, due to our personal relationship with the bands, other aspects of the business were gaining ground. We began to do representation work for them and to edit their records on our own label, so as not to have to depend on third parties ”, he recalls. In full diversification, they began with the defunct Low club, a session “that combined the sound of guitars with electronics and in which a small music festival was mounted every night”. With those responsible for the also defunct room Ocho y medio, they began eight years ago to organize live music cycles and events. And with them they have also created Bravo Madrid, with the intention of protecting the independent live music scene from the pandemic crisis and accompanying the groups they have been working with for so long in this situation. It is also a way to remain active, in a year in which the company has only covered 15% of its usual turnover.
“Concerts by independent bands in auditoriums outside the city can be a huge tourist attraction, as has happened with summer festivals,” argues the music entrepreneur.
The profit margin in theaters is not very high at the moment, due to the high cost of renting spaces that have limited capacity, but it is an option that shows its advantages, says Lario. “Besides that you don’t have to set up outdoor structures, as in summer events, it’s amazing to see how the spectators enjoy themselves from the seat. By not moving, or going out to smoke or order something at the bar like in concert halls, they pay more attention and are more involved in the concert. It is something that, in the end, the artists themselves also appreciate. Sen Senra, who made several passes in December, was delighted, “he explains.
The union of independent theaters and bands of Bravo Madrid will suppose, when normality returns to its past meanings, “just a complement” to what some and others already did before. “Neither our concerts can take the place of a musical in a theater, for which they charge 70 euros to enter, nor are we interested in replacing the halls of a lifetime or music in open spaces”. Occupying the daytime schedules of these spaces, as various proposals have been making in the city in recent months to comply with the different curfews, has become the appropriate option for this session of sound encounters designed for the cold months.
Lario and his partners are not only thinking about occupying the seats in the city center. “In the rest of the region and in other parts of Spain there are auditoriums with hardly any programming throughout the year. It is a way of giving new life to infrastructures that have been less used for decades than they should ”. That independent groups approach them can be a huge tourist claim, as has happened with the summer festivals whose posters are occupied by 90% of these types of bands, argues the musical entrepreneur about this new business idea that was created by the recent need . “People are going to this new form of concerts and are showing that they want to perform live,” he argues.
A place for new talents
“At a creative level we are living a very critical moment, but if the concert halls do not survive, perhaps the new artists that are emerging will not have a place to perform”, comments promoter Máximo Lario. For this reason, Bravo Madrid not only focuses on supporting the usual groups. The two rooms of the Nuevo Alcalá Theater host emerging talents in this cycle. This is the case of Paula Ribó (Barcelona, 1990), known in her musical facet as Rigoberta Bandini and who has already sold all the tickets for her appointment on April 9. In January, he confirmed on the stage of the Reina Victoria theater the viral success that flourished during confinement with songs such as In Spain We Call It Soledad Y Too Many Drugs. He did it within the program of Madrid Brillante, another of the morning concert cycles that have proliferated in the city.
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