At a time when the arts industry is struggling, and live event attendance is still recovering from a pandemic decline, a classical music concert is the last place you’d expect to see Toronto’s millennial and Gen Z crowd.
But last year, more than 50,000 people in the city attended a Candlelight Concert — performances featuring classical renditions of songs from popular artists such as Adele and Coldplay in intimate venues like the Metropolitan Community Church.
They usually feature a string quartet surrounded by hundreds of artificial candles.
In 2024, in just its fourth year in Toronto, the company had amassed about one fifth of the number of patrons at local shows as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra — one of the best-attended symphonies nationwide.
Candlelight performances now occur in more than 150 cities globally.
Launched by a young Spanish entrepreneur, and backed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and venture capitalists, Fever is the live entertainment technology company behind Candlelight Concerts. The company, valued at more than $1 billion, has utilized its marketing and technology savvy to disrupt the traditional classical music industry.
How did they do it?
Getting millennial bums in seats
Worldwide, Fever has attracted millions of customers to immersive events it hosts and produces through digital marketing and targeted advertising.
In Toronto, the company is concurrently running Candlelight Concerts, while co-producing Dinos Alive, an immersive experience with life-size artificial dinosaurs, and Bubble Planet, a virtual reality experience with ten bubble-themed rooms.
In designing Candlelight Concerts, Fever’s focus was on getting millennial bums in seats, according to the company’s Canada lead, Andrew Bryan.
“They had the big question: ‘How can we introduce this to a new demographic? How can we introduce this to a new audience,” he said. “Through that, Candlelight was born.”
Working with classical music institutions in Spain, the team experimented with offering shorter shows than the typical two-hour symphonies, featuring tributes to pop artists, and marketing on social media where young audiences spend their time, he said.
“The success was tremendous,” Bryan said.
Over the next several years, the company raised several rounds of capital, increasing its capacity to develop new shows, boost its technology, and refine its marketing.
In 2020, as the company was growing, Fever launched Candlelight Concerts in Montreal, adding Toronto the next year.
The show has been a hit in the city.
On a per capita basis, Toronto is among the top five cities in the world for attendance at Candlelight Concerts, Bryan said.
While the shows attract an audience across the age spectrum, the core demographic is people ages 20-40, he said.
A tech success
A big factor in that success has been the company’s savvy marketing, pushed out through paid social media ads, partnerships with Instagram influencers and promotion via Fever-owned Secret Media Network.
The media network operates websites and Instagram accounts in cities where Fever hosts shows — in this city, it’s a site called Secret Toronto — which provides curated lists of fun things to do citywide, including performances that Fever stages.
For the month of February, a Secret Toronto Instagram post highlights the chance for locals to ski at Earl Bales Park, attend the Fever-promoted pole dance experience, Vertical.Show by Pink Puma, and attend Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s year of the snake concert.
Secret Toronto also uses a data collection approach, common among digital marketing companies.
It allows the company to identify people who might be interested in Candlelight Concerts or other experiences and advertise to them.
Bryan said if an individual has demonstrated interest in music, they might start to receive Candlelight Concert ads, which will feature several different concert options, such as Punjabi Hits, a Valentines Day special, or a tribute to Leonard Cohen.
“Because [Secret Toronto is] operated by Fever, yes, we can leverage and publish about content that is also produced by Fever,” he said. “But that’s more of a tool than the primary goal of it.”
Marketing focuses on ‘experiences’
Boran Zaza, a lecturer of music marketing at McGill University, said another key aspect of the company’s success has been in the way it positions Candlelight Concerts.
Rather than focusing on the names of composers, as many symphonies do, Fever’s ads showcase the “experience” of a Candlelight show, demonstrating how a concert could be a “date night” or an evening out with a friend, she said.
“This kind of approach resonates much more with younger audiences, because [Fever’s] telling them, ‘Here’s what’s in it for you,'” she said.
Bryan said this approach was by design.
A lot of young people have an interest in seeing classical music, but the existing providers weren’t necessarily positioning it in a way that resonated with them, he said.
“[Fever’s] marketing just makes it seem so easy and fun to attend,” he said. “Candlelight isn’t afraid of refining the classical music format and I think that’s contributed a lot to their success.”
Zaza agreed. A few weeks ago, during an introductory music marketing class, she said she asked her students to indicate if they’d ever heard of Candlelight Concert.
“Every single one of them raised their hand,” she said.
Global platform for new show development
In crafting the set lists and scores, Bryan said the Fever team works with creators worldwide.
For the global pop shows, such as its concert of Adele covers, a curator works with a musical arranger to develop the set list for the show, he said. A quartet in New York subsequently spends days playing and refining the songs, before they are rolled out to cities globally.
Locally, Fever’s teams identify talented musicians to play the shows.
Toronto Jazz vocalist Joanna Majoko said she received an email from Bryan in the winter of 2022, inviting her to consider working with the team on a Women of Jazz tribute show.
She agreed, and said the experience has been fantastic.
“Every Candlelight show we’ve had, I’m constantly blown away by how enjoyable of an experience it has been,” she said.
Majoko said she’s been paid well, been provided with a platform to share her music, and has been offered the chance to connect with new audiences.
The existing set list for the Women of Jazz show includes Nina Simone’s “I Put a Spell on You,” Ella Fitzgerald’s “Fly Me To the Moon,” and several of Majoko’s own songs.
Violinist Brielle Goheen said she’s also had a very positive experience with the company.
Working with Fever has been the “perfect trifecta” that musicians search for — good music, good performance experiences and top-tier compensation.
“It’s a powerful company, backed by powerful resources, and it’s trickling down.”
Gig model, rather than unionized full-time
Nationwide, most of Canada’s symphony orchestras are unionized organizations that provide full or part-time employment to musicians, according to Allistair Elliott, vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Musicians.
Elliott said collective agreements have been important in securing pensions for artists so they receive an income when they can no longer work.
In contrast, Fever works on a gig model with performers, paying per Candlelight show.
The company also employs far fewer musicians than many of the country’s symphonies. Whereas the Toronto Symphony Orchestra employs dozens of musicians, many of Fever’s shows feature just four musicians in a string quartet.
Katherine Carleton, executive director of Orchestra Canada, said these labour model differences are not fundamentally bad.
“The word gig kind of came from musicians in the first place,” Carleton said. “This is another market for their work and another way of bringing their music to audiences.”
Still, she said, the orchestras’ unionized contracts have helped ensure skilled musicians can lead “lives of comfort, dignity and contribution.”
TorontoToday asked Fever whether the company would consider working with the Canadian Federation of Musicians to develop a collective agreement that includes support for pensions.
“Due to the sensitivity of this information and the complexity of our agreements with musicians—each tailored to local considerations across multiple cities where Candlelight is present—we are unable to provide a definitive answer within your deadline,” said Fever spokesperson Amanda Turchiari Boucault in an emailed statement.
“We appreciate your interest in how Candlelight operates and recognize that our approach differs from traditional orchestras.”
Growing audiences in Toronto
Carleton said there is much traditional orchestras should learn from Fever — with its savvy marketing and nimble approach to hosting the shows that are resonating most with audiences.
“I don’t see this as an ‘us against them’ situation,” she said.
Violinist Brielle Goheen agreed, adding that she believes Candlelight Concerts are helping to grow the size of audiences in Toronto for classical music.
Goheen said Candlelight is doing this by giving audiences the music they want to hear and love.
“They might not necessarily go to a symphony, because they don’t know what ‘Symphony Number 4’ is,” she said. “But they know what Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect’ is.”
She said that Toronto needs this now more than ever.
“My philosophy has always been that when you do a great job of anything, you’re expanding the demand for it,” she said. “When anyone experiences a great musical experience, it makes them go out and try more musical experiences.”
