Let’s face it: college is expensive. Despite the fact that Bellevue College is considerably cheaper than any of the local four-year colleges, between tuition, books and transportation, students here know how important it is to be money conscious. Concert tickets and fancy nights out tend to be rare occurrences for those paying their way through school; after all, it wouldn’t be very financially responsible to drop $40 every weekend to go see the Seattle Symphony play.
The Seattle Symphony’s Campus Club is a free membership that gives college students access to all concerts for just $12 a ticket. Here’s how it works: To become a Campus Club member, simply email campus.club@seattlesymphony.org with the following information: your name, address, phone number, email and school name. After being approved, members are issued membership cards that they must present along with valid student ID each time they buy a ticket. One of the only drawbacks to the Campus Club is that tickets can not be reserved in advance, and must be bought the day of the concert, at least an hour before show time. For $12, however, this is a small inconvenience. And these tickets won’t just get you nosebleed seats, either; $12 buys the best available seat in the house. That means that those $75 orchestra seats are up for grabs to Campus Club members for less than a third of the original ticket price.
As awesome as cheap concerts are, classical music is not everyone’s cup of tea. Contrary to popular belief, however, the Seattle Symphony plays more than just long, stuffy, snooze-worthy symphonies by composers who died hundreds of years ago. They also put on concerts featuring orchestrations of popular music (see the Holiday Pops concert on Dec. 6-9, 2012), monthly performances targeted at children under twelve (see the Tiny Tots: Swing Sway Musical Adventure concert on Nov. 16-17, 2012), jazz concerts which, with a mix of big band standards and unpredictable improvisation, are sure to be a thrill (see the New Orleans Night Out concert on Nov. 3, 2012 or In The Mood—A 1940s Big Band Revue on march 10, 2013) and concerts featuring contemporary music from other cultures (see the Flamenco concert on Nov. 1, 2012 or the Celebrate Asia concert on Jan. 27, 2013). The Campus Club also gives members access to tickets for the Seattle Youth Symphony. Even though classical music doesn’t appeal to everybody, the Campus Club can still make inexpensive, quality entertainment accessible for people who aren’t Mozart enthusiasts.
For those classical music buffs out there, for the 2012-2013 season, the Seattle Symphony will be welcoming world-renown musicians such as world-renown violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter (March 3, 2013) and Grammy-award winners such as Hillary Hahn (April 25 and 27, 2013) and Itzhak Perlman (Feb. 19, 2013) to Benaroya Hall for performances that aren’t to be missed.
So whether you’re a Rachmaninov enthusiast, looking to become more culturally involved or you just need a place to take grandma when she comes to visit, the Campus Club is definitely worth the email.