Peter,
--- On Sat, 8/14/10, Peter Nightingale <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I play my lute regularly at a local restaurant, music from
> before 1650
> exclusively. The owners have been contacted by BMI
> and were told that
> they need a license.
> Putting it generously, I would call this BMI claim dubious
> and my question
> is: am I missing something here? Is this legitimate?
No way. You're playing music that is in the public domain. You or the
restaurant are no more responsible for paying royalties on performances of this
music than a preacher and church are for reading aloud from the Bible each
Sunday. Sounds like you might be up against some pencil pushers at BMI who
won't allow themselves to be confused by facts. But maybe there's an easy
solution...
I ran into this problem when I tried to get have the children's guitar ensemble
I directed play at a local bookstore. The person in charge of booking insisted
that, due to licensing reasons, acts could only play exclusively their own
music. Despite my explanation that all of the kids' repertoire was public
domain, the woman on the other end of the phone was adamant. Finally I simply
said, "Sure, we've got enough of our own compositions," and she gave us a date.
Much of the repertoire was standard light classical stuff like Bach's G major
Minuet that must have been recognizable even to someone with no classical music
experience. It was obviously not written by any of the 10-year-olds in our
group. We were asked back, however, and this became one of our regular
performance venues.
..so maybe on paper you can jettison all of your historical repertoire and
present an "evening of original lute music by Peter Nightigale."
Chris
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