Three configurations for one club evening
The arrival half-hour
Light instrumental classical guitar — Bach preludes, Granados, Vivaldi — at the volume of conversation. Members arrive, greet, and settle without competing with the music.
The member dinner program
A curated voice + flute + guitar set across the courses. Sung program notes from the soprano connect each piece to the evening's theme, the honoree, or the club's own history.
The featured concert
A fifteen- to forty-five-minute headline performance after the keynote or toast — a full Iberian and South American program, an evening of romantic song, or a custom-built set.
How private clubs program the duo
Members-only dinner programs
Quarterly or seasonal member dinners where the club wants the music to be part of the room — not background, not foreground, but the third element after the table and the conversation.
Holiday & seasonal evenings
December and Valentine's evenings. Voice + flute + guitar arrangements of carols, holiday repertoire, and seasonal song — a tradition members come back for.
Foundation & charity evenings
The crossover evening — a member club hosting a foundation board, a hospital affiliate, or a 501(c)(3) the membership backs. Programming sized to the formality of the cause.
Board, governance & milestone events
President's dinners, anniversary observances, board reception evenings, and milestone events for outgoing officers. A custom program built around the club's own narrative.
Programs sized to historic club rooms
Realistic examples of the configurations clubs of this caliber commission.
The Albert Kahn ballroom
180–250 members in a historic ballroom with high coffered ceilings and warm wood. Reception arrival music, a featured fifteen-minute performance after dinner, and a closing Snapshots of South America set as members move to the cocktail rooms — without amplification.
The library or member lounge
40–80 guests in an intimate, timber-paneled room. A continuous chamber-music underscore through cocktails; a single ten-minute featured piece (Rodrigo's Aranjuez slow movement is a frequent request); a short reception set as the evening winds down.
The summer terrace concert
An outdoor evening on a club terrace, lakefront porch, or member garden. Lighter instrumental program, weather-tested set list, written backup-indoor plan in the engagement agreement. June through early September.
Programmed across Michigan's institutional landscape
Preferred-vendor lists
Meadow Brook Hall · The Henry Ford · Grosse Pointe War Memorial
Six Detroit Music Awards
The duo's six DMA wins (2001–2006) are documented; the 2002 cohort is independently verified via the Metro Times winners archive — a credential no metro Detroit string ensemble has matched.
International diplomatic performance
Organization of American States event hosted by The Hon. Lloyd Axworthy, P.C., O.C., O.M., then-Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister — a more-than-1,000-guest audience.
Concert, opera, and festival
Livonia Symphony Orchestra (Concierto de Aranjuez) · Michigan Opera Theater (Frida, six sold-out shows) · Cheltenham International Music Festival 2002 (European debut)
A sound your members will not have heard from another booking.
Voice, flute, and classical guitar — a combination almost no other Michigan ensemble offers. A club's spring members' dinner does not need to sound the same as the fall members' dinner, the holiday evening, or the foundation evening. The Dearing Concert Duo configures across all four without staffing or sound-system changes.
The soprano can address the room directly with sung program notes connecting each piece to the club's own history — a useful practice for anniversary evenings, presidents' dinners, and member-recognition programs. The flute extends the upper range above what a string quartet can do; the classical guitar ranges from intimate accompaniment to virtuosic Spanish and South American literature.
The ensemble scales without amplification from a forty-person library to a 250-guest ballroom. For larger black-tie events, a discreet two-microphone reinforcement setup is coordinated with the club's AV team. Every aspect of the engagement — load-in, dress code, repertoire, sound check, and the engagement agreement itself — is built for clubs of this caliber.