Twenty minutes with Brett Batterson, President & CEO Orpheum Theatre Group, Memphis

BRETT BATTERSON serves as President & CEO of the Orpheum Theatre Group, a five-time Tony Award winning theatrical institution in Memphis.

Prior to his arrival, he served for twelve years as Executive Director of the national historic landmark Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, ten years as COO of Michigan Opera Theatre, Detroit, and was named Memphis Magazine’s CEO of the Year in 2025, and Arts Presenter of the Year by the North American Performing Arts Managers and Agents in 2017.

The leading venue in Memphis, artists who have graced the Orpheum’s stage include Jerry Lee Lewis, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, ZZ Top, Mary J Blige, Jerry Seinfeld, and Houdini. But are the theater’s best days nothing more than sepia-tinged memories, or is there a bright future ahead for The Orpheum, Memphis theatreland, and live music?

“Oh I’m envisaging at least as good as, or better future. I think live entertainment will always be a valuable part of America, of the world, because I think it goes back thousands of years. I think that people said when the radio came along, you know the radio is going to kill live entertainment and it didn’t. Television is going to kill live entertainment, and it didn’t. Movies didn’t kill it. The internet didn’t kill it because people want to experience something in a room full of other people.

“It’s been proven that if you go to a comedy with a full house that’s laughing, you’re gonna laugh more than if you watch it at home on your television. So, I think live entertainment has a very bright future and I think The Orpheum’s future is very bright because I think we’ll continue to attract the artists that are looking for twenty-three, twenty-four hundred seats, and wanna play a beautiful building. I mean if you gave any artist the chance to play The Orpheum or play a chrome and steel building – I think most would choose The Orpheum.

“And absolutely yes, we would like to attract more music acts to The Orpheum. We’re known for presenting Broadway – we present Broadway series – and that’s what we’re really known for, but the concert business is probably our second most recognisable business, and yeah, I’d love to see twenty, twenty-five acts a year come through The Orpheum.

“We hit that act that can sell ‘this’ number of tickets. We have some that return all the time, John Mellencamp comes through town every time he tours, ZZ Top does the same, they play The Orpheum whenever they’re in town, and we get some country people.

“So, we do present the big bands and big names that are touring, but I think one of the disadvantages Memphis has over London, or New York, or Los Angeles, or Nashville even, is we don’t have that level of musician living here by and large. We’ve had you know, Jerry Lee Lewis lived here, still lived here until he died, but Johnny Cash left, and you know, they all left at some point.

“We have to wait for a tour to come through, and so we work with a lot of the four profit promoters, Live Nation, AEG Entertainment, and all those places to book those bands, and it’s cyclical. The first two years after Covid, we had some great names because everyone wanted to go out and make money – that’s kinda now dying down a little bit and what we need is, really what we need for our venue, is a steady stream, so the peaks and the valleys, they’re hard to budget for.

“Everybody loves Memphis, everybody wants to come to Memphis, but they have to be touring or they won’t come, as opposed to packing up and going down the street and playing a concert.

“Memphis has the image in the rock industry as being a hard ticket, a difficult sell, that’s been for decades, and I don’t know why that is. When I came to Memphis from Chicago in 2015, I heard that right from the beginning and Memphians said it, ‘it’s a hard ticket,’ meaning it’s hard to sell in the music industry. But I know our concerts are selling on equivalent with other shows – an act playing a twenty-hundred seat theatre in Los Angeles or in Memphis, we’re selling the same number of tickets as they are so I’m not sure where that reputation comes from.

“What we do have in Memphis that’s very interesting, is that we don’t have a lot of competing venues. We have venues of different sizes. So, if you can sell ‘this’ many tickets you’ll go to ‘this’ place. We get the bands that can sell 1,500 to 2,500 tickets, they’re going to come to The Orpheum. If they can sell 6,000 tickets, they’ll got to the Landers Centre which is a small arena in northern Mississippi, if they can sell 20,000 tickets they’ll go to the Fed Ex Forum.

“So, one of the good things about Memphis from a venue operators’ point of view is that we’re not competing with other venues, it all depends on how many tickets they can sell, and then they fit the building that they fit.”

But away from theatreland, and speaking as a well-informed, passionate backer of the city of Memphis and its musicians, does Batterson sense any danger the city may one day become nothing more than a musical theme park, focusing soley on Elvis Presley, and the long departed legends’ of yesteryear?

“There’s a ton more to Memphis than Elvis, and the music that’s come out of this city is way more than Elvis, but I think there’s always been a competition between Memphis and Nashville, and Nashville’s become the theme park and so I think that Memphis is the grittier city with the more urban sound, earthy and scrappy. I mean the Elvis thing is the Elvis thing, but I don’t see Memphis becoming another Nashville if that’s the question, another Disneyland, I don’t see it happening.

“But something you’ll hear from young musicians in Memphis now, is that the focus on the past is hurting their ability to break out. Memphis has a lot of history, but also a lot of young talent that needs exposure, I think that’s the challenge for the city – how do they continue to be a place that musicians want to be, where they want to live, where they want to record, where they want to play.

“I think Memphis – speaking specifically of music – has always been a melting pot of everything, of different styles. It’s for this region where the rural country people met the urban city people and that melded to make rockabilly and to make a little bit harder edged country.  I think now we’re seeing it with some of the rap artists and some of the hip-hop artists that come through where they make their home here for a while.”

And finally, if wishes came true, is there one ‘bucket list‘ musician Batterson would like to see headline The Orpheum?

“Ah Jeez! I’m too pragmatic to say because for me it’s how much money can I make, which is how many tickets can I sell, how many drinks can I sell. Well, you know what I’d love to do, and it’s just my own ‘fandom,’ it would be like Springsteen did a series of small theatre concerts, I wish something like that would happen again.

“Elton John did the same thing back in the late ‘70s when he felt himself needing to refresh, he started playing some small theatres. I would love to have those kind of, that level of act play a small theatre. We had Justin Timberlake last year do a concert here and that was probably as close as we’ve gotten, that big major star name, local boy made good.”

(With special thanks to Brett Batterson, and Kristin Bennett-Banks)

Visit Orpheum Theatre Group HERE