Academy of Country Music Names Ryman Auditorium Venue of the Year

RYMAN AUDITORIUM VENUE OF THE YEAR
General Manager Sally Williams Honored As Promoter of the Year

Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium has been named Venue of the Year by the Academy of Country Music (ACM) and its General Manager, Sally Williams, has been named Promoter of the Year. This marks the second time the Mother Church of Country Music has been honored with the industry-voted award. The win for Williams is her first. The 46th ACM Awards show will be held this Sunday, April 3 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and televised on CBS. Industry awards, including Venue and Promoter of the Year, will be formally presented September 19 at the ACM Honors event.

“We are very proud of the Ryman staff and their dedication to providing superior experiences for our guests as well as for the artists and musicians who perform on our legendary stage,” commented Steve Buchanan, Senior Vice President, Media & Entertainment, Gaylord Entertainment. “Sally Williams is an exceptional leader of the team who brings passion, creativity and know-how to the art and science of concert promotion and venue management.”

Last year was a record-setting year for the Mother Church of Country Music. In addition to being named ACM Venue of the Year, the venue also was named Pollstar Magazine’s Theatre of the Year for a third time. The Ryman presented concerts by country superstars Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley, Don Williams, Kris Kristofferson, Lady Antebellum and Vince Gill, among others. Major television productions included Fox’s American Idol, CMT’s Crossroads with Kenny Chesney and the Steve Miller Band and GAC’s Music City Keep On Playin’ – A Benefit for Flood Relief. The Ryman also welcomed over one hundred Grand Ole Opry shows, including forty-eight in the wake of Nashville’s historic flooding while reconstruction of the Opry House was underway. During the extended Opry at the Ryman season, performers included country superstars Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Dolly Parton and Martina McBride.

Williams began managing the Ryman in 2008 and is only the eighth person to hold the role in the National Historic Landmark’s 119 year history. She began her career promoting concerts while a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia and went on to work for promoters Contemporary Productions, Jam Productions and Pace Concerts. In 1999, she joined Gaylord Entertainment and managed concerts and other events for the Opry Entertainment Complex for more than seven years. After a brief stint at the Country Music Association, Williams returned to Gaylord as the Ryman’s General Manager. Since then she has led the Ryman in promoting concerts ranging from Miranda Lambert to Zac Brown Band and from Paul Simon to Widespread Panic.
“I have the great privilege of working with an incredibly talented and passionate group of people who are dedicated to growing the Ryman’s legacy as a world-class concert venue and the Mother Church of Country Music,” said Williams. “I am very proud to be part of the country music community and tremendously honored to receive the Promoter of the Year award from the Academy of Country Music.”

The current concert line-up at the Ryman offers a wide-variety of entertainment and the venue continues to honor its country music heritage. In celebration of the fiftieth-anniversary of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” the Ryman is bringing back the bio-musical “Always…Patsy Cline” for six weeks starting June 17, 2011. Mandy Barnett will reprise her role of Patsy on the same stage where she first portrayed Patsy in 1994 to national acclaim. Other upcoming events include the 10th Anniversary of Marty Stuart’s Late Night Jam to kick off CMA Music Festival and the annual Springer Mountain Farms Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman summer concert series featuring Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, Doc Watson and more.

Country music superstars comment on the Ryman:

“Premiering my album “Revolution” live at the Ryman Auditorium was a dream come true.” – Miranda Lambert

“There’s no place I’d rather play!” – Keith Urban

“Playing the Ryman has been at the top of our list of goals since we first got together to write songs.” – Lady Antebellum

“You changed my life forever when I stepped on your stage the first time!” – Taylor Swift

“It’s one of the finest places in the world to play for a country musician.” – Jamey Johnson

“If country music had a Vatican, it would be the Ryman.” – Marty Stuart

GM Sally Williams Talks With The Tennessean

Anita Wadhwani sat down with our General Manager, Sally Williams to talk about our storied past and our future. They discuss the state of the touring industry, how we set our ticket prices and Sally’s nomination as the Academy of Country Music Promoter of the Year. Read more here.

Tracy Morgan at the Ryman

Tickets on sale Friday, April 1 at 10 am

SNL alum Tracy Morgan is set to take the Ryman stage Friday, June 3. Current staring as Tracy Jordan on the NBC hit “30 Rock”, comedian Morgan is also the author of “I Am The New Black” which was published in 2009.

Tickets go on sale April 1 at 10:00 a.m. via ryman.com.

B. B. King & Buddy Guy Return To The Ryman May 31st

B.B. King and Buddy Guy return to the Ryman May 31st! Tickets go on sale Friday, March 25th at 10:00 a.m. via ryman.com and Ticketmaster.

OneRepublic Setlist (03/13/11)

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Owl City at the Ryman June 13

Owl City to play the Ryman June 13. Tickets on sale Tuesday, March 22 at 12:00 p.m.

Owl City is back after a long cold winter with a new full-length studio album “All Things Bright And Beautiful” is due out May 17 Worldwide on Universal Republic. Produced by Owl City’s Adam Young and recorded at Sky Harbor Studios in Owatonna, MN, “All Things Bright And Beautiful” features twelve new songs and was mixed by Young along with Grammy Award-winning engineer and producer Jack Joseph Puig whose credits include Beck, Mary J. Blige, Green Day and John Mayer to name a few.

Tour in support of the new album starts with this June 13 date here at the Ryman. Ticket available here.

Paul Simon to play the Ryman May 19th

To celebrate the release of his first new record in five years, legendary artist Paul Simon has announced a very special Nashville show scheduled for May 19, 2011. Tickets are set to go on sale Friday, March 11 at 10:00 a.m. Ticket says will be online on via ryman.com. Tickets are $115.00, $85.00 and $65.00. The set list willd raw from his iconic career, including several songs that haven’t been performed live in many years. Also included will be songs from “So Beautiful or What” his brand new album set for release by Hear Music/Concord Music Group on Tuesday, April 12. Before hitting the road, Simon will appear two consecutive nights, April 6 and 7 on NBC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon”.

Produced by Phil Ramone and Paul Simon, with liner notes by Elvis Costello, “So Beautiful or What” is one of the most highly anticipated albums of the year. Rolling Stone magazine recently declared it “…his best since Graceland…” and National Public Radio affirmed, “…his new music balances great poetry and pop. Paul Simon is a national treasure.” In their current issue, Filter Magazine calls the new album, “…a new masterpiece from the Picasso of music.”

Joining Paul for this tour is a stellar band of musicians including Cameroonian guitarist Vincent Nguini, drummer Jim Oblon, pianist Mick Rossi, saxophonist/keyboardist Andrew Snitzer, bassist Bakithi Kumalo, guitarist Mark Stewart, master percussionist Jamey Haddad and multi-instrumentalist Tony Cedras.

For more information, click here

Welcome to the new ryman.com!

Welcome to the new ryman.com! You’ve probably noticed a lot of changes around here today! We’re so thrilled to finally show this website to the world – we’ve spent a year on concept, design, content building and finally programming. It’s been a long journey and we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what our users are after.

We know the Ryman means a lot to people all over the world. We know the reasons the Ryman means so much to so many people are as varied as the events and experiences that have taken place here over the past 119 years. However, most people today experience the Ryman in one of two ways. Either by taking a tour during the day or a seeing a concert at night.

During the day, visitors come to tour the National Historic Landmark and the most famous former home of the Grand Ole Opry® where so much history has taken place. For these guests we offer Self-Guided and Backstage tours as well as the opportunity to have pictures “made” on the historic stage or to Make A Record at the Ryman.

Our nighttime visitors come through the doors of Pollstar’s Theatre of the Year to see their favorite artists in concert. In 2010 alone, the Ryman hosted multi-night sold-out shows by The Avett Brothers, Don Williams, Neil Young and Widespread Panic; performances by Grammy-nominated artists including Adam Lambert, Arcade Fire, The Black Keys, Blake Shelton, Dailey & Vincent, Dierks Bentley, Lady Antebellum, Marty Stuart, Norah Jones, Sara Bareilles, Train and Vampire Weekend; television tapings including CMT’s Crossroads with Kenny Chesney and the Steve Miller Band, GAC’s Music City Keep on Playin’ – A Benefit for Flood Relief and Fox’s American Idol; award shows such as ACM Honors, the Americana Music Association Awards and Honors and the International Bluegrass Music Awards. Also in 2010, the Ryman hosted a total of eighty-one Grand Ole Opry shows, including forty-eight in the wake of Nashville’s historic flooding while reconstruction of the Opry House was underway. During the extended Opry at the Ryman season, performances included country superstars Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Dolly Parton and Martina McBride.

In addition to the Daytime and Nighttime sections of the new ryman.com, we have a third section, History. The Ryman is a building steeped in Nashville cultural history – we don’t use the tagline “Historically Cool Since 1892” without reason. Did you know Houdini performed on our stage in 1924 or that Charlie Chaplin came to raise money for Liberty Bonds in 1919 (Bonus trivia: Tom Ryman’s son Paul opened the show, his first of two Ryman Auditorium appearances.) Or did you know that Ricky Skaggs made his Ryman debut at the tender age of 7? Or that Helen Keller spoke to a sold-out house through her lifelong companion, Anne Sullivan? We could go on and on about the amazing things that have happened in our past – we’ve documented many of them in the Ryman Timeline. Explore the Ryman through the years using the scrolling arrows on each side and see pictures of President Roosevelt coming in the side door or see the ad for New York Metropolitan Opera performance for which our original stage was built in 1901.

After exploring the History section of the website, peruse the Hatch Show Print Gallery where we’ve collected all of our Hatches since the 1994 renovation. Or try your hand at Ryman trivia in the Trivia section.

Interested in bringing a group to the Ryman? Check out our new section just for groups. We’ve also got an expanded section about renting the Ryman – for a private event, concert, press conference or product launch – nearly anything you can dream up. Did you know you can get married at the Mother Church of Country Music? You can, and all the information is in our new Wedding section.

Explore, play around and enjoy the new site. We hope you love it as much as we do – because we built it for you, our daytime patrons, nighttime concert goers and Nashville history buffs. To us who work here every day, the Ryman is not just a building. She’s a member of our extended family. We’re all just so honored to be here, continuing the tradition of great concerts and sharing the Ryman story with our visitors during the day.

We love to hear your feedback, so feel free to reach out to us via Facebook or Twitter.