The Empire Theater in Albany was open during the early 1900s and while the population today has reached over fifty-thousand, the city was much smaller back then. The Empire was also not the only theater open in this area at the time, so in order to ensure they would have steady business, this theater was forced to explore alternative promotional strategies. This included many musical performances.
I found these newspaper articles featuring short explanations for a variety of musical performances including singers and live instruments that were soon to appear at the Empire Theater. My research consisted of searching "Empire Theater" in Albany newspapers. This search yielded hundreds of results, so I narrowed my search dates down to the years 1900-1920 to see if I could find any information about the theater in it's earliest days of film exhibition. Along with these musical performances, this theater also hosted car shows as a form of alternative promotion with what appears to a local car company called "Barrett Bros."
According to these articles, at this free event, cars would be on display and there would be a presentation explaining things about their cars. Finally, I found one more rather strange promotional strategy that featured a scientific rope twirling exhibition performed by professional rope experts.
As you can see, the owners and operators of the Empire Theater explored many options in order to maintain their business and their position in the community. Their strategy included live music, auto shows, and free exhibitions of fun, entertaining performances.