Ineffable Now Booking Majestic Ventura Theatre, Talent Buyer Heads Toward 1,500-Show Milestone For 2025

Independent promoter Ineffable Live has taken over the role of exclusive talent buyer for the historic Majestic Ventura Theater in downtown Ventura, California, adding to the company’s stable of venues up and down the state.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Ineffable Live as we enter this next chapter at the Majestic,” said Robert Antonini, owner of the Majestic Ventura Theater. “Their passion for live music, deep artist relationships, and commitment to community make them the ideal partner to help us bring even more dynamic music and cultural events to downtown Ventura.”

The 1,200-seat, 1920s-era theater was previously booked by Live Nation, with upcoming shows on the calendar including Rhiannon Giddens, The Gaslight Anthem, Buena Vista Social Orchestra and Cannibal Corpse.

The venue adds to Ineffable’s toehold in the coastal Southern California city, having opened the 635-capacity Ventura Music Hall in 2022, and creates additional routing opportunities with venues it books across the state in cities including Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, Napa, Fremont and South Lake Tahoe.

“We’re seeing more and more that, in order to have a vibrant music community everywhere, it’s best to bring music to people locally,” says Thomas Cussins, CEO of Ineffable Music, which includes artist management, label and talent buying divisions. He says Ventura’s distinct population and distance from Los Angeles makes it an underserved market with a local community looking for live music, demonstrated by the 150 shows annually at Ventura Music Hall.

“Adding the Majestic was such a natural fit because we’re already sending hundreds of offers every week for the marketplace, we have our theater businesses in San Luis Obispo, the theater in Monterey, and the theater in Napa, it’s kind of a Coastal California run that is really great for folks when they’re not on their major market tour or want to add a Monday or Tuesday outside of the major-market play.

“It’s doubling down on and supporting Ventura as a whole. NIVA (the National Independent Venue Association) recent did that study that for every $1 spent on a concert ticket, $12 is spent locally in the community. Before we came in with Ventura Music Hall there may have been 50, 60 touring acts through each year. We’re 4x-ing that number now.”

Opened in 1928 with an elegant, lavish interior and with an example of the Spanish Colonial Revival architecture style, the Majestic Ventura Theatre was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

“It’s a beautiful theater,” Cussins says. “Obviously our job here is to be the buyers and to do the booking, but we are always trying to help improve the experience for bands and fans. The bones are great and you cannot just make something like this anymore, but there are certain tweaks to make and improvements to work on, like sound, so we’re all in on that.”

Ineffable is on pace for 1,500 shows booked this year, its highest in a year to date, with additions including a 30-show series at the Hangar in South Lake Tahoe — a 600-capacity outdoor space — this summer, featuring artists including The Hip Abduction, Allah-Las, Whitney, STRFKR and Collie Buddz.

Cussins says it’s about staying true to the mission of artist development.

“Yes, it’s mostly smaller stuff but we’re really proud of that,” said Cussins, who is also manager for musicians including Stick Figure, Trevor Hall, The Elovators, Collie Buddz and more. “We want to have a room for everybody. We’re kind of filling a role that the labels used to, in terms of long-term development. We’re helping to break bands and pushing them to local communities, who hopefully can develop into the shed stuff. It’s very organic. We work great with Live Nation and other (bigger) companies. Our job is to fill in around the edges of the space of the scene to just kind of maximize the number of people that are encountering and experiencing the music and finding their new favorite band, just keeping the ecosystem healthy overall.”