Royal Palm Bay Villas, Orlando, Kissimee, Florida , USA.

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Florida is one of the most multicultural states in the union with a very recent history of immigration. As a consequence the musical styles available range from traditional country music through classical and Hispanic to rock and hip-hop. Depending on your taste and what part of the state you are in you can indulge your aural fancy as you desire. Miami probably provides the greatest range of choice in the state with venues large and small offering every imaginable musical style. South Beach has the widest choice of discos. Key West is a mixture of Hemingway's legacy and the excess of seventies hippiedom. Places like Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville epitomise the latter while Sloppy Joe's celebrates the former. All venues have music, some of it even live and passably tuneful.

A number of the theme parks put on concerts, many of them country music. Both the reopened Cypress Gardens and Silver Springs have some big names in country music performing in their grounds, and the price of admission covers the concert as well on those days. There are many small venues but of the larger ones the TD Waterhouse Center in Orlando , which is a sports stadium, is an excellent location for listening to the driving sound of the stars of country music. There used to be music in a variety of venues at the Church Street Station location in Orlando but this is no longer the case although the area is still worth a sightseeing visit. A smaller, more intimate setting is the King Center in Melbourne , on the east coast of Florida about fifty miles from Orlando . They too feature some of the best known names in music from classical to country. Parking is easy here, which it isn't in Orlando , and the location some way outside the town is conducive to a pleasant evening.

Of course tickets can be purchased on the day at most venues, if there are any left, but it is always advisable to book them soon after the performance is announced. This can be done on the internet or by telephone from ticket agents like Ticketmaster and Ticketweb. Most will not mail tickets abroad so it is necessary to arrive early for the concert and collect them from the Will Call window. As a safeguard you have to produce the credit card used to book them. This goes some way to avoiding the scourge of ticket touts. Ticket prices are much the same as over here if not a little cheaper, depending on the exchange rate prevailing at the time.

Annual events such as the Rodeo at the Silver spurs Arena in Kissimmee often feature top flight acts, in this case in the Country and Americana genres. Likewise many of the dinner show venues feature live music. The Coliseum Ballroom in St Petersburg is good for both ballroom and country dancing. Tampa 's Ybor City is good for jazz music. For those who like classical music Florida has both a Philharmonic Orchestra and a Concert Association which perform across the state. Miami 's New World Symphony and Jackson 's Symphony Orchestra perform regularly in their home towns. The Florida Grand Opera puts on several productions a year and the Gold Coast Opera presents opera in the south-east of the state. So nobody should want for musical choice in this cosmopolitan state.