|
|
 
|
|
Author
|
Topic: Providence's Columbus Theatre makes comeback as performance, recording space
|
Paul Goulet
Master Film Handler
Posts: 347
From: Rhode Island
Registered: Jan 2000
|
posted 11-16-2014 09:53 AM
http://www.providencejournal.com/features/entertainment/music/20141116-providence-s-columbus-t heatre-makes-comeback-as-performance-recording-space.ece
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Since the Columbus Theatre reopened in 2012, the 88-year-old building at 270 Broadway has enjoyed a rebirth as a combination performance space and recording studio that has attracted hip bands from Rhode Island and around the country.
The Newport Folk Festival has sponsored shows there, including actor/musican John C. Reilly. The theater has presented legendary country/rockabilly singer Wanda Jackson, neo-soul favorite Charles Bradley and comedian Tig Notaro. Acclaimed producer/performer Daniel Lanois is scheduled to perform Friday.
D The Columbus has also played host to at least one movie premiere this year, Jeff Toste’s documentary on the Haven Brothers diner (with the Haven Brothers truck itself parked outside).
In October, it had a political gathering to support successful Providence mayoral candidate Jorge Elorza. Five local bands played, and then band members got to ask Elorza questions.
You never quite know what you’ll find at the Columbus. On Monday, the Hispanic Flamenco Ballet rented the theater and performed for an audience of enthusiastic students.
It’s a far cry from the era when the Columbus was best known as a venue for adult films.
The theater has benefited from an unusual collaboration between the volunteer Columbus Cooperative and 82-year-old owner Jon Berberian. The cooperative is Ben Knox Miller and Jeff Prystowsky, members of the nationally known Providence band The Low Anthem, along with Bryan Minto, Tom Weyman and Lauren Faria.
A mutual admiration society appears to exist between the Columbus Cooperative and Berberian.
“They’ve been a godsend,” Berberian said.
“He’s the sweetest man in the world. He’s our hero,” said Weyman.
Berberian, who had been a tenor with the New York City Center Opera, said most of the bands that play the Columbus aren’t from his musical era, but he likes some of them, such as Mother Falcon, an orchestral rock band from Austin, Texas.
It was Berberian’s father, Misak Berberian, who bought the theater in 1962 for $23,000. Shortly thereafter, Jon Berberian and his wife, singer Elizabeth Schwering Berberian, moved to Providence to run the theater.
Berberian booked pop singers such as Al Martino and Jerry Vale. When the singers went to larger venues, Berberian turned to second- and third-run movies, and European art films. Finally, in order to keep the theater alive, he turned to adult fare. But Berberian said The Columbus hasn’t shown adult movies for more than 10 years.
In 2009, the theater had to close to comply with the stricter fire codes required after the Station nightclub fire. Berberian said it cost him $400,000, and a long slog through government bureaucracy, to get the Columbus open again.
When it did reopen in late 2012, it was with a gala of local musicians that pointed the way to the theater’s future: The Low Anthem, Brown Bird, The Barr Brothers, Roz Raskin and the Rice Cakes, Alec K. Redfearn and the Eyesores, Sugar Honey Iced Tea and Keith McCurdy.
After the event, some of the organizers decided to keep going.
“Working together felt really good,” said Weyman, a musician and band manager who now functions as the theater’s director of programming. “The Low Anthem guys know a lot of musicians; I know a lot of bands and booking agents.”
Low Anthem’s Miller said the band’s connection with the Columbus was originally through Prystowsky, who noticed the theater and became curious about what was inside. Berberian said he first heard about The Low Anthem through Barnaby Evans, creator of “WaterFire.”
Miller said that the band was immediately intrigued by the possibilities of the theater.
“It was this unbelievable time-capsule space,” Miller said. “Jon sold us on the acoustics of the place — he sang for us on stage.”
The Columbus has two theaters. The larger one downstairs holds about 800 people, while the intimate upstairs theater holds about 200.
Weyman said he usually books between 8 and 10 shows a month in the small theater, one or two in the large one. (That doesn’t count outside rentals such as the Hispanic Flamenco Ballet.)
In a series of rooms off an upstairs hallway, above the theater’s marquee, The Low Anthem has created a recording studio. “Sound travels through the theater in amazing ways,” Miller said, and musicians can play in different parts of the theater to get different sounds.
Band members even installed a big metal plate on a bathroom wall to create an effect known as “plate reverb.”
At the moment, Low Anthem is in the process of upgrading the studio with a bigger mixing board. In the meantime, the area is a musician’s toy chest, even if some of the walls are peeling.
Scattered about the rooms are amps, guitars, multiple percussion instruments, a hammer dulcimer, a theremin, vintage synthesizers, an upright bass, trumpet, mike stands, old organs. There’s a psychedelic mural in one room, a leopard-skin vehicle sculpture by Mark Taber in another.
Miller said more than a dozen bands have used the recording studio, including Roz and the Rice Cakes, Vudu Sister, Last Good Tooth, Dylan Harley, and Haunt the House.
He said the studio is “filled with surprises and weird sound possibilities,” and as more bands record and experiment, they continually discover something new.
There’s no particular philosophy behind booking the Columbus, said Weyman, except perhaps to bring in musicians that other musicians like and respect.
He said the word-of-mouth about the Columbus is spreading among touring bands.
“It’s cool to meet a band for the first time and have them say ‘We were in New York last night, and we heard about the Columbus,’” he said.
So what’s the future for the theater?
Berberian said he’s happy with the way things are going and has no plans to sell the theater at this time. If he does sell, he said, he would like the Columbus Cooperative to be the new owner.
In the meantime, he said, he’s investing in the theater as much as he can. This week, work crews were cleaning the bricks and repairing mortar on the building’s front walls.
Weyman said he likes the way the theater is positioned as a combination studio and performance venue.
“I see it as a nice, slow uphill climb,” he said. “More people find out about us, more people get excited, more people want to play here. We want to do more shows, and bigger shows. But I like the path we’re on now. This is a place where art is created as well as performed.”
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
Printer-friendly view of this topic