Community Concert Hall Reopens

When the curtains closed after our March 12th performance last year, Community Concert Hall director, Charles Leslie did not expect it to be the last call for more than a year. You're watching the Local News Network brought to you by FASTSIGNS and the Timbers at Edgemont Highlands, I'm Wendy Graham Settle. In March, 2020 as the country entered lockdown in response to the rapidly spreading Coronavirus. The Community Concert Hall was one of the many organizations that closed its stores for an indefinite amount of time. But along with other arts organizations across the country Concert Hall director, Charles Leslie continued to find ways to bring music and performances to town.

We normally do a series of concerts at Buckley Park. Called Concert Hall at the Park and we ended up doing those virtually, so we do seven of them one a week for seven weeks and four of the artists who were scheduled to perform here in Durango actually performed them from their homes. So we had one from Nashville, one from LA, one from Chicago and one from Omaha, Nebraska. And then the final three, we produced from our own stage and we shot them and then broadcast them at the same time. And we called it Concert Hall in your own Backyard.

Over the course of the summer and fall, Concert Hall staff worked to bring virtual concerts to Durango. Including a live-streamed Bar D Wranglers Christmas Special last December.

We reopened on February 1st with our full staff and what ended up happening from February basically until the end of may, is we were supporting college events. So the music department and theater department both did plays and performances that we then broadcast. We had cameras on stage. We had multiple switching devices so that we could do a multi-camera shoot and we'd done that all all spring.

On June 10th, the Concert Hall hosted its first in-person concert since that final curtain call in March, 2020, featuring a songwriter circle of three singer songwriters onstage.

One of the interesting things about reopening is that we didn't do anything for several months. So we're in a way having to relearn a lot of things that we've, you know, I've been doing this for going 20 on 25 years, but I'm like, oh wow! I do have to remember you know, how we sell tickets and how we do marketing and you know, all those things that go with putting on shows. It's been really interesting to try to kind of relearn all that.

The Community Concert Hall once again, will host the Concert in the Park series beginning in August. And Leslie hopes to return admission to full capacity for the Hall's fall season in September.

I'm really excited to get the Buckley Park Concert Hall at the Park series you know, it's our free concert series. Everybody, you know, from little kids to, you know, people who are literally a hundred years old, we've had people a hundred years old at our concerts. Just seeing people gather again, there's something really gratifying and exciting about that.

To buy tickets and view the schedule for the summer concert series, visit durangoconcerts.com or call 970-247-7675. You can also view future concert dates and locations by visiting the calendar page on the website. Thanks for watching this edition of the Local News Network. I'm Wendy Graham Settle.

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