The Santa Cruz Foundation for the Performing Arts (SCFPA) has been looking for a permanent concert venue since its founding in 2005. Fred and Christina Wilhelm, who oversee the foundation, began with a $500,000 donation from Virginia Benderly, a local philanthropist and patron of the arts who has since passed away.
Over the years Fred Wilhelm has invested this seed money wisely, but a hall with good acoustics, seating, stage, lighting, lobby, and all the other attributes that go into an excellent performance space costs well into the millions. At various times SCFPA has considered purchasing the Mission in Patagonia, and last year they came close to leasing performance space in Kino Springs, but for a variety of reasons, these and other possibilities have not borne fruit.
The Wilhelms have been reluctant to take on a mortgage, and they shy away from grants, saying there are too many strings attached to most grants and the process is often more rigorous than the actual check warrants, when and if it comes.
While their search for a site has gone on over the past eight years, the Wilhelms have brought music to the community with the Benderly Concert Series, performances by professional musicians that take place on winter Sunday afternoons at interesting venues around the county. These concerts and the champagne receptions that follows are always well attended.
Then the Wilhelms opened the Community Music School at 348 Naugle Ave. in a rented building. The school offers affordable individual, private instruction in a large variety of instruments as well as master classes.
Those who attend the Sunday concerts are impressed with the quality of music they hear. That’s because the performers are professionals and often paid accordingly. Their transportation is also paid. Fred says that between this and logistics costs, the concerts just about break even. Christina stresses that making money is not the goal. The foundation’s mission is to provide the region with “new and exciting ways of experiencing the performing arts.” These concerts and the SCFPA Community Music School have been their way of carrying out that mission while waiting for the concert hall to happen.
A member of the Portland (Maine) String Quartet came to perform in the Benderly Concert Series last year. While he was here, talk turned to the deficit of live classical music venues in the state of Maine which is made up largely of rural towns and offshore islands. Those sitting around the table agreed that the only way to remedy the situation was to take music to the towns, and that’s when Christina had her brainstorm.
Now we have “Concert Haul TM”, not the hall that has always been a vision, but a specially-designed trailer that opens out into a stage with lights and acoustical wings on each side to direct the sound forward. There is storage for 50 chairs. “Concert Haul TM*” can “take music to the towns.”
Using the internet, Fred Wilhelm found a firm in Chicago that manufactured large custom trailers. Using modern communications, the firm and Fred designed the “Concert Haul TM*.” Gustavo Estrella, a graphic artist whose work the Wilhelms admire, designed the exterior, which is actually printed on vinyl and wrapped around the enormous box. The trailer was delivered in early December, and the man who drove it here from Chicago told the Wilhelms that it handles beautifully.
Now, with a portable concert hall, SCFPA can take music to all sorts of creative venues. The possibilities seem limitless. Christina envisions concerts for hospitals, malls, wineries, schools and so on. These events will either be free or very reasonably priced and they will take place in Santa Cruz County and beyond. The trailer pulls into a parking lot, the stage opens up, the chairs are set up, the performers arrive, and bingo, there’s a concert.
Most of the “Concert Haul TM*” performers will be from the region, and they won’t just be playing traditional classical music. The Wilhelms are open to folk music, dance, puppetry, young and seasoned performers. There will be microphones, but the music will be acoustic. Professional performers have already begun to volunteer, inspired by the idea of a traveling stage and by Christina who is a well-known pianist and choral director.
There are still some unknowns in this new SCFPA endeavor. The “Concert Haul TM*” weighs 13,200 pounds and has electric brakes. The truck that tows it will have to have some special equipment, but it turns out that there are several of these in the area owned by people who would like to help. Then there is practice—not the musical kind, but the mundane process of setting up the stage, putting out the chairs, plugging in the power, and then taking it all down and securely packing it away. At this point, Fred says, he is overseeing this end of the operation.
At the moment the “Concert Haul TM*” is parked out of sight somewhere in the county, but soon the Wilhelms hope to move it behind the music school on Naugle Ave. From all appearances, there is adequate room to park it there between concerts.
It seems that Christina and Fred Wilhelm have combined their visionary, creative and practical talents to come up with their long dreamed of performance space. If all goes forward as planned, the concert haul will be woven into the fabric of southern Arizona and bring music to everyone.
The Wilhelms still have some paperwork to do before they can present a concert on their new stage, so an audience will have to wait until February 8, 2014 when, in conjunction with Global Arts’ annual Valentine’s Day event, the “Concert Haul TM*” will hold its inaugural concert.