nothin Co-Op Comes To College Street Music Hall | New Haven Independent

Co-Op Comes To College Street Music Hall

Brian Slattery Photos

Cooperative High School students’ tour of the inner workings of College Street Music Hall was almost over, and they were getting a chance to try out what it felt like to speak into a microphone from that stage. Most of the students introduced themselves, said hello to their fellow classmates. One student took the opportunity to sing.

The tour was part of College Street Music Hall’s outreach program under the auspices of its nonprofit, the New Haven Center for Performing Arts.

College Street Music Hall Director of Community Engagement and Outreach Elinor Slomba has been working with College Street Music Hall for two years. In that time, she has brought in students from University of New Haven’s audio engineering program to have a chance to work College Street’s audio boards. She has developed an ongoing relationship with Amity Teen Center in Woodbridge to the point that the center now throws its annual battle of the bands at College Street.

And she has organized field trips for students from Betsy Ross, New Haven Academy, Educational Center for the Arts (ECA), and Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School. The idea is to give students who are interested in careers in the arts a chance to see just how many jobs exist in the arts beyond what’s seen onstage — from crew to promotion to management — and to give students a little taste of what working at a place like College Street Music Hall might be like.

Betso and Bunting.

On Tuesday, this meant a couple dozen students from Co-op High, just down the street from College Street Music Hall, streamed through the music hall’s doors just before 8 a.m., led by Harriet Alfred, the school’s choir director. In the lobby, Slomba introduced the students to Ian Bunting, operations manager at College Street Music Hall, and Logan Betso, stage manager and lighting designer.

To bring artists and audiences together for that live performance — there’s a lot of people involved,” Slomba explained. An operation like College Street could be thought of as having two working parts, production and promotion, which was another way of saying people who worked with the artists and people who worked with the audience. On both sides, Slomba said, there’s a lot of creativity and creative choice that goes into those jobs.”

Within production, Bunting said, the work could be broken down further. As operations manager, part of his job was making sure there’s a symbiotic relationship between artists and management.” Betso, meanwhile, manages the tech side.”

They divided the group in half. One half followed Slomba to the hall’ balcony seating upstairs. The other half followed Bunting and Betso to the hall’s floor, and to the bank boards that controlled the stage’s lighting and sound. These jobs are to make sure the show sounds good and looks good,” Betso said by way of introduction, but then broke it down much further. Sometimes a band travelled with a sound man who would run the board for the band; sometimes College Street provided one. Different kinds of music required different kinds of sound profiles.

When you set up lights, would it be different setups for people up there — ” a student asked, motioning toward the balcony above, ” — and people down here?”

Betso nodded. You have to have a specific height requirement, so it’s not a hazard.” What looked great from the floor could be blinding in the balcony. Lower lights also had to stay out of the eyes of security guards. Moreover, bigger touring acts often came with their own elaborate lighting setups. In that case, Betso said, the whole day is spent setting that up.” A typical setup day at College Street, Bunting said, could involved between five and 20 people working.

Bunting and Betco then led the students to the loading dock outside. Maybe it didn’t look as glamorous, but the job of stage hand was the best job to get your feet wet,” Bunting. Taking stage hand jobs, in fact, was how both Bunting and Betso got their starts working on shows.

Listen up,” Alfred said.

Loading in a typical show from the alley next to College Street could involve moving about 200 cases of gear, from instruments and amplifiers to lighting and cables, as well as sandbags used to weigh down lighting towers or other props. There was pleasure in having a hand in putting the show together. Being a stage hand is hard work, but it’s rewarding,” Bunting said.

Backstage some of the students immediately began posing in the many mirrors on the wall. There are a lot of mirrors backstage,” Bunting conceded. Rock stars like to know they look good.”

But the logic behind the amenities backstage ran deeper than vanity, Bunting explained. Touring artists, after all, traveled at night, sleeping on their touring buses. During the day, this is their home,” Bunting said. So the backstage area had showers, a kitchen, comfortable seating — everything the hall could provide to make the artists feel welcome. That extended to hospitality. These rock stars and techs are working all day,” Bunting said, and didn’t have time to cook. So meals had to be provided somehow. It was all part of the job of building long-term relationships with touring artists. Artists get to choose where they stop on tour, Bunting explained, and we want to make sure that tours keep coming back.”

The more shows we have, the more work we have, and the more it stimulates the economy,” Bunting added.

How old do you have to be to work here?” a student asked.

From backstage, Bunting and Betso led the students to the stage itself, where a single microphone was set up. They invited the students to try it, offering a prompt: They could just say their names and their ages. Above them, in the balcony, the other half of the tour was watching with Slomba.

Several of the students gave the microphone a shot. Then teacher Alfred stepped to the mike and began to sing, belting a song to the rafters. She spread her arms wide. The students cheered.

Sorry,” Alfred said. Couldn’t resist.”

The students regrouped in the lobby. Then those who had gone with Slomba first followed Bunting and Betso into the hall. Slomba took the other half to the balcony and asked if they had any questions.

Slomba.

How many people does it seat?” asked one student. Slomba smiled. The other question I usually get is how much are the tickets?’ Those two things are in a relationship.” If College Street provided all seating, its capacity was about 1,500. If the floor was standing room and there was only seating in the balcony, capacity could get to 2,000. How many people could a particular show attract? How much would people spend to sit? How much to stand? It’s a conversation with the tour management,” Slomba said. She then asked the students what experiences they’d had doing promotion for school events, and what they’d learned.

You have to do networking and outreach,” one student said.

Talking to people,” another student said.

Begging,” Alfred said, getting a few laughs.

You got to sell it,” another student said. You have to have a lot of confidence when you speak.” Slomba elaborated on that. The better a promoter knew and understood a show, the better she would be at promoting it. And the better she understood a show’s audience, the easier it would be to connect with them. If you know what your audience’s habits are, then you can go to where they are.”

What you’re selling is the experience,” Slomba added. and experience is what the audience leaves with — what they feel inside.”

Alfred also pointed out that shows at Co-op — say, its recent production of In The Heights — were successful because the high school had a good reputation. Slomba nodded.

There’s always a story to be told about the artist,” she said. But building a relationship between audience and venue was just as important. Sometimes organizations get in trouble when they focus on the artist without paying attention to the venue,” she said. Promotion had to start well in advance, as well. Some shows might be sprung on the hall — last year’s Aziz Ansari show was booked merely a week ahead of time — but usually the lead time was longer than six weeks, often months in advance.

Slomba had suggestions for students interested in pursuing careers in the arts. College Street took college students as interns. In addition to University of New Haven’s audio engineering program, SUNY Purchase and UMASS Amherst had arts management programs, and neither of them were too far away. One student nodded; it turned out she had already visited UMASS.

On the stage below, Bunting and Betso had brought the other half of the tour out to try the microphone. One by one the students gave it shot.

Get your hands out of your pockets!” Alfred called from the balcony.

I’m your biggest fan!” a student called to one of her friends.

Finally, a student approached the microphone who, like Alfred, couldn’t resist. She started singing. Her voice echoed through the hall. She gained confidence and volume, and filled the room. The entire place broke out in applause. That’s my baby!” one of the students called from the balcony.

Alfred explained that the field trip was an easy sell for her and her students. They offered it so I jumped at the opportunity,” she said. You never know which of these kids I might see on that stage in the future.”

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