Historic music hall has brighter days ahead

Newark Symphony Hall.

Growing up in Newark's South Ward, Linda Reaves was a regular at Newark Symphony Hall, where she attended concerts by Sly and the Family Stone and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and annual fashion shows hosted by Ebony magazine.

Newark native Halima Abdulghani saw Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald -- and she would have gone to a 1968 Jimi Hendrix show if her father had let her.
"It's a great venue," said Reaves, 53, who now lives in East Orange. "It was so easy to get to and the acoustics were great."

Added Abdulghani, "It had a very big impact on everyone I know."

Once the major venue in the state's largest city, Symphony Hall is now a deteriorating rental facility with a badly leaking roof. It hosts hundreds of social events and meetings, but it presents fewer and lower-profile shows than it did in its heyday in the '50s and '60s, when stars such as Judy Garland, Fitzgerald and James Brown were in the spotlight.

But a renewed commitment from City Hall, a reorganized board of trustees and the imminent repair of the roof could signal a turning point for the historic facility, according to new executive director Philip Thomas.

"Newark Symphony Hall is the anchor institution in terms of a facility on the south end of Broad Street," said Thomas, who was vice president for education at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center before taking the helm at Symphony Hall in May. "People have come here for decades and they continue to come. They have a long emotional history with Symphony Hall, a lot of memories."

The opening of the Prudential Center arena next month will extend the downtown corridor to within blocks of the theater, bringing people and attention to the area. And the redevelopment of the Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District which focuses on the neighborhood around the hall -- is picking up steam.

The interior of Newark Symphony Hall , circa 1925.

"Clearly, it is still trying to find its place, but the future is much brighter," said Linwood Oglesby, executive director of the Newark Arts Council. "It becomes the link between the whole Lincoln Park area and the north part of downtown."

Built in 1925 and listed on state and national historic registers, Symphony Hall, originally called the Salaam Temple and known for decades as The Mosque, is owned by the city and leased to a nonprofit organization charged with its operations and upkeep. It houses three performance venues -- the 2,829-seat Sarah Vaughan Concert Hall, the Terrace Ballroom, which can seat 1,000 for a theater event or 700 for a banquet, and a 200-seat black box theater -- and its fourth floor dance studio is home to the Garden State Ballet School.

A 2004 performance which included professionals as well as students from Gallman's Newark Dance Theatre Junior Company and Gallman's Newark Dance Theatre Conservatory.

Last year it hosted 200 events, ranging from civic meetings to church services, fashion shows to gospel concerts. It also hosted 170 events associated with the ballet school. Federal tax returns show it earned between $838,000 and $1.1 million in rental revenue in each of the last three years. Last year's budget was $1.7 million.

"Symphony Hall has a long history for social events, for parties, dances, high school graduations and church services," Thomas said. "Those events are still happening."

The Newark PAL Hip Hop Dance Troupe performs to support their after-school- programs at Newark Symphony Hall in 2004.

Performances, though, are less frequent. Later this month, it hosts the play, "Gossip, Lies and Secrets." Tye Tribbett presents a gospel concert on Oct. 7, and a Jazz Marathon concert starring a dozen area artists -- from Rufus Reid to Savion Glover -- is scheduled for Nov. 15.

Still, the situation is better than it was 10 years ago. In the mid 1990s, the venue suffered years of serious budget deficits and constant management turnover. City Hall and the Internal Revenue Service both launched investigations into box office irregularities, including the alleged theft of almost $75,000 from ticket receipts. (No criminal charges were filed, though several employees lost their jobs.) In 2004, following a six-year residency, the African Globe Theatre Company severed ties with the hall after a dispute with the box office.

The biggest difficulty came in 1997, when the New Jersey Performing Arts Center opened across town. The state of the art NJPAC took attention, money and artists -- including the New Jersey Symphony, New Jersey Opera and New Jersey Ballet -- away from the down-on-its-heels hall.

"It got left behind (when NJPAC opened)," Reaves said. "It's great to have the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, but that does not mean that Newark Symphony Hall should not have been taken care of as well."

Thomas says the political will now appears strong enough to reverse that. "The value of Symphony Hall is being taken seriously by this administration," he said.

He has secured city government's help in accomplishing his first priority -- installing a new roof, a $500,000 project that is at least five years overdue. Following that, he plans a fund-raising campaign that will seek private contributions to upgrade the dance studio and then the theater and ballroom.

Refurbishing the office space on the third and fourth floors of the massive building also is on the agenda, Thomas said. Rental revenue from this space could subsidize the artistic operations of the hall.

The hall's recovery could take years, and it will need financial help from all sources to be successful, says Oglesby. There are several positive, if minor, developments. Last month Newark City Council approved a new lease, the first in a decade, that provides $650,000 for operations, an increase of $150,000 in its annual subsidy.

But there are still problems. There were not enough board members at its last meeting to tackle any new business, including a vote to add several prominent members of the business community to the group. They will meet Oct. 2 to try again.

After fixing the roof and improving the function of the board, Thomas says he will turn his attention to the artistic side of operations. Not surprisingly, he will focus on programs for the city's schoolchildren. "There aren't enough activities in the city for children," he said. "I don't want to replicate what we did at NJPAC. We want to complement it."

Peggy McGlone may be reached at (973) 392-5982 or pmcglone@starledger.com.

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