Smith Center honors talent daily, so there’s no stopping for birthday
The Smith Center for the Performing Arts may be celebrating its anniversary, but don’t expect to hear “Happy Birthday” pealing from the downtown center’s 17-story Carillon Tower .
“We’re not stopping to have a celebration,” Smith Center President Myron Martin says. “We’re going to keep on keepin’ on.”
And when Martin says “keepin’ on,” he means “bringing the world’s most talented people to Las Vegas.”
Technically, The Smith Center celebrated its anniversary March 2, a year after country singer Randy Travis performed the first of two “Hard Hat” concerts for those who built the $470 million complex.
Or you could cite March 10 as the center’s official birthday.
That’s when a glittery opening gala was held, with luminaries from country (Willie Nelson) to classical (Joshua Bell), Broadway (Brian Stokes Mitchell) to pop (Jennifer Hudson).
It formed the basis for the PBS special “From Dust to Dreams: Opening Night at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts.” (Las Vegas’ PBS affiliate, KLVX-TV, Channel 10, has scheduled repeats of the special March 22-25 and 28-29.)
While “it feels like opening night was just the other night,” Martin says, “in some ways, I feel like we’ve been open a long, long time.”
But that’s what happens when you present 457 performances in one year.
“That’s enough for most places to count for many, many years,” he says. “The truth is, we kind of purposefully programmed more than we might in an average year.”
Presenting The Smith Center’s inaugural cavalcade of classical music, dance, Broadway musicals, locally produced plays, lectures, jazz and cabaret, comedy and even circus performances “helps us see what kinds of shows audiences relate to,” Martin says.
First and foremost, in The Smith Center’s first year, Las Vegas audiences related to Broadway tours, including a six-week run of the musical “Wicked.”
More than 70 percent of those tickets went to season subscribers, showing that “our community expects us to be a Broadway house,” Martin says.
But even hometown institutions such as Nevada Ballet Theatre and the Las Vegas Philharmonic have found a home in The Smith Center’s 2,050-seat Reynolds Hall.
Season subscriptions to Philharmonic concerts “were up by about 20 percent this season,” Philharmonic President Jeri Crawford says.
“We added an additional pops concert, and we will be adding some additional concerts next season,” she notes. “It’s enabling us to grow.”
Nevada Ballet Theatre sold almost 90 percent of the tickets to its new “Nutcracker,” according to a company statement, representing “a significant increase in sales from the last three years that the company performed” the ballet at Paris Las Vegas.
However, “with the positive increase in ticket sales comes an increased cost of presenting in a new venue,” the statement says.
In addition to traditional programming, Smith Center officials have tried to reach new audiences with attractions such as “Drumline,” featuring marching bands from historically black colleges.
The shows drew “an incredibly enthusiastic audience,” Martin recalls. “And many of them had never been here before. That’s really exciting.”
Audience development also remains a priority at Cabaret Jazz, The Smith Center’s intimate music club, which in its first year hosted renowned performers such as Barbara Cook, Branford Marsalis and resident headliner Clint Holmes.
“What I get from people is, there’s no other room like this in Las Vegas,” with “music you can’t hear anywhere else,” Holmes says.
Yet Martin suspects that “there’s still a large number of people in Las Vegas who don’t know — or go” to Cabaret Jazz.
“That’s one of our goals for the second year,” because “once you go once, you want to go back.”
In addition to Cabaret Jazz, The Smith Center’s Boman Pavilion is home to the Troesh Studio Theater, a flexible space that — in addition to performances — has hosted rehearsals, meetings, wedding receptions and “countless kids’ shows,” Martin says.
A few months ago, the Troesh Studio Theater hosted a daylong meeting for Martin’s colleagues — chief executive officers at performing arts centers nationwide.
“I don’t want to say my peers around the country were jealous,” Martin says, but “they loved it. We’re pretty proud of what we’ve got here.”
But not so proud that they’ve stopped trying to make improvements.
After dealing with first-year complaints (such as amplification problems and noisy chairs in the balcony boxes), Martin and his Smith Center colleagues aren’t shy about asking locals for their opinions — good and bad.
At times, Martin doesn’t need to ask, he says, ticking off a list of places he has heard suggestions from the public: “in our lobby, at Starbucks, at the grocery store. ”
And while The Smith Center has “landed in the center of the world’s cultural map,” Martin says the Las Vegas connection means just as much — if not more.
“A long, long time ago,” local arts supporters decided “this needed to be the center for the people,” he says.
And now that it’s here, locals “are talking about The Smith Center like it’s theirs,” Martin says. “That’s what gratifies me the most.”
Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.
