September 12, 2004
Author: Teresa Annas THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

From Warwick Boulevard, it looked almost like Lincoln Center. On a site where construction workers had tromped for many months, dressed-up men and women stepped briskly toward a high-ceilinged glass entrance.

It was Sept. 1, and the grand-opening performance for Christopher Newport University's new performing arts center was minutes from starting. Singer Tony Bennett, who rarely plays small theaters, got talked into the date , just on the prestige and promise of the event.

The fact that the $54 million center was designed by I.M. Pei's architectural firm helped tip the scales, said Bill Biddle, the center's executive director. So did the fact that the acoustics in the 463-seat theater - one of the complex's three performance halls - were expected to be outstanding.

Sylvia and Alan Custer of Newport News drove the four blocks from their home to see a big-city show in the building they had watched go up. "This is quite a transformation," said Sylvia Custer. She taught from 1971 to 1990 at the old Ferguson High School, which was renovated and incorporated into the 300,000-square-foot center.

The Custers sat in the last row but were still only 50 feet from the stage. They gazed around and saw new burgundy velour seats and curtains and handsome wood paneling, all of which played a leading role in the acoustical engineering. They wondered if the sound would be as fantastic as advertised.

"I would like to welcome you to the new Ferguson Center for the Arts," Biddle said, addressing the packed house from the stage. "I've been waiting six months to say that."

Then, standing before Mayor Joe Frank, CNU President Paul Trible and countless other dignitaries, he made an extraordinary promise: "We will do everything in our power to make it the best performing arts facility in the nation."

Already, the Ferguson Center for the Arts can claim status as a new major player in the Hampton Roads arts scene.

The center's first phase, which just opened, consists of the 463-seat Music and Theatre Hall, the 200-seat Studio Theatre, plus classrooms and support facilities for CNU's theater, music and fine-arts departments. A 1,700-seat hall suitable for Broadway shows and large orchestras is slated for a September 2005 premiere.

Besides booking college and the community's performing arts groups in the 463-seater, Biddle has organized a series featuring big-name performers.

As of Friday, about 90 percent of all available tickets for all 10 performances had sold, he said.

The Bennett show - which sold out in 18 minutes, even though tickets were $125 - was not part of the subscription season. Two shows already are sold out, Box Office Manager Kimberly Lee said on Friday - the Oct. 8 opening show featuring chamber orchestra St. Martin in the Fields and a March 7 concert with Doc Severinson & His Big Band.

The season ends April 4 with "Smokey Joe's Cafe," a party of a show propelled by hits of the 1950s and '60s, all written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

The direct costs for putting on the first season are $500,000. That sum doesn't include staff salaries and building expenses absorbed by the university. That's a lot for a small theater, Biddle acknowledged.

To compare, the 400-seat American Theatre in Hampton, run by the city and Hampton Arts Foundation, is presenting 54 events this season; Hampton Arts' $1.3 million budget includes staff and building costs for its theater and a fine-arts center as well as artists' fees, said Michael Curry, Hampton Arts' director.

At the Ferguson Center, ticket sales should pay for nearly half of this season; Biddle said he already has raised most of the remainder from corporations and city arts commissions.

Next year, he said, he will only book shows for the 1,700-seat hall and expects the budget will soar to about $4 million. If ticket sales continue to be strong, he's hoping that within three years they will cover up to 75 percent of the cost of events, with the remainder donated by businesses, individuals, foundations and arts commissions.

Becoming a national center for the arts means "you need to not only book top artists but commission new work," said Biddle, who has worked in theater for two decades and who came to CNU in January from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, where he ran a 3,500-seat hall.

CNU already has hired famed New York choreographer David Parsons to create a new dance to music by Virginia's Dave Matthews Band. The deal isn't yet cinched, but it's fully expected. The Parsons Dance Company is tentatively scheduled to perform that work soon after the concert hall's grand opening, Biddle said.

For the main season, Biddle wants to bring in diverse programs with wide appeal, from musical comedy to classical music. He's seeking "signature artists in their field. If we want Irish music, we'll book The Chieftains. If we want a violinist, we'll try for Itzhak Perlman."

Not every group on the lineup will be a household name, but he plans to include enough giants to create buzz, he said. He hopes patrons will be lured to the center to see a top artist, then become enticed by another show they learn about.

The programs are mostly for the community; many students can't afford the tickets, which this season range from $40 to $55. But they'll get close encounters with the artists through workshops and master classes.

Ferguson Center for the Arts - named after Ferguson Enterprises, a Newport News-based company that gave $2.6 million - is part of the university's push for greatness, which intersects with the city's goal to raise its image from a blue-collar town.

"There's nothing wrong with blue-collar workers, but this community has changed," said Mayor Joe Frank. Northrop Grumman Newport News now has 8,000 or so hourly workers; 10,000 more are salaried, said a shipyard spokesperson.

"We want to create the kind of community where people believe it's a good place to work and live," Frank said, "and part of that has to be the uplifting experience of arts and cultural events."

The center is impressive, from its expansive, cacophonous lobby with Italian marble floors to its plush, library-quiet music and theater hall.

Pei's firm is well known for its museum designs, notably the see-through pyramid on The Louvre in Paris, Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Gallery of Art's angular east wing in Washington . Liberal use of glass and natural light is a hallmark of the work of the firm he founded, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

Ferguson Center features skylights, glass walls with wavy patterns and a glamorous glass entrance, which attracts like a lantern in the evening. When the concert hall is finished, an even more commanding windowed entry - five stories high - is expected to become an icon for Newport News.

Pei retired in 1990 but has continued with the occasional project. The lead architect on the center was Henry N. Cobb, who has worked on hotels, university buildings and banks all over the world.

"I studied Henry Cobb's work in architecture school," said Ted Porter, the center's project manager and an architect with Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas and Co. , a Norfolk firm hired to be the center's associated architects. Cobb's sensibility is sympathetic to that of Pei, who was a giant in the modernist movement of contemporary architecture.

One of Cobb's finest touches is the 500-foot-long colonnade that runs the length of the facility. The concrete columns are modern, with a shape that vaguely suggests a boat seen from overhead.

Hints of a maritime theme can be spotted here and there; the school, after all, is named for a sea captain. The soaring lobby balcony leading to a second-floor theater entrance suggests a ship's deck. The billowing colonnades resemble sails, as seen on CNU's logo.

Porter worked on the center from its inception eight years ago; he's familiar with its details. He worked closely with all of the consultants, including Theatre Projects Consultants of S. Norwalk, Conn., which helped decide on the size and shape of the theaters, and Kirkegaard & Associates of Boulder, Colo., a top acoustics firm that improved the sound in Carnegie Hall, Atlanta Symphony Center and other top halls.

The high school's skeleton seamlessly blends into the new facility; the old terrazzo tile floor is one of the few indications you're in the revamped section. The old gym was broken up into the 200-seat theater, a rehearsal hall, scene shop and lighting lab.

The small theater has a stage floor made up of black panels that can be raised or lowered, allowing for many configurations, Porter said. A balcony encircling that floor can be used for audiences, lighting instruments or stage settings.

The larger hall is 440 seats, but 23 seats can be added when there's no orchestra in the pit, Biddle said, as with Tony Bennett's concert. The hall was designed with box seats along the side walls and a balcony, so that no seat is far from the stage.

William Brown, head of CNU's jazz studies program, performed with his student jazz ensemble before Bennett's concert. "When you look out into that beautiful auditorium, you see people from left, right, forward and down. It's just really amazing.

"The people's faces are right there," Brown said, "and you begin to make a connection with them."

The music department is especially excited about the new practice rooms, which have extra-thick walls and floating floors that do not connect to exterior floors, so that sound won't travel, said Paul Fitzgerald, CNU's director of facilities management.

And the theater department's "crown jewel," Fitzgerald said, is the rehearsal hall, because it will allow them to rehearse in a high-ceilinged room the same size as the larger hall's stage.

In late August, during the first week of classes in the Ferguson Center, freshmen acting students gathered in the new rehearsal hall. Their teacher asked them to relive their happiest moments for the class.

Anna Hemphill, 18, of Lexington, went first. "My happiest moment was in April when I performed in the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center," Hemphill said with extra-crisp diction. She was among 60 chosen from 10,000 high school Shakespearean actors to compete in New York and ended up among the top 10.

As she stood on the New York stage to perform her monologue, she marveled that "this is where Broadway actors stand and present their art," Hemphill told her fellow students.

CNU's arts departments have grown in the past decade. Both music and theater had about 20 majors in the early 1990s and this year have about 100 students concentrating in the arts. The promise of the new center helped lure more students, said Steven Breese, a former professional actor-director starting his fifth year as theater department head.

Ten arts instructors have been added this year in music, theater and fine arts to accommodate the enrollment surge.

The facility switch, from dated Gaines Theater, has been like going from a puttering 1964 Volkswagen to a 2005 Mazarati. "And we're about to take it out for its initial spin," said Breese, grinning.

He's directing students in "Romeo and Juliet" in November in the larger hall. That production wasn't possible in Gaines, mostly because there was no room large enough to rehearse the sword fights, he said.

"Theater is, to a large degree, facility-driven," Breese stressed. More-extravagant sets now will be possible. Plus, with much-improved acoustics, students' voices will be more easily heard.

"We've always had very strong students and a nurturing atmosphere," said Mark Reimer, music department head. "But this is just a drop-dead gorgeous hall. It transforms the students' thinking."

Young music students performing in the 463-seater will begin to feel more like professionals, he said, and the experience should boost their ambitions and improve their playing.

Good acoustics are critical, Reimer said. "They have to be able to play in a place that has good reverb: They have to hear themselves coming back. There has to be a certain warmth to the sound."

The music and theater hall has those qualities, he said. Even more, "They get to play on the same stage that last week Tony Bennett played on."

That stage, and those acoustics, also seemed to excite Bennett. During his concert he tested the theater's limits, turning off his microphone to sing "Fly Me to the Moon."

"This theater is so beautiful to perform in," Bennett told the crowd. "We play in theaters all over the world. Whoever built this, they don't build 'em like this anymore.

"It's so intimate and magnificent. A performer could feel natural on stage."

Ten minutes later, he said good night and grinning patrons began filing out. The Custers lingered, savoring the moment.

Alan Custer was impressed by how well the singer's voice was heard, even without the microphone. "That attests to the quality of how this thing was built."

"It's a real thrill to be here tonight," said Sylvia Custer, a retired schoolteacher. "Now we can say we have our own cultural center here, for all kinds of arts.

"I give it an A-plus."