King Street Cove, a new event center near Centralia College, is seen Thursday afternoon in Centralia.
Although the Fox Theatre is not quite ready to open, Executive Director Scott Stolarz said that Fox will still be providing community entertainment through high-quality live-streamed concerts while supporting local musicians amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Fox Theatre is partnering with King Street Cove, a local independent music venue, and the Community Foundation of South Puget Sound to create a “TV quality” live-streamed concerts.
The virtual concerts will be free to the public and Stolarz said they hope to host the first one by early December. To cover the costs of hiring the musicians, camera operators, audio engineers, stagehands and lighting designers, the Community Foundation South Puget Sound has offered a partial match on funds raised toward the project before Nov. 20.
“We’re looking to see how much we raise in conjunction with the help from the Community Foundation before we announce a schedule. We want to see how many of these we can do and that is funding specific,” Stolarz said.
The Fox is planning to live stream the concerts on the Fox Theatre’s Facebook page and possibly on YouTube as well.
“The overarching idea was to get musicians that have lost their source of revenue back to work. That also includes live event professionals — audio, lighting, camera operators. It’s musician-focused but it’s also designed to provide relief to people with those other occupations,” Stolarz said.
He said that there aren’t any requirements for the musicians who would like to be involved. The Fox Theatre’s goal is to have three to four musicians playing shorter sets in order to maximize the number of people they can help.
“The beauty of being a theater and working with other theaters is we have these deep roots in the musical community and we’ve been reaching out to some people that we know and getting the word out through the musical community,” Stolarz said.
In addition to donations, Stolarz has reached out to local businesses and acquired some sponsorships to support the event.
“The response from the community has been great,” Stolarz said. “We’re incredibly excited to be able to reach out to the community. A lot of people see the Fox as that building at the end of the block that’s continuing to be worked on but we don’t want to see those four walls as our limit. We want to provide the arts that Centralia loves.”
Those interested in supporting the project can head to the Community Foundation of South Puget Sound’s website and donate to the project titled “Support COVID Affected Musicians with the Fox Theatre!” The deadline for donations to qualify for the matching funds is Nov. 20 for more information, go to spsgives.org/o/community-foundation-of-south-puget-sound/i/give-local-2020/s/centralia-fox-theatre-36fyiwu9f.
Musicians and live event professionals that have been affected by COVID-19 and would like to participate in the Fox Theatre’s virtual concert productions can email Scott Stolarz at scott@centraliafoxtheatre.com.
