Count Basie Unveils New Space for Its Theater Performing Arts Academy

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By Madelynne Kislovsky

RED BANK – The curtain has gone up on the Count Basie Theatre’s new Performing Arts Academy building, located at 111 Monmouth Street, next to the theater.
The space, which is the former home of Phoenix Productions, will serve as a center of the Performing Arts Academy learning activities as well as community arts gatherings. A celebration of the new building was held on Monday.
“Today is a really huge step in The Basie’s future, and a manifestation of the board’s vision, to be a true regional center for the arts,” said Count Basie Theatre CEO Adam Philipson. The new sign outside the Performing serves as “a real representation of what we’re really about,” he said.
The Count Basie Theatre Performing Arts Academy will allow the organization to offer more professional development classes, teacher workshops, a training center for the Basie’s teachers who visit schools, a place for rehearsals, free community workshops, and more.
The new building will also hum to the sounds of the Jazz Arts Academy, for middle and high school-aged musicians.
“We’re thrilled to be able to use this facility,” said Joe Muccioli, the ar tistic and managing director of the nonprofit organization the Jazz Arts Project. “It opened up our abilities to expand the program.”
Mayor Pasquale Menna said the new arts center is a “building block of a continuing process that began years ago,” as a result of the “woefully inadequate” facilities at Count Basie.
Fifteen years ago, the theater’s arts academy welcomed 150 students per year. Now, more than 15,000 have come through, said Yvonne Scudiery, Performing Arts Academy director of education.
Scudiery runs the academy and oversees all of the classes including the outreach program, which has been in place for about 10 years, and the academy’s bus in-program, which features a pre-and post-show for each performance in the theater, accompanied with free busing for the students. “It’s all about integrating the arts into the curriculum,” Scudiery said.
Scudiery quoted Robert Louis Stevenson at the ceremony for the building dedication: “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant.” She added: “And we are indeed planting, I think we’re the Johnny Appleseeds of the 21st century.”
Samantha Giustiniani, the arts education and outreach manager for the education department at the Performing Arts Center, was in the audience at the ceremony. “We’re definitely able to do new things in here,” she said. “It’s the largest space we have. We’re able to offer more community events, and our Jazz Artists Academy has space to breathe being in here now, as opposed to one of the smaller classrooms…Just to have something visible from the sidewalk is very significant.”
Guistiniani teaches theater and arts-based classes at the Performing Arts Academy, as well as at the Red Bank Primary School as part of the arts integration program. This program allows teachers from the Performing Arts Academy to visit classrooms and teach curriculum content and an art form at the same time.
For example, one of Giustiniani’s lessons involved teaching fractions and music notation simultaneously, allowing the students to learn an art form and math at the same time.
“The Count Basie is an integral part of our community, for young and old,” said Danielle Acerra of Tinton Falls, an artist and an employee of Monmouth Arts. “I’m so excited to see the growth and development and support that they’re getting for all the amazing education programs that they’ve done.”
Acerra was also involved with the most recent Basie Awards, which honors excellence in Monmouth County High School dramatic and musical theatre. Last May the Performing Arts Academy’s Basie Awards, which originally began with 11 Monmouth County high schools and now involves 29, celebrated its 10th anniversary.
Philipson said he was “thrilled about the turnout and the evident energy going on…It’s beginning to show that all the hard work we’ve been doing is taking root.” Philipson explained that this event is crucial not just for Red Bank, but the surrounding region as well.
“We have students that come in from other counties and cities as well as Red Bank,” he said. “It shows that we are gelling as the center, we are definitely entertaining, but we are moving more into what we do beyond the entertainment, which is the education and the outreach, and making sure the arts are a part of the fabric of a community… Those are things and skills that we know about as art lovers, but it’s something that we’re realizing other people are beginning to support.”
In June, the Count Basie Theatre was gifted $1 million donation by The Charles Lafitte Foundation for theater education, which will allow the Basie to offer its programs “in perpetuity,“ said Jonathan Vena, director of marketing and public relations for the Count Basie Theatre.
The new 2,856-foot space was purchased in October 2014 from Phoenix Productions for $725,000, according to county property records.