SPRINGFIELD — The Hope Center for the Arts is paving the way for more Grammy Award-winning and internationally acclaimed musicians to perform in Springfield.
The new venue, established by Pride Stores founder Robert Bolduc and his Hope for the Arts foundation, opened in June after a year-long renovation project.
The center has already hosted free summer programming for 150 city students, several high school graduations and three concerts during July’s Springfield Jazz and Roots Festival.
Now, readying for a busy fall season, Bolduc said the Hope Center for the Arts, the former CityStage space, is on its way to becoming “cutting edge.”
“We got the latest and the best,” Bolduc said of the first schedule of performances, broadening use of the space from theatrical productions.
“Now, performers want to come here,” he said.
That’s performers like John Pizzarelli, who will play the center with his Frank Sinatra tribute band on Oct. 4; Judy Collins, who will perform Nov. 1; and the Blind Boys of Alabama, who will present a Christmas show Dec. 20.
The season begins Sept. 27 with Sweet Honey in the Rock, an internationally renowned African American women’s ensemble that has been performing across the globe for half a century.
Pushing boundaries
Performers are eager to play the center as much as Kyle Homstead, technical director and talent buyer, wants to see them in the city.
“It’s been exciting to put together this season because Springfield really hasn’t had a venue of this sort of intimate nature, size, and certainly all the technical capabilities that we have in a long time,” Homstead said Tuesday in an interview with The Republican.
The theater, originally built in 1984 as StageWest until it was renamed in 1998, had remained vacant for years after CityStage closed in 2018. Bolduc‘s Hope for the Arts Foundation set out to renovate the space after purchasing it in 2024.
Now, the 500-seat theater boasts 51 hyperreal speakers, 100 lighting instruments, 130,000 lumens of brightness and an over 34-million-pixel video screen, according to the Hope Center for the Arts’ website.
The theater claims to be the first performing arts center in the country to install the L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound System, designed by L-Acoustics, which provides the sound systems for Coachella and other major music festivals.
The sound system is a “spatial design” that separates overlapping tones, so each individual voice and instrument can be heard with “extraordinary clarity.”
“We’re really excited to be pushing the boundaries with this sound that is mixed in three dimensions and 365 degrees,” Homstead said.
“It leans into the nature of the way the theater is designed, which is already very intimate because it’s a half-round theater,” he said. “When you couple that with this sound technology, it makes the experience that much more intimate and immersive and brings you closer to the artists who are on stage.”
Other standout features are the theater’s immersive projection mapping and video capabilities. Homstead said these can create colorful and transformative visual work onstage. The stage itself is visible from every angle, thanks to the theater’s round architecture.
The theater’s innovative technology could make it a big draw for performing artists.
“There really aren’t any theaters in the region that have this built-in capability,” Homstead said. “So, we’ve had artists approach us and collaborate with us in order to really harness the full potential of what we have to offer here.”
In addition to acts mentioned, the lineup includes BEATrio Béla Fleck, Edmar Castañeda and Antonio Sánchez on Oct. 5; Amherst native Makaya McCraven on Oct. 9; and Rafiq Bhatia, a guitarist and Academy Award-nominated composer, on Oct. 10.
While late fall and winter months can be a slow time for concerts, that won’t be the case at the center.
Shows also include East Forest, Nov. 8; Arturo Sandoval, a Grammy, Emmy, and Presidental Medal of Freedom-winning jazz artist, Nov. 14; a live broadcast of a Yo-Yo-Ma concert in Boston, Nov. 21; and the Irish Tenors, Nov. 28.
December will bring Take 6, a 10-time Grammy winning jazz ensemble, Dec. 11. The new year will welcome “On A Winter’s Night,” a reunion tour for Patty Larkin, Cliff Eberhardt, John Gorka and Lucy Kaplansky, on Jan. 22.
“It’s beyond what we had expected,” Bolduc said.
Homstead said he is excited to see how people respond to a diverse lineup of programming. “There’s so many different cultural communities [in Springfield], and we want to try to engage as many facets of our community as possible.”
Ticket prices vary, with many shows starting between $25 and $50. Tickets can be purchased online on the center’s website, or in-person on the day of the show.
Fall programming for Springfield youth
Free programming for Springfield youth is at the heart of the Hope Center for the Arts’ mission, Bolduc said.
“You look around and say, ‘okay, well, what do kids do after school if they don’t play sports?’” he said. “Not everyone wants to play sports, and a lot of kids find their expression and their confidence and even the desire to get up in the morning and do something through the arts.”
After a successful summer program, registration for fall programming is now open. Participation is free for Springfield residents. Fall programs are expected to start later this month, but enrollment will continue on a rolling basis until classes are full.
It’s an opportunity that Isaac LittleJohn Eddy, the center’s director of education, hopes more and more families take advantage of.
“For students, the most important thing is expression and learning how to tell the world your point of view and learning how to listen to the stories and the points of view of others,” Eddy said. “The sneaky thing that art does is it makes us all better humans and better civic leaders.”
He knows what he’s talking about. For 12 years, Eddy performed as a member of the Blue Man Group, complete with the blue body paint and black garb.
Now, he says, working with Springfield youth is his “dream job.”
“To see students feel safe to be able to try new things and also push themselves in areas of art that they do really well in is just incredibly, incredibly inspiring,” Eddy said.
Students have a variety of programs to choose from in the performing, visual and technical arts. The registration page lists options that include a reading lab, theater arts, vocal ensemble (singing), hip-hop lab, creative writing and poetry, visual arts, dance, guitar and ukelele, film and video, college improvement, photography, band (contemporary), making beats and stage production.
Programs offer hands-on experiences with live production, filmmaking and audio production, skills that Bolduc said can help youth in the future.
“When they go through our program and they go to a big city and want to get into tech, somebody’s going to say to them, ‘Well yes, but we’ve got all this technology.’ And our kids are going to be able to say, ‘Sure, I know all about it,’” he said.
Students participating in fall programs have the opportunity to see concerts and — hopefully — interact with the professional artists playing the center in the months ahead.
“When acts coming through are willing to collaborate in any way, whether it be a talkback or maybe a workshop … we’re going to do it,” Eddy said.
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