On a recent Saturday evening, crowds at the Delray Beach parking structure that doubles as the Arts Garage were jumping and jiving to the New Age/neoclassical piano sounds of composer and artist Jace Vek.
Vek, a two-time Emmy award winner and Pittsburgh native, was accompanied by soprano Kat Yarbrough and tenor Matthew Farmer, who does double duty himself as the programming manager of the Arts Garage.
Vek’s joy and passion were in evidence as he conveyed his piano compositions to a full house and an enthusiastic audience.
Kenneth Stern, a former Palm Beach County family court judge, and his wife Pamela Farthing Stern, an interior designer, were beaming after the show.
“Jace Vek is amazing and the evening was thrilling – really wonderful to hear,” Kenneth said. “Although the Garage is in its infancy, I take a lot of civic pride in the fact that Delray is able to command this caliber of talent and I will be back. Now that we’ve found this wonderful venue, we can’t stay away.”
Pamela said the show reminded her of “the salons in Vienna or Salzburg,” where people came to hear Mozart.
“Because of the intimate environment, we were able to see Vek close up and see his fingers and hands move over the keys as well as see his emotions,” she said.
From a relatively modest opening in April, the Arts Garage, at 180 N.E. 1st St., has become an important player on the South Florida cultural scene, with a busy slate of activities each weekend that range from puppet theater to hip-hop. It also has become a key venue for jazz, always an art form with too-few outlets, and brought musicians familiar in the Miami-Lauderdale orbit further north.
“It’s amazing what the Arts Garage has accomplished in a short period of time,” said Gwen Verbeeck, a retired marketing research executive from New York and culture maven who has attended a number of events since its inception.
The inspiration for the Arts Garage — a multidisciplinary venue for visual artists, musicians, performers, film and playwrights — was developed under former two-term Mayor Jeff Perlman, who led the charge to create a long-term cultural plan for downtown Delray.
He hired a New York arts consultancy and Carol Coletta, host of National Public Radio’s Smart City and an expert on urban planning, to help with the long-term vision for the city.
It was then that the idea of Delray Beach as an arts incubator took hold.
“We did a plan that called for Delray to be positioned as an intimate, authentic venue for the arts. At that time, we had plans for everything else, neighborhoods, parks, the downtown,” Perlman said. “But we had no blueprint for what we wanted from a cultural standpoint.”
In February 2010, the Delray Beach Community Redevelopment Agency bought a 15,007-square-foot warehouse in Pineapple Grove and decided to utilize the parking garage nearby on First Street to host cultural and arts activities. Their intention is to move into the warehouse as a permanent space within two to three years, Perlman said.
City leaders launched a national search for a director of its arts activity and found her in Russian-born Alyona Ushe, then executive director of the New Orleans Opera.
Ushe, who has been described as someone who can do 99 things at once and be good at all of them, brings 15 years experience in nonprofit management, administration and development to her new position as executive director of the Creative City Collaborative and Arts Garage.
Ushe said she was sold on the idea of the upcoming Arts Warehouse when she first saw the building.
“When I saw the warehouse, it was overwhelming. It’s raw space with nothing but potential,” she said. “You walk into the venue and it begins to unfold in front of you, and with each step that you take, the more possibilities and the more ideas evolve naturally and organically. And when you see the humongous ceilings and open space, you can only say ‘Wow.’”
The buying of the warehouse didn’t immediately come with a plan for the parking garage, which “was not even a concept at the time,” Ushe said. “But they saw the opportunity to create an unusual arts center from this raw, powerful space and they came back to CCC and said ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing building, do you guys want to figure out what to do with it?’”
To get that off the ground, the garage became critical.
“Our challenge was to build out this amazing venue without having any audience development or any financial backing, or fundraising base. When the parking garage miraculously became available, everything came together,” she said. “Now we have this as our testing ground with a much bigger picture in mind. We have the flexibility to try different things and see what works and what doesn’t.”
Perlman and others have high praise for Ushe, who is high-energy and disarmingly direct, the sort of person who immediately starts writing down ideas she likes while conversing.
“Alyona is a force of nature. She resurrected the cultural plan that we had worked on. With the CRA’s support and her energy, the vision of the Arts Garage has come to life,” Perlman said. “They have done a tremendous amount in a short period of time to enhance Delray’s reputation in the arts world.
“Alyona is bringing world-class musicians to Delray and has also given local talent like Chloe Dolandis, Jace Vek and Drew Tucker a venue in which to build their careers.”
The ambitious line-up of musical programming includes a jazz series with Israeli-born Brooklyn-based Uri Gurvich and four-time Grammy award winner and violinist Federico Britos, trumpeter Melton Mustafa and saxophonist Jesse Jones Jr.; classical performances with cellist Jonah Kim and members of the South Florida Symphony; and “straight from the streets of Brooklyn,” the Urban Underground, bringing R&B, reggae, and hip-hop.
Farmer also initiated cabaret-style female-impersonator performances, Divas in Art, on the last Sundays of the month.
That’s helped make the Arts Garage popular in a short time, and it may have a future once the operation moves to the Arts Warehouse.
“If people love to come here, we may keep it as an annex or as its own destination. Once the boutique hotel is finished across the street, we will be perfectly positioned,” Ushe said.
CRA Executive Director Diane Colonna said the Garage “has exceeded our expectations.”
“Delray Beach has been a work in progress for the past two decades. In the 1980s we wanted to be Boca. Our downtown was dead,” Colonna said. “The CRA made housing and neighborhood improvements and focused our energies and monies into arts initiatives.
“Although we wanted to invest in economic development for the city, we had no set agenda or idea, but wanted to put Delray Beach on the map as an arts destination. Alyona, as a true change agent, has raised the bar and attracted high-profile talent to our area,” Colonna said.
Ushe’s future plans include a film series, but one of her most notable recent accomplishments is to bring Louis Tyrrell, founder of Florida Stage, into the fold.
“When I met Lou, I knew we were on the same artistic page,” Ushe said.
After the final curtain fell last June at Florida Stage, Tyrrell found a second act in December in Delray Beach. He’s now artistic director of The Theatre at Arts Garage, and has already programmed a Master Playwright Series with playwrights John Guare (Six Degrees of Separation), Pulitzer-prize winner Marsha Norman (‘Night Mother) and Israel Horovitz (The Indian Wants the Bronx). He also hopes to bring renowned Tony Award-winner Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) to the venue.
The Master Playwright Series is set for four subsequent Tuesdays in February (7, 14, 21 and 28), and on March 1-4, he’ll present a new play-reading festival with six new works, plus workshops led by playwright William Mastrosimone (Extremities). The first formal production will be Woody Sez: The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie, a revue by David Lutken and Nick Corley celebrating the 100th birthday of the folk hero and musician. It opens March 16 and runs through April 8.
Tyrrell said he sees the return of the kind of work he was doing at Florida Stage as an economic boon for the city.
“We hope to drive the economy in the area in terms of restaurants and shops, plus there will be a brand-new boutique hotel across the street. And if all of the rest of the square footage in the Garage gets rented, then the city would say, ‘Why would we mess with it?’” Tyrrell said.
“At Florida Stage, we had that experience when we were in the Plaza Del Mar in Manalapan. The clothing store Chico’s moved in, and all the restaurants and shops were very generous with us because we drove a lot of the business. Our plan is to do the same thing here.”
In the meantime, patrons are just plain enjoying the vibe at the Arts Garage, even when cars rumble overhead during a performance.
“The atmosphere is alive and you can bring your own bottle of wine, come with friends or come alone, sit at a table and meet new people,” said Verbeeck, the retired marketing executive. “It’s these types of organizations that make Delray Beach so vibrant.”
The Arts Garage is located at 180 N.E. 1st Street, Delray Beach. For scheduling or ticket information, please visit www.delraybeacharts.org or call 561-450-6357.