Northridge : New Arts Center Aims to Strike Chord

Intimacy and state-of-the-art acoustics are two of the finer points of the new Performing Arts Center at Cal State Northridge.

When the new 500-seat theater launches its inaugural season next week, managing director David Pier said arts fans will enjoy a center where no seat will be farther than 50 feet from the stage. According to Pier, that means “there isn’t a bad seat in the house.”

In 1990, the CSUN University Student Union was expanded as part of a $16-million project--to be paid over 30 years from student fees, Pier said. Part of that project included funding to construct a new performing arts center. Work began in 1993 and was completed late last year.

Other campus theaters are heavily booked, and the new center will be one of the few places where the larger community and the students schedule plays, musicals or other performances. Outside groups and individuals may rent the center for extended runs, with a lower rate available for nonprofit organizations.

Pier said he hopes both students and Valley arts lovers can meet and discuss theater or just be entertained.

“There really hasn’t been a place where the arts community in the San Fernando Valley could showcase their talents,” Pier said.

His own talents as a saxophone player and background in shaping the arts as a business should help him in his new role. Before earning a master’s of business administration in arts management from UCLA a year ago, Pier toured with Cab Calloway and Tony Bennett.

As part of an effort to involve the campus in the arts, he said students will also work as technicians or stagehands during the shows.

The first season, which will begin Feb. 1, will open with the jazz band Yellowjackets, and be followed by the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers, conga player Poncho Sanchez, young jazz instrumentalist Joshua Redman and female impersonator Jim Bailey.

For more information about center events, call (818) 885-2488 or (818) 885-3943.