APRIL 6, 2017 // 9
Continued from Pg. 8
a difference. When I visited the
Liberty Theatre I saw that I could
use my background to champion
the arts. For the first time I’ve
been able to merge my business
life with my music life.”
Crocket, originally from Frank-
lin, Pennsylvania, was schooled in
Michigan and DePaul University in
Chicago. She has a very inclusive
vision for how the theater can
support our community.
“We are Astoria’s living room,
not an elite venue. Bereniece and
I have a goal of one free event a
month, and every time we do that,
we pack the house.”
She adds, “But over and over
I hear people saying ‘I’ve never
been inside the theater before’
which seems amazing to me. So
that’s part of what we’re doing
— we’re programming a wide
scattershot of performances to see
what stick, we want to see what
people like. We have such a rich
love of classical music in this
area, but we also need to remem-
ber all the musicians on the stage
started somewhere, like me — I
was a public school kid.”
DANNY MILLER/THE DAILY ASTORIAN
Evening sunlight casts upon The Liberty Theatre as two people walk by in
Astoria. The downtown venue is experimenting with different events to
grow the audience and build support.
Jennifer Crockett
World-class theater
Music and education
Which leads to one of the
other goals of this new manage-
ment team — partnering with the
schools to encourage a younger
audience to participate in music.
That’s where Jones-Centeno and
her expertise come into play. As
she says, “It’s an exciting time for
the theater in Astoria! It’s a time
of discovery, creation, dreaming,
planning, trial, failure, restarting,
and analysis, with the hope that
we can begin to have a really
long-term love affair.”
“This community is filled with
lovers of culture,” Jones-Centeno
continues, “from abstract paint-
ing, to contra dance, to heritage
preservation, to opera, to plays, to
DIY crafts — everyone can find
something that interests them.
We want everyone to feel that the
theater is open to their expression
of culture. As Astoria grows,
the theater has something of a
responsibility to be the cultural
hub for the area.”
“Jennifer and I have hearts for
education and this is driving some
of our programming for the 2017-
2018 season and beyond. We are
tionally known musicians.
April 20 is another example of
the creative offerings Crocket and
Jones-Centeno are scheduling.
On stage will be Scottish fid-
dler Alasdair Fraser and U.S. Jul-
liard-trained cellist Natalie Haas.
Fraser and Haas started playing
together 17 years ago. As Fraser
said in his distinctive brogue after
their performance at the Sisters
Music Festival last summer, “Na-
talie was 11 when she came to
one of my fiddle camps. So we’ve
really been performing together
for more than two decades.”
They bring a hybrid combina-
tion of traditional folk fiddle and
classic musical acumen. They
illustrate how music changes as
it enters other cultures: one of
their popular medleys is a ringing
version of the same tune — The
Highlander’s Farewell — as it
traveled the globe from Scotland,
to Spain, to our own Appalachia.
“There’s not a culture on this
planet that doesn’t express itself
with an instrument like the fid-
dle,” Fraser says.
DAILY ASTORIAN/FILE PHOTO
To inspect the quality of the finished print, director Richard Donner showed “The Goonies” in the Liberty Theare
before its official release in 1985.
scheduling programs with educa-
tional opportunities for school-
aged children in the schools, and
for lifelong learners. We’ll be
providing lectures, workshops,
talkbacks and more.”
To begin nurturing a closer
relationship between the theater
and the schools, Crocket and
Jones-Centeno offered the theater
venue to the band director at As-
toria High School as a fundraiser.
“There were 100 kids involved
and 100 people in the audience —
and they brought in $2,500,” says
Crocket. “We’d like to be able
to do this once a year, not only
for Astoria schools — we’ll do
Ilwaco next May, and Seaside and
Warrenton after that.”
International offerings
As an example of the broad
range of programming this dy-
namic duo is bring to the theatre,
two weeks ago there was a fantas-
tic performance of the a cappella
quartet, Women of the World.
They charmed the audience with
tight harmonies, compelling
rhythms and international sounds.
As part of their performance they
also answered questions from the
audience. Someone asked how to
introduce music to young chil-
dren. Their answer? — “exposure
kids to music, the more kinds, the
better.”
The Liberty Theatre man-
agement team is doing just that;
they’ve featured everything from
local indie-rock to more interna-
Crocket and Jones-Centeno are
hoping to build on their initial calen-
dar of performances this year as they
grow the audience for the Liberty.
As Crocket says, “We’d like to
be able to schedule musicians two
or three years out. That’s the way to
get the top-notch performers. To do
that we’ll need community support.
Come listen and tell us what you
like!”
And let’s not forget the quality of
our theater. Clark again, “The Liber-
ty Theatre shares many of the same
characteristics as the Musikverien in
Vienna, one of the four or five best
concert halls in the world: nooks
and crannies and little filigrees,
murals and statuaries, materials of
wood and plaster. Even the chan-
delier. These all have the tendency
to give the sound little chances to
hide for a millisecond so it doesn’t
hit you right in the face. It bounces
off various things and makes for a
world-class venue.”
Many view these older concert
halls of moderate size as the best in
the world. Our Liberty Theatre is a
gem that is now paired with an am-
bitious, talented management team.
Buy a ticket (https://libertyastoria.
showare.com) and go see what all
the fuss is about.