In Tuesday’s (2/17) Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock), Eric Harrison provides an update on Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall, closed for two years of renovations, which is home to the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Celebrity Attractions, and Ballet Arkansas. All three have been performing at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center, “which opened in 2011 as part of the new Maumelle High School campus. It seats just over 1,200—Arkansas Symphony Executive Director Christina Littlejohn says 1,204 … almost exactly half of the seats in the ‘old’ Robinson [which] will seat closer to 1,800 when it’s finished in November 2016…. ‘It’s a wonderful performance space,’ says Littlejohn of the Maumelle facility, which has hosted eight Masterworks concerts and a ‘side-by-side’ concert with its youth orchestras since the end of September. ‘Orchestra members and [Music Director Philip Mann] are really enjoying it.’ … Littlejohn says they’ve been filling, on average, 90-92 percent of total capacity.” Once Robinson reopens, “Littlejohn says the symphony might also maintain a link to the Maumelle facility…. ‘One of our goals is creating a web of musical activity throughout central Arkansas.’ ”
Posted February 19, 2015
