Dallas City Council Briefed on City Performance Hall Opening

by Jerome Weeks 20 Aug 2012 4:59 PM

So you knew already that the new City Performance Hall is getting a grand opening in three weeks, right? Sarah Jaffe is headlining and KXT is co-presenting? But the City Council had to be officially informed. With deets on, like, next year’s budget and stuff.

The ‘grand opening’ of the City Performance Hall, the Arts District’s latest (and possibly last) facilities component, is less than a month away. So Office of Cultural Affairs director Maria Munoz-Blanco updated the City Council’s arts, culture and libraries committee on the big doings being planned for the new hall. You can hear her address in the podcast below. The overall idea, she says, is “to highlight the beautiful and very practical building but also to showcase the artists …. we’re really proud to be partners with them.”

Among the many public events — the ribbon-cutting, the onstage lunch and, of course, the opening night concert Friday, September 14th, co-presented by KXT — there will be a community open house Saturday and Sunday, plus building tours. The Dallas Center for Architecture is training docents to lead them — again, they’re open to the public. Learn more here.

Also below, find the response by City Council member Ann Margolin, encouraging fellow members to attend some of the hooplah. (“I think we need to be well-represented there. The showcasing of local talent is really what City Performance Hall is all about.”)

Finally, the briefing provided more than the familiar stuff — you knew about the Friday concert headliner Sarah Jaffe and the Saturday jazz collective headed up by Roger Boykin, right? Because this also spelled out the hall’s budget for the next fiscal year (bottom).