Kimmel Center Inaugural Festival - Press Release

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts celebrates its opening with a two-week Inaugural Festival from December 16 – December 31, 2001. The line up includes nearly 100 performances, open house tours, lunchtime concerts, workshops, art exhibits and happy hours, many of which are free. Guests staying for the weekend can make their visit more economical thanks to the Philly Overnight Hotel Package which offers two nights for the price of one and FREE hotel parking both nights.

Inaugural Festival events will take place in The Kimmel Center’s main spaces: the 2,500-seat Verizon Hall, the 600-seat Perelman Theater and Commonwealth Plaza, the center’s glass-enclosed, ground-floor civic space. For a complete schedule of Inaugural Festival activities, visit www.kimmelcenter.org.

Happenings Every Day Except Christmas

The Kimmel Center Inaugural Festival will show off the best elements of this new arts venue along Center City Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts (Broad Street). Visitors are invited to sample music, theater and dance in formal and informal settings throughout the building every day of the festival except Christmas Day. One might listen to the "Mr. C" Jazz Trio while sipping coffee in The Kimmel Center restaurant, sing along with the Opera Company of Philadelphia in Verizon Hall or play Name that Tune with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia in Commonwealth Plaza. Overnight guests to Philadelphia can sip champagne under the stars late into the evening at the Rooftop Garden, under The Kimmel Center’s glass-vaulted roof.

The Kimmel Center will be open from 10 a.m. to (approximately) 10 p.m. throughout the Inaugural Festival. Performances in the Commonwealth Plaza are generally scheduled from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. The weekend schedule is punctuated with children’s activities including storytelling, photographs taken with holiday characters and a costume Try On Trunk, popular with children and adults.

Ticketed Marquee Performances

Highlighting the two-week festival calendar are special, ticketed performances in the cello-shaped Verizon Hall. Guest performers include Branford Marsalis & Joshua Redmond, Canadian Brass, Betty Buckley & Michael Feinstein, the Vienna Boys Choir, Audra McDonald and the St. Petersburg State Ballet performing "Sleeping Beauty on Ice." For ticket information, call (215) 893-1999.

A Music Sampler

Short, free, daytime concerts will be performed in Verizon Hall and the Perelman Theater by some of the region’s finest performers and students, notably the Curtis Institute of Music’s Brass Quintet, the University of the Arts Jazz Ensemble and musicians from the Temple University Boyer College of Music and the Settlement Music School. Other afternoon music offerings in Commonwealth Plaza span the globe, including Brazilian and contemporary jazz, klezmer music, Victorian carolers and the Kulu Mele African Dance Ensemble

The Resident Companies

The eight resident companies of the Regional Performing Arts Center (RPAC), which manages The Kimmel Center, will perform throughout the festival and some will conduct behind-the-scenes workshops. Performances include Pennsylvania Ballet’s "The Nutcracker" (at the Academy of Music), Holiday POPS with Peter Nero and the Philly Pops® and The Philadelphia Orchestra’s New Year’s Eve Concert. The RPAC resident companies are The Philadelphia Orchestra, PHILADANCO, The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Peter Nero and the Philly Pops®, American Theater Arts for Youth, Opera Company of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Ballet. The latter two will continue to perform in the Academy of Music, one block from
The Kimmel Center.

Art for Children

Families will feel at home in The Kimmel Center thanks to the following line up of activities: a musical "petting zoo;" photographs taken with the Pennsylvania Ballet’s Sugar Plum Fairy and Mouse King and American Theater Arts for Youth’s Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and Fairy Godmother; a costume display of elaborate outfits worn by professional singers, dancers and thespians; a culinary replica of The Kimmel Center made by the Art Institute of Philadelphia; behind-the-scenes workshops in props, jazz and dance held in the Rendell Room; a "Try On Trunk" to make believe you’re a famous ballerina or opera star; and outdoor performances by Philadelphia’s own Mummers, Spiral Q Pageantry and the Philadelphia Suns Chinatown Lion.

Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation is a non-profit organization dedicated to generating awareness of and visitation to Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties. For more information about travel to Philadelphia visit www.gophila.com or call (877) GO-PHILA.

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